Woodward I.T. Airtrain Plasma Display

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The Airtrain Plasma Display is an application written by Woodward IT for Brisbane's Airtrain. The Airtrain is a rail service that connects the Brisbane domestic and international airports with the Queensland Rail service and hence provides a cheap and quick way for visitors to travel into the city or to the Gold Coast.

Woodward IT was contracted to write the display software to replace some LED screens that were not relaying enough train information and weren't easily visible. These were replaced with wide-screen plasmas running the Airtrain Plasma Display.

The display software was written to be extremely reliable without the need for any user interaction, whilst providing unique displays at the different various locations of the screens. There are 6 unique circuits which all extract departure information from the one common database.

The plasma displays have now been integrated with the TABS web server database to retrieve their information.

Domestic Airport Displays

In the baggage claim areas (arrivals) for QANTAS and Virgin Blue in the Brisbane domestic airport will be 5 plasma screens that will clearly show a countdown in minutes to the next departing train. This display has been designed to be highly visible and easy to interpret.

This display interchanges with the upcoming departures screen and a message if entered by Airtrain staff.

Upcoming Trains

The upcoming trains screen shows the time to the next 3 departing trains. This screen is interchanged with either the platform displays at the domestic or international terminals and the airport display. Besides being another source of information, this screen also acts as a way of avoiding "screen-burn" with the plasma screens.

Platform Displays

The display screens used on the platforms are slightly different to the airport display in that they are linked to an individual platform and also scroll through the list of stations along the route.

In addition to the platform displays, there is also a ticket window display which alternates between the next departures on both platforms. There are essentially 4 different displays. These are for platforms 1 and 2 at both the domestic and international train stations.