Featured Project: RailPod Data Portal
- Project Type: Website
- Initial Release/Completion Date: December 2017
- Technologies Used: Django, Python, PostgreSQL, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, JQuery, React, AWS
Development Notes
This data portal displays railroad track inspection data collected by semi-autonomous vehicles. I developed this data portal while employed as a Python and full- stack developer at RailPod. It is active in production, and allows RailPod employees and their clients/customers to view and analyze many parameters and variables related to track safety; aiding in the identification of various flaws and defects requiring repair.
The site is built with Django on the backend and predominately React on the frontend, along with other various JavaScript libraries and components such as HighCharts, Leaflet, and Datatables. PostgreSQL is used as the database, along with the postGIS extension to allow for geospatial queries and geotagged data.
It can handle very large datasets by streaming data on demand, dynamically downsampling as required based on the zoom level selected. The map displays inspection routes and geotagged points, and the UI syncs the cursor location on the map with the other components, so that they all focus on the same point.
Multiple data sets from different inspections over the same section of rail can be displayed overlapping. This allows for visual detection of rail wear trends over time. A custom UI component also displays rail profile data at regular intervals along the inspected route. This profile data is buffered and streamed on demand as it is a very large data set.
I was the sole full-stack developer on this project and it was developed over the course of a year. In addition to developing the site, I also set up and managed various AWS environments to deploy and test it on.