Here’s the latest visible change on the “train exhibit”:

By the entrance sits the “Vision” screen -- it projects videos from a few live cameras around the layout. When there’s no train motion detected on the cameras, it displays pre-recorded videos I made on the layout -- the same ones I have on my YT channel,  I have about 140 video clips now.

Next to that screen is the RTAC tablet display. It shows the state of the automation -- which trains are running, or what will run next, and details like speed and direction of the trains. That little 10-inch tablet is a ChuWi Hi10 that I got back in 2017, running my custom Android RTAC app, and it has lasted a surprisingly long time given that it’s basically on 24/7. A couple times lately the tablet has turned off, but I got it running again after some careful massaging. Still, at some point, I expect it to entirely stop working so I wanted a plan B before that happens.

And the plan B is to merge the display from the tablet onto the Vision screen display. So that’s exactly what I’ve done, the changes are in the Vision project, and we can see the result above. I actually like it and I removed the tablet since it’s now redundant. Amusingly, plan A was to update RTAC to run on a more modern Android 13 tablet -- I have done that and I had it at home ready for deployment. Out of curiosity, I implemented plan B integrating both features on the same display screen, and now I like it better. That’s why I try things. There is no wrong choice here.

Most visitors will only need to see the status line under the videos -- it indicates whether the automation is stopped, or whether a train runs. For my own edification, I have details on the automation shown on the left side:

That display on the side is purposely simple and not too fancy. I thought about doing something like an “old monitor” look or an LCARS interface and opted not to go for the gimmick.