Welcome Thread - v373

Just wanted to say welcome to everyone new and not-so-new to DEV. 👋

Hope y'all enjoy it here!

If you're wondering how to get started with posting a post, then consider checking out this article here.

Writing your first post on DEV ✍️

Sloan the DEV Moderator

Sloan the DEV Moderator

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Aug 7 '23

Writing your first post on DEV ✍️

#tutorial #meta #writing #howtodevto

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20 comments

4 min read

To learn more about writing on DEV, check out our Best Practices for Writing on DEV series. 😀

Hi! I am Ripa. Now I am learning CSS. Almost finished, just trying to strengthen my site in responsive design. I heard about this from Programming Hero. So here I am.

Welcome welcome welcome everyone! Please don't fee shy to comment here or anywhere else on the site with questions, suggestions, whatever.

Hi everyone, I’m Aftab. I’m into web and software development, mainly working with PHP, C#, and .NET, and lately I’ve also been exploring cloud and AI-related projects. I joined because I like learning from other builders and picking up practical skills I can actually use in real projects. Fun fact: I enjoy jumping between backend development and experimenting with new tools way too often. Looking forward to learning with you all 👋

Hello, I’m Alexander. I’m aiming for my first junior DevOps role. Right now I’m self‑educating by building a multi‑hop VPN infrastructure (AmneziaWG, Xray, Ansible, Prometheus) to help my family and myself access information that’s restricted in our region. I joined dev.to to learn practical, relevant skills and connect with people who are solving real infrastructure problems.

Hey everyone 👋

I’m currently building SaaS tools and admin dashboards (focused on real usability, not just UI).

Working on a couple projects right now and trying to improve the developer experience side of things.

Happy to connect with other builders here 🚀

Hey everyone — I'm Rohith.

I've spent the last year building LLM systems in production. Started with a RAG chatbot for enterprise warehouse management, ended up with two production services, a shared orchestration layer, and a lot of hard lessons about what actually matters when these systems run under real load.

Most of what I've learned isn't about the model. It's about everything around it.

Just published my first article here. Writing more as I go.

Good to be here.

Hi DEV Community!
I’m Hema — a SDET with 9 years of experience in software testing and quality engineering. I’ve recently started learning machine learning, generative AI, and responsible AI from a QA perspective, and I’m documenting my journey learning in public.
I regularly share my learnings and AI‑focused QA insights on my blog as well:
hemaai.hashnode.dev/
Excited to be part of the DEV community and to learn, share, and grow together. Feedback and conversations are always welcome! 😊

Hi Dev.to 👋

I'm a Go / Vue dev based in Ukraine, and for the past year I've been building something called Road511 — a REST API that normalizes real-time traffic data from every US state and Canadian province 511 system into one
consistent schema.

Over the next 6–8 weeks I'll publish a deep-dive series about the technical decisions behind it. If you work on data pipelines, API design, geospatial systems, or you've ever tried to integrate 30+ upstream services with 30+
different schemas — this one's for you.

## Why Road511 exists

Every US state and Canadian province runs its own "511" traveler information system — traffic events, road conditions, cameras, DMS signs, rest areas. They all serve the same kinds of data. They all do it differently:

• Transnomis JSON — Alaska, Arizona, Manitoba, Nevada, Newfoundland…
• ArcGIS FeatureServer — Kentucky, Wyoming, Nova Scotia truck data, FHWA bridges
• GraphQL BFF — Colorado, Indiana
• Custom XML over C2C — the New England compact (ME / NH / VT)
• ASP.NET PageMethods — Mississippi
• Protobuf binary with XOR obfuscation — Wyoming
• Azure Blob static GeoJSON — North Dakota
• Iteris ATIS CDN JSON — Montana, South Dakota
• …and about a dozen more one-offs

Want cameras for a cross-state trip? That's five integrations, five auth flows, five update schedules.

Road511 aggregates 80+ source servers into one REST API with a unified schema. One call, one key, one response format.

## What's in the data

• 57 jurisdictions — 44 US states + 13 Canadian provinces / territories
• 7 national datasets — FHWA NBI, FHWA National Network, FHWA NHFN, NREL, OSM, EIA, StatCan
• 10,000+ live traffic cameras with direct image URLs
• 621,000 bridge clearances (height, weight, condition, inspection dates)
• 479,000 truck route segments (STAA National Network)
• 100k+ EV charging stations
• DMS sign messages, RWIS weather stations, rest areas, weigh stations, ferries
• Seasonal weight restrictions / spring load limits
• Weekly US fuel prices + monthly Canadian province prices

Every endpoint has a GeoJSON variant. Drop it into Leaflet or Mapbox and it just works.

## The series

Already published:

• How I Normalized 30+ Different 511 Traffic APIs Into One REST Endpoint — the architecture: adapter registry in Go, DB-driven scheduler, per-source circuit breakers, adaptive backoff.

Coming up — expect one post per week:

1. Real-Time Traffic Camera Feeds via API — how we serve 10k+ cameras without being a CDN
2. Bridge Clearance Data API for Fleet Routing — the FHWA NBI 621k-bridge dataset
3. Real-Time DMS Sign Messages API — the one data type no competitor serves
4. GeoJSON Traffic Events API with BBox and Radius Queries — PostGIS spatial query design
5. Spring Load Limits API for Trucking Compliance — six state websites collapsed into one endpoint
6. How to Build a Traffic Dashboard with Road511 + Leaflet — full tutorial
7. Comparing Traffic Data APIs: Road511 vs HERE vs TomTom vs INRIX — what each one is actually good at
8. Fuel Price API for Fleet Cost Planning — EIA + StatCan normalized

Follow the series tag (sidebar, right) if you want new posts to land in your feed automatically.

## Stack

• Backend — Go (chi, pgx v5, slog, DB-backed log handler), PostgreSQL 18 + PostGIS 3.5, Redis 8 (nil-safe)
• Frontend — Vue 3 + Vite + Pinia + Leaflet for the public map, Tailwind on admin + portal SPAs
• Scheduler — single binary, DB-driven, 523 registered fetch functions across 76 adapter files, per-source rate limiting + circuit breakers
• Payments — Paddle (live)
• Two binaries — cmd/api (public API + customer portal) and cmd/worker (scheduler + adapters + admin)

## Try it

• Live map — map.road511.com (no signup)
• API docs — docs.road511.com
• Free tier — portal.road511.com (no credit card)
• Code examples — github.com/Road511/road511-examples (Go / Python / JS / curl)

If there's a 511 system I haven't covered, a feature you wish existed, or a data source I should look at — drop it in the comments. I'm actively building and this series will shift based on what people actually want.

See you in the next post.

Hello. Do people normally create accounts with a pen name or with their real name? I just tinker and I am for ever learing as a hobby. I am happy to update my profile if everyone else uses their real name.