HKDashboard

Overview

hkdashboard.com turns any spare tablet or screen into a Hong Kong information board. The screen is a grid the user configures: choose what goes in each slot and how wide it is, in landscape or in a portrait page-flip layout. Everything is served from the edge, so a kiosk left running for days costs nothing to operate.

The brief

Hong Kong has excellent open data, but it is scattered across a dozen government sites — none of them meant to be left open on a wall. Bring the pieces people actually check every morning onto one screen, let each household or shop decide which pieces those are, and make it readable from across the room.

What we built

• Configurable tile system — pick each slot and its width, in landscape or a portrait page-flip layout; every choice is saved on the device.
• Over twenty live tiles — Observatory weather and warnings, typhoon track and radar, MTR, bus and tunnel arrivals, news, calendar, clocks and timers, stocks, A&E waiting times, flights, border queues, fuel prices, ferries and more.
• Official open data only — the Observatory, data.gov.hk, the Hospital Authority, the Airport Authority, the Transport Department and the Immigration Department, fetched through our own edge proxy with caching and abuse protection.
• Google Calendar sign-in — server-side OAuth so a wall tablet stays signed in for months instead of asking for a login every hour.
• Built to stay on — screen wake lock, automatic night dimming, burn-in protection, full-screen kiosk mode, plus an installable PWA and an Android app.

Highlights

• One screen replaces a dozen apps and bookmarks.
• Every household builds its own layout — no two boards look alike.