Creating a real-time transit arrival dashboard in Power BI

[ebeaulac]

Hi there,

I am trying to use my small transit agency's JSON/RESTful API to create a real-time departure board for our transit center. I've successfully linked the API and it is working on the desktop file as well as the online file. However, scheduled refreshes will not work for my purposes. Ideally, the dashboard would refresh (or update) every minute. I am not a web developer nor do I have the permissions to build a webpage, which is why I have been using Power BI. I'm looking for solutions that will allow this one minute refresh and allow me to enter in my API key. 

I am out of league on this but I understand there may be multiple ways to do this. Including:

1. Setting up a streaming dataset. Am I able to setup a streaming dataset from a RESTful API that I do not own? 

2. Connecting through a direct query. I am correct to assume I need to use Power Query for this? Again, can I do this with an API I do not own? 

Any other solutions? 

[Anonymous]

Hi @ebeaulac 

1. Setting up a streaming dataset. Am I able to setup a streaming dataset from a RESTful API that I do not own? 

I think you couldn't create a real-time streaming dataset by that API.

There are two ways to create a real-time streaming data feed that can be consumed and visualized by Power BI:

• Power BI REST API using a real-time streaming endpoint
• PubNub

For reference: Create your streaming dataset with the option you like best

2. automatic refresh

Automatic refresh option can refresh the report automaticlly by determind interval. However you need to connect to your datasource by Direct Query.

For reference: Automatic page refresh in Power BI

Best Regards,
Rico Zhou

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[ebeaulac]

@Anonymous Thank you for your reply!

I thought Rest APIs were not able to be connected via Direct Query?

[Anonymous]

Hi @ebeaulac 

If you want to connect to Rest API by Direct Query, I think you can try a "Custom ODBC Driver" for your REST API.

For reference:

DirectQuery your custom REST API in Power BI

Enabling Direct Query for an ODBC based connector

Best Regards,
Rico Zhou

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.