Michael Benedict lost his engineering job at Amazon and built a birthday present for his wife. Now he's selling it for $219 a pop, and the September batch is already gone.
Benedict, a software engineer who lives next to the Judkins Park light rail station, created Seattle Transit Live after Sound Transit opened the 2 Line across Lake Washington in March. The custom circuit board uses 383 LEDs to track trains, ferries and the water taxi in real time, pulling from public transit-agency data feeds. He built the first one as a gift to mark the 2 Line opening for his transit-loving wife.
GeekWire reported Monday, Sept. 7, that the personal project has turned into a small commercial operation under the name Salt River Labs. Benedict worked at Amazon for about three years before his layoff. Rather than jumping into another corporate role, he picked up freelance work and taught himself CAD design and custom hardware prototyping.
"I put way more time than is ever going to be economic into this," Benedict told GeekWire. "I really kind of luxuriated in it because I didn't have a job and I could just go deep."
The 8.6-by-11.8-inch board is built on custom fiberglass with etched copper tracing Seattle-area waterways. It connects to Wi-Fi and tracks six rail services, eight Washington State Ferries routes and five passenger ferry routes including the King County Water Taxi.
Three software modes let users watch live positions, replay schedules or fast-forward through a full day of transit at 400x speed. An ambient light sensor adjusts brightness to room conditions.
The circuit boards are manufactured in Shenzhen, China. But Benedict kept part of the supply chain in Seattle, partnering with Oxbow Fabrication, a 4,000-square-foot cabinet shop in Georgetown, to CNC-machine birch plywood stands that ship with every board.
That Georgetown connection grew out of unexpected demand. Benedict posted an early prototype on Reddit, drew an enthusiastic response from transit fans and turned the side project into a production run. His first batch of 50 pre-orders sold out fast. He ordered another 150 units to carry through the end of the year. As of Thursday, Aug. 27, the September batch was sold out, with new orders shipping in October or November.
The financial stakes are real.
Benedict put 75,000 LEDs on his personal credit card to fund the production run, according to GeekWire.
Benedict, originally from Queens, N.Y., previously held data science roles at 98point6 and Modernist Cuisine. He showcased Seattle Transit Live at the Seattle Design Festival and said he is exploring retail options, naming the Seattle Art Museum gift shop as one possibility.
His layoff fits a broader pattern. Amazon cut 30,000 corporate positions in rounds in October 2025 and January 2026, according to GeekWire. The Seattle Times reported that tech employers have collectively laid off more than 10,000 Seattle-based workers since May 2025. The hardware schematic is open-source on GitHub.
Benedict told GeekWire he has his eye on the Ballard Link extension, which Sound Transit has said could take until 2060 to build: "If I'm still making transit maps by the time they put Ballard in, I'm going to consider that a huge win all around."
