https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog Notes on maps, the web, and whatever I have been taking apart lately. en Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/metroboard-home-assistant https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/metroboard-home-assistant Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT I got a Metroboard as a gift and mounted it on my wall, where I can't reach its buttons. I added an MQTT bridge to its firmware so Home Assistant can control it like the rest of my lights. https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/building-parchment-on-open-data https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/building-parchment-on-open-data Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT I've spent most of my spare time since 2023 building Parchment, a maps app for people who walk, bike and take transit. Here's why I started it and what I want it to become. https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/parchment-barrelman-split https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/parchment-barrelman-split Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT The APIs I depended on couldn't do a lot of what I wanted, so I started building my own backend for search, routing and map tiles. It ended up becoming a separate product with its own business model. https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/parchment-provider-capabilities https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/parchment-provider-capabilities Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Parchment's code used to reference every map service by name, which made changing anything painful. I borrowed the way Home Assistant handles devices, and now switching providers doesn't mean rewriting features. https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/parchment-where-it-stands https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/parchment-where-it-stands Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Parchment is in closed alpha with a small group of testers. Here's what's working so far, and what I want to finish before opening up a beta. https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/where-parchment-started https://alex.wohlbruck.com/blog/where-parchment-started Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT The first version of Parchment was a Vue app wired up to free, open source map services. That worked well for a while, until rate limits, mismatched data formats and outages started getting in the way.