NJ Transit Light Rail Scraper

A headless browser scraper that provides real-time Light Rail departure data from Essex Street station via a REST API for Home Assistant integration.

Features

• 🚋 Real-time Light Rail departures from Essex Street
• 🔄 Automatic GraphQL data interception
• 📊 Simple REST API for Home Assistant
• 🕒 Northbound and Southbound departure tracking
• ⚡ Lightweight and efficient

Kubernetes Deployment

This application is deployed using Kubernetes and ArgoCD for GitOps.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster with Rancher/RKE2
• ArgoCD installed and configured
• Container registry access (GitHub Container Registry)

Deployment Files

• deployment.yaml - Kubernetes Deployment manifest
• service.yaml - Kubernetes Service with LoadBalancer (IP: 192.168.200.56)
• Dockerfile - Container image definition
• .github/workflows/docker.yml - CI/CD pipeline for building images

ArgoCD Setup

The deployment includes ArgoCD annotations for automatic image updates. Update the image repository in deployment.yaml:

annotations:
  argocd-image-updater.argoproj.io/image-list: light-rail-scraper=ghcr.io/your-username/light-rail-scraper

Manual Deployment

kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
kubectl apply -f service.yaml

Local Installation

1. Install Node.js (v16 or higher)
2. Install dependencies:

   npm install
   

Usage

Start the server:

npm start

Development mode (auto-restart):

npm run dev

API Endpoints

• GET / - Service info
• GET /api/departures - All departure data
• GET /api/northbound - Next northbound train
• GET /api/southbound - Next southbound train
• GET /api/status - Scraper status

Home Assistant Integration

Add these sensors to your configuration.yaml:

sensor:
  - platform: rest
    name: "Light Rail Northbound"
    resource: "http://192.168.200.56/api/northbound"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.status }}"
    json_attributes:
      - destination
      - time
      - lastUpdated
    scan_interval: 120

  - platform: rest
    name: "Light Rail Southbound"
    resource: "http://192.168.200.56/api/southbound"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.status }}"
    json_attributes:
      - destination
      - time
      - lastUpdated
    scan_interval: 120

Response Format

/api/northbound or /api/southbound

{
  "status": "in 5 mins",
  "destination": "HOBOKEN TERMINAL LIGHT RAIL STATION",
  "time": "11:27 PM",
  "lastUpdated": "2025-08-03T03:30:00.000Z"
}

/api/departures

{
  "northbound": [
    {
      "destination": "HOBOKEN TERMINAL LIGHT RAIL STATION",
      "time": "11:27 PM",
      "status": "in 11 mins",
      "scheduledTime": "8/2/2025 11:27:00 PM"
    }
  ],
  "southbound": [
    {
      "destination": "8TH STREET LIGHT RAIL STATION",
      "time": "11:36 PM", 
      "status": "in 20 mins",
      "scheduledTime": "8/2/2025 11:36:00 PM"
    }
  ],
  "lastUpdated": "2025-08-03T03:30:00.000Z",
  "status": "success"
}

Troubleshooting

• No data: Check if the NJ Transit website is accessible
• Browser errors: Try restarting the service
• Memory issues: The service automatically manages browser instances

Notes

• The scraper waits 8 seconds for the page to load completely
• Data is cached to avoid excessive requests
• Only one scraping operation runs at a time
• Browser is reused between requests for efficiency