What does the The Train Clock actually do?
It shows the next four trains arriving at the subway stations you choose, in both directions, on a small LED matrix that lives on your desk or shelf. Data refreshes every five seconds from the MTA's official GTFS-Realtime feed — the same source the platform countdown clocks read.
Which transit systems are supported?
Right now, the New York City subway only — all 22 lines, all 373 stops. We've started looking at DC, Boston, and San Francisco for a future revision. If a city you care about isn't on the list, drop us a note.
How long does it take to set up?
About two minutes. Plug the board in. It comes up as a captive-portal WiFi network — connect your phone, enter your home WiFi credentials, pick your stations from the list. The board reboots, joins your network, and starts pulling arrivals. Selections persist across power cycles; you only do this once.
Where do you ship?
Continental US first — free standard shipping, with a two-week build window from order. International shipping (Canada, EU, UK, Australia) opens after the first batch clears.
How do updates work?
Over WiFi, automatically. The board checks for new firmware in the background. If something arrives, it gets verified, staged, and applied on the next quiet moment. If anything goes wrong, the board rolls back to the last working version on its own — you don't have to do anything.
Holding the UP+DOWN buttons at power-on for three seconds restores the original factory image, in case you ever need it.
What happens if the data feed is down?
The board keeps showing the last known arrivals with a "stale" indicator, and switches to "offline" after about half a minute without an update. As soon as the feed recovers, fresh times come back automatically.
How much power does it use?
About 3 W idle, 6 W typical, 12 W if every pixel is white at full brightness (which never happens in normal use). Cheaper to leave on for a year than a single LED bulb running an hour a day.
What if it breaks?
One-year hardware warranty — we'll repair or replace anything that fails on its own. 30-day no-questions return window if you decide it's not for you. If a firmware update bricks something we shipped (it shouldn't — auto-rollback is the whole point), that's on us regardless of how old the board is.
Are you affiliated with the MTA?
No. The MTA publishes its real-time feed publicly so anyone can build with it; this is one of the things people have built. The MTA logo, line bullets, and station names are property of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and used here only to identify the data source.
Why $149?
It covers the components, hand-assembly and testing of every board, packaging, free shipping, and a thin margin to fund the next batch and ongoing improvements. We're keeping it as simple as we can — one model, one price, free updates.