About Theme Park Waits

A little LED sign that scrolls live theme park ride wait times. These days, a project you build yourself.

From product to project

Theme Park Waits started as a small hardware product: a scrolling LED display that sat on your desk or shelf and showed how long the lines were at your favorite parks. Over the years it found its way to around fifty happy customers.

With Version 3.0 I’ve turned it into something different: an open-source, build-it-yourself maker project. The interesting part was never the sales. It was the engineering. So instead of selling a finished box, the whole thing is now out in the open. You build your own from a few off-the-shelf parts, the code is free and open source, and the guides walk you through every step.

Why the change?

3.0 is a complete rewrite on top of ScrollKit, an open-source CircuitPython library I built for exactly this kind of device, with over-the-air updates, real fault tolerance, an effects engine, and a desktop simulator. It’s the most fun and the most robust the box has ever been, and it felt like the right moment to open it up and show how it works. If you’re curious about the internals, the Built with ScrollKit page goes under the hood.

Who’s behind it

I’m Michael Czeiszperger. I build software and the occasional physical gadget, and I also run Theme Park Hall of Shame. Theme Park Waits is a labor of love. If you build one, I’d love to hear about it.