Deploy and Host Tronbyt Server on Railway

Tronbyt Server is the self-hosted brain for a Tidbyt or Tronbyt smart display: it renders the apps, holds the schedule, and serves each device the next frame. This template runs it as one service on a persistent volume, and — unlike a stock deploy — the instance already belongs to you the first time its public URL answers a request.

About Hosting Tronbyt Server

Tronbyt ships as a single static Go binary with an embedded Pixlet renderer and a SQLite database, so hosting it is mostly about two things: keeping the database and the rendered frames on storage that survives a redeploy, and making sure nobody else claims the account system before you do.

Both are handled here. The volume mounts at /app/data, where the SQLite database, the system apps checkout and the per-device WebP frames all live. The image is ghcr.io/bon5co/tronbyt-railway, built from the pinned upstream release, and its entrypoint registers your account against a loopback-only server before the public port is ever served — so the window where a stranger could register first does not exist. The same credential is re-applied from the environment on every boot, which also gives you a way back in if you lose it, since upstream exposes no password reset in the UI.

A healthcheck on /health keeps Railway from routing traffic during first boot, when the server clones roughly 200 MB of community apps into the volume.

Why Deploy Tronbyt Server?

Your display, your server. No dependence on the Tidbyt cloud remaining online or free.
Claimed on first boot. TRONBYT_ADMIN_USERNAME and TRONBYT_ADMIN_SECRET are required; the container refuses to start without them rather than booting an unowned instance.
Registration closed by default. ENABLE_USER_REGISTRATION is false here; upstream's Go config defaults it to true.
Pinned upstream release, so a redeploy replays the version you tested rather than whatever latest points at that day.
Small. Roughly 70 MB of RAM at idle, comfortably inside the smallest Railway plan.

Common Use Cases

Driving a Tidbyt, Tronbyt, Pixoticker or Matrix Portal display from your own infrastructure
Running community Pixlet apps — transit times, weather, market tickers, build status
Serving several displays in a home or office from one scheduler

Dependencies for Tronbyt Server

A volume for /app/data (database, apps checkout, rendered frames)
Outbound network access on first boot, to clone the system apps repository

Deployment Dependencies

Upstream project: tronbyt/server
Image source: bon5co/tronbyt-railway
Community apps: tronbyt/apps