Theme Park Waits 3.0 is here, and it's a build-it-yourself project now
Version 3.0 is the biggest release in the history of Theme Park Waits, a complete ground-up rewrite, and it comes with a change in direction. Theme Park Waits is now a build-it-yourself maker project. Instead of buying a finished box, you build your own from a few off-the-shelf parts, and the code is open source.
A completely rewritten, more robust box
3.0 rebuilds the whole application on top of ScrollKit, a new fault-tolerant LED-matrix library. The reliability engineering is the headline:
- A hardware watchdog that reboots the board within seconds if it ever wedges, instead of sitting frozen until you unplug it.
- Reboot-loop safe mode that keeps the configuration page reachable so you’re never locked out.
- Self-healing WiFi that reconnects on its own after a power blip.
And twice as much fun
It’s not all plumbing. 3.0 is genuinely more alive:
- Animated ride icons: over 80 hand-drawn 64×32 icons that move.
- Thirteen screen transitions and playful number reveals (rain, swarm, split-flap), chosen at random so the motion never loops.
- A swarming boot splash that assembles the words “Theme Park Waits.”
See it all in motion on the What’s New in 3.0 page. Every clip is the real app running on the board, not a mockup.
Now powered by themeparks.wiki
3.0 moves to the free themeparks.wiki API for live theme park ride wait times across 100+ parks. No API key, no account.
Build your own
Four parts, a 3D-printed case, no soldering, about half an hour of assembly. The Build Your Own guide has the parts list and print files, and the Assembly Guide walks through it step by step.