Bus Board Card

A Home Assistant dashboard card that shows upcoming public transport departures from the stops near you, one row per departure, each with a bar that counts down to the moment you have to leave the house to catch it.

• Leave-the-house bars. Walk time to each stop plus a door buffer are subtracted from the real-time departure. Green while you have time, amber at 3 minutes, red at 1 minute, then run!, then too late, then the row drops.
• Real-time. Expected vs scheduled time, delay in minutes, blinking dot for live data, strike-through for cancellations. Countdowns tick every 5 s in the browser; data refreshes every 30 s.
• No YAML needed. Give the card a stop id and it fetches departures itself (Entur for Norway, Transitous for most other countries). Or point it at any Home Assistant sensor that lists departures.
• Route selection you can automate. Which line@quay combinations are shown can come from an input_text, so an automation can switch between a morning set and a daytime set. Walk minutes can come from input_numbers.
• Official line colours when the data source publishes them (Ruter, VBB, …); a stable palette otherwise; override anything with line_colors.
• Compact tile and full pop-up variants, English / Norwegian / Swedish / German strings, works in sections views, masonry and bubble-card pop-ups.
• Visual editor. Every option below, including the list of stops, can be set in the dashboard card editor without writing YAML.

Installation

HACS (recommended)

1. HACS → ⋮ (top right) → Custom repositories.
2. Repository https://github.com/andersgar/bus-board-card, type Dashboard, Add.
3. Search for Bus Board Card, Download, reload the page when asked.

Or click the badge at the top of this page. HACS registers the dashboard resource automatically (storage-mode dashboards).

Manual

Download bus-board-card.js from the latest release into config/www/bus-board-card/ and add a dashboard resource /local/bus-board-card/bus-board-card.js of type JavaScript module.

Quick start (no sensors required)

type: custom:bus-board-card
title: Buss mot sentrum
source:
  provider: entur              # Norway. Use `transitous` elsewhere, see below.
  door_buffer_min: 1           # minutes from "leave now" until you are out the door
  stops:
    - id: NSR:StopPlace:60447  # Buran
      walk_min: 4
      lines: ["1", "22"]       # optional filter
      quays: ["103009"]        # optional filter (quay 1, toward the city centre)
    - id: NSR:StopPlace:271    # Lademoen stasjon
      walk_min: 6
max_rows: 6

Finding stop ids (Norway): search on stoppested.entur.org or call https://api.entur.io/geocoder/v1/autocomplete?text=Buran&layers=venue. A NSR:StopPlace:… id gives every platform at the stop; a NSR:Quay:… id gives one platform. The quay ids in quays: can be given as the full id or just the number.

Everywhere else: use provider: transitous, which serves departures for most of Europe and large parts of the world without an API key. Find the stop id with https://api.transitous.org/api/v1/geocode?text=Alexanderplatz&type=STOP (ids look like de-VBB_de:11000:900100003 or se-Trafiklab_740000001). Transitous is run by volunteers for non-commercial use; be reasonable with the refresh interval. See docs/providers.md for the full picture, including what to do in countries where the only API needs a key.

Configuration

Open the card in the dashboard editor for a form with all of these options (the colour and label maps are edited as YAML inside the form). The YAML reference:

Card options

Option	Default	Description
entity	–	Home Assistant entity whose list attribute holds departures (entity mode, see below). Either entity or source is required.
source	–	Fetch departures directly in the browser (see Source options).
title	localized "Departures"	Header text.
show_header	true	Title row with the "next: leave in N min" summary.
max_rows	6	Rows shown (rows that do not fit in a height-limited tile are hidden).
compact	false	Smaller badges and bars for a tile on a busy view.
label	bar (inline when compact)	bar = text inside the countdown bar; inline = walker/bus icons with minutes in the time column and a thin bar.
scale_min	20	The bar spans 0–N minutes.
show_stop	true	Stop name and walk time under the destination (bar layout).
short_dest	true in inline layout	Kattem instead of Kattem via sentrum-Tiller (full text in the tooltip).
drop_after	20	Seconds a too late row stays before it disappears.
animations	true	false for info screens: no bar transitions, no blinking dot.
bar_height	10	Bar height in px (inline layout).
line_colors	{}	Line number → badge colour, e.g. { "1": "#3fa34d", "22": "#f2a900" }. Overrides colours from the data source.
stop_labels	{}	Quay id → label shown under the destination, e.g. { "103009": "Buran 1" }.
language	HA user language	en, nb, sv, de.
tap_action	–	Standard HA action (navigate, url, more-info, call-service, …).
grid_options	{ columns: 12, rows: auto }	Size in sections views.

Source options

Option	Default	Description
provider	entur	entur (any OpenTripPlanner Transmodel API), transitous, or a provider registered at runtime (docs/providers.md).
url	provider default	Override the API endpoint, e.g. a self-hosted OTP.
client_name	homeassistant-bus-board-card	Sent as ET-Client-Name to Entur, as they ask.
stops	required	List of stops, see below.
door_buffer_min	0	Minutes between "leave now" and being out of the door. A number or an input_number.* entity id.
refresh	30	Seconds between fetches. Cards with identical sources share one fetch; polling pauses while the tab is hidden.
time_range	5400	Seconds ahead to look.
departures_per_stop	40	Departures requested per stop.
watch	–	Only show these line@quay tokens, e.g. ["1@103009", "22@103009"].
watch_entity	–	Read the tokens from an entity's state instead (comma separated), e.g. input_text.bus_watch. Lets automations decide which routes are shown.

Per stop:

Option	Default	Description
id	required	Stop id in the provider's format (NSR:StopPlace:…, NSR:Quay:…, de-VBB_…).
name	from the API	Label shown under the destination (the quay code is appended).
walk_min	3	Walking time to the stop. A number or an input_number.* entity id.
quay_walk_min	{}	Walk minutes per quay when platforms are far apart.
quays	all	Only these quay ids.
lines	all	Only these line numbers.
exclude_lines	[]	Hide these line numbers.
quay_labels	{}	Quay id → label (overrides name).

Entity mode

If you prefer the data to live in Home Assistant (history, automations that notify you, a dashboard that works for everyone on the network), feed the card from a sensor instead:

type: custom:bus-board-card
entity: sensor.bus_departures

The sensor's list attribute must hold departures of the shape documented in docs/home-assistant-sensors.md. A ready-made package for Entur builds exactly that from a rest sensor and a template sensor, with the route selection in an input_text and walk times in input_numbers. Any other integration whose attributes you can reshape with a template sensor works too.

Examples

Small tile on the home view that opens a pop-up (bubble-card pop-up with hash: "#bus_board" holding the full card):

type: custom:bus-board-card
entity: sensor.bus_departures
title: Buss
compact: true
max_rows: 3
tap_action:
  action: navigate
  navigation_path: "#bus_board"
grid_options:
  columns: 6
  rows: auto

Route selection driven by automations. Keep the tokens in an input_text and let the card read it; an automation that writes 22@103009 on weekday mornings and a longer list otherwise changes the board instantly:

source:
  provider: entur
  watch_entity: input_text.bus_watch
  door_buffer_min: input_number.bus_door_buffer
  stops:
    - { id: NSR:StopPlace:60447, walk_min: input_number.bus_walk_buran }
    - { id: NSR:StopPlace:271, walk_min: input_number.bus_walk_lademoen }

Berlin, German strings (Transitous data, VBB's line colours):

type: custom:bus-board-card
language: de
source:
  provider: transitous
  stops:
    - id: de-VBB_de:11000:900100003   # S+U Alexanderplatz
      name: Alexanderplatz
      walk_min: 5
      exclude_lines: ["S3", "S5"]

Information screen (no animations, fixed height, many rows):

animations: false
max_rows: 12
label: bar
grid_options: { columns: full, rows: 10 }

Data sources and other countries

Country / API	Provider	Key	Status
Norway – Entur JourneyPlanner	entur	no	built in, real-time, line colours
Most of Europe and more – Transitous (MOTIS)	transitous	no	built in, real-time where the feed has it, non-commercial use
Any OpenTripPlanner 2 with the Transmodel API	entur + url	–	built in
Sweden – SL Transport, Switzerland – transport.opendata.ch, Belgium – iRail, UK – TfL	–	no	key-free and browser-friendly; see docs for how to add a provider in ~30 lines
Finland (Digitransit), Sweden (Trafiklab), Denmark (Rejseplanen), Germany (HVV), …	entity mode	yes	use a rest: sensor or the HA integration and reshape with a template

Details, verified endpoints and the provider API are in docs/providers.md.

Development

npm install
npm run build        # bundles src/ into dist/bus-board-card.js
npm run watch
npm run dev          # static server on :8765, open /dev/ for the test harness

dev/index.html renders the card from a fixture (entity mode) and live from Entur and Transitous (source mode). dist/ is committed so HACS can install straight from the default branch; releases attach the same file as an asset.

Credits and data licences

Departure data from Entur (NLOD licence) and Transitous (see their sources). Card by Anders Garberg, MIT licence.