Red Dot and BrightSign create digital kiosks for the TARC transportation network

The digital signage integrator project Red Dot Digital Media for River City Transit Authority (PEN), in Louisville (EU), contemplates the installation of digital kiosks with video players BrightSign in your network 36 public transport stations.

The public transport provider PEN has completed the digitization project with interactive kiosks in its 36 stations, as well as on their buses, with systems integrated by Red Dot Digital Media in the American area of ​​​​Louisville.

The centerpiece of the project is a network of digital kiosks installed in each of the 36 TARC transit network stations, with real-time information on GPS coordinates of each bus, stop times depending on location, route and speed.

Red Dot's participation in this project included the station's computer configuration, which included the design and development of a 'next bus server' application, that feeds endpoints translated into visual and spoken information for passengers waiting at transit stations.

“Red Dot has been the stellar partner in the IT part of the project,” he says. David Herd, TARC ITS engineer, with the contribution of an elegant and functional solution that not only meets our vision and passenger information requirements, but it exceeds our expectations”.

Specifically, Red Dot designed a system with endpoints that use dongles GPS that interact with multimedia players BrightSign to provide the local LAT/LON coordinates used by the 'next bus server' application, as needed, to identify the StopID from the nearest bus stop.

Single implementation means locations and stops are not hardcoded into the device, although the stop times of each bus route are determined by local GPS coordinates and the closest stops.

The arrival data is extracted from the GTFS programming TARC Google to provide arrival information at endpoints in real time. An override mechanism was also developed to replace the coordinates of the dongle GPS and assign a particular StopID that uses the BrightSign player.

At each of the end points, A media player-enabled display from this digital signage manufacturer provides information to passengers at every transit stop.

With the push of a button, BrightSign player triggers audio prompts from a text-to-speech device that informs passengers at the digital kiosk when the next bus is expected to arrive and estimated arrival times for the next four.

Digital kiosks also display important information about service alerts TARC and stop, possible interruptions and general company news, the content of which is displayed via a pair of visual tickers that pull real-time service alert data from Google's GTFS programming from TARC.

A portion of each digital kiosk's screen is dedicated to a rotating feed of informational content, including a complete route map, another detail of the local stopping area with the locations of incoming buses, as well as weather forecasts and other information of interest to travelers.

One aspect that was especially taken into account in the development of the Red Dot project was implementing ADA best practices to ensure that digital kiosks were accessible to all users., with text-to-speech functionality to verbally transmit service alerts for visually impaired passengers, as well as its availability in English and Spanish.