LivingKiosk · Display 09

Departures

A split-flap board that says whatever you type. A wedding welcome, a cafe specials board, a countdown to a trip, a GONE FISHING sign — free text is the whole point, and it never leaves the browser: Departures makes no outbound request while it is running.

What it does

You type it, it flips it

Every page of text you write becomes rows of physical-looking flaps that cascade into place, letter by letter, whenever the board changes.

It can tell time

Drop {clock}, {date} or {countdown:…} into a line and that spot keeps itself current, without ever fetching anything.

It asks nothing of you

No account, no key, no upstream service that can disappear or start charging. The whole board is arithmetic on the URL you build below.

Build your URL

What the board says

A blank line starts a new page. Lines longer than cols are truncated, never wrapped — the counts below show you before you copy the URL. Add |LABEL before a countdown’s closing brace for a named countdown, e.g. {countdown:2026-12-25T09:00|XMAS}.

P1DEPARTURES10/22

P1SET YOUR OWN TEXT17/22

P1AT /SETUP9/22

Board sizeRows6Cols22

132 cells (6 × 22). 480 is the ceiling — the two sliders above can never cross it.

Dwell — seconds per page8s

Ignored automatically when there is only one page.

Alignment

Applies to the whole board, not per line.

Clock format

Affects {clock} only.

Flap colour

Background

#0b0b0b

The colour behind the board, not the flaps themselves.

Dimoff

A black scrim over everything, for a screen that shares a room with a bed.

Flap speed

Sound

A soft synthesised clack. Browsers block audio until someone taps the board once — the board shows a small “tap to enable sound” button the first time it loads with sound on.

Live preview

16:9, running for real.

Your kiosk URL

/Open it →

Paste it into whatever holds the screen open. Nothing here is stored — the URL is the whole configuration.

Character set

Lowercase is upcased automatically. Anything not in this set — accents, emoji, most symbols — renders as a blank space, the same way a real board simply has no leaf for it.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . , : ; ! ? ' - / & + # @ ( ) $ %

Special tokens

Token	Shows	Notes
`{clock}`	`14:32`	24-hour by default. Set `clock=12` for a trailing AM/PM instead.
`{date}`	`TUE 1 SEP`	Day of month has no leading zero, same as a railway board.
`{countdown:2026-10-04T18:00}`	`33 DAYS 04:12`	Days plus hours:minutes remaining. Shows `00:00` once it passes. The date and time are read as your local time.
`{countdown:2026-10-04T18:00\|TRIP}`	`TRIP 33 DAYS`	A label trades the hour:minute precision for a name — the label is doing the specificity instead.

Tokens re-render only the cells they touch, once a minute — the rest of the board stays still.

Every parameter

Parameter	Values	Default	Notes
`text`	your words	a demo page	`\|` separates lines, `\|\|` separates pages. /setup builds this for you.
`dwell`	3–3600 seconds	`8`	Seconds per page. Ignored with one page.
`rows`	1–12	`6`	Lines per page.
`cols`	8–40	`22`	Characters per line. `rows × cols` tops out at 480.
`align`	`left` · `center`	`left`	Whole board, not per line.
`clock`	`24` · `12`	`24`	Format for `{clock}`.
`theme`	`classic` · `cream`	`classic`	Black flaps/white letters, or cream flaps/black letters (old railway style).
`bg`	`dark` · `light` · `#hex`	`#0b0b0b`	The colour behind the board — fleet-wide convention.
`dim`	0–0.8	`0`	Fleet-wide black scrim, for a screen that shares a room with a bed.
`sound`	`on` · `off`	`off`	A soft clack. Never plays before you tap the board once — browsers block that.
`speed`	`slow` · `normal` · `fast`	`normal`	How fast each flap turns.
`seed`	any text	none	Pins the cascade's exact timing — mainly for screenshots and tests.