Overview
A physical LED matrix on the wall that scrolls news headlines and live Schwab portfolio positions — green when up, red when down. Data flows from the Schwab API through a portfolio service on one home server, gets fetched every five minutes by the matrix controller on another, and lands on the panel hardware.
Notes
The controller runs as a systemd user service with hot-reloadable JSON config — display changes take effect on the next cycle without a restart. Firmware on the matrix side is a small Arduino sketch; everything above it is Python.
It’s the project guests actually notice, which is a lesson in itself: the pipeline took ten times longer than the panel, and nobody has ever asked about the pipeline.
Status
Done and running in production on the wall. Occasional feature tweaks when the mood strikes.