7 ms·

Pretty cool. When I took the train to work I made a simple stop-light with transit data. Trains ran every 10 minutes and it took me a few minutes to walk to the

by kevan 7y ago

Pretty cool. When I took the train to work I made a simple stop-light with transit data. Trains ran every 10 minutes and it took me a few minutes to walk to the station. Green meant I could definitely catch the next train. Yellow meant I'd make it if I walked fast, and red meant I'd miss this train and need to wait for the next one.

cameronh90 7y ago
Curiously, I've made almost this exact same thing. In my case it needs to account that some platforms are a couple minutes extra walk. Given that we've both independently implemented basically exactly the same thing, I wonder how many other people would want something like this.
Kipters 7y ago
I made something similar when I was in uni and had to catch a bus to get back home, but with my Pebble and a C application: next bus was one button press away and another press was all was needed to start a carefully calibrated double alarm for "start packing" and "leave" times
- steeleduncan 7y ago
  Is there any option right now as hackable as the Pebble? I'm not sure how I would build something like this right now that the Pebble is gone.
  - Kipters 7y ago
    Not that I know of, sadly. Pebble was a jewel :(
benj111 7y ago
Rather than show red, why not show the next train you could actually catch? A bit more glass half full, and reduces the light count by 33%!
- kevan 7y ago
  I was using a physical RGB LED so there wasn't much extra bandwidth for conveying information. I live in a cold climate so green really meant "Leave now and you'll only have to wait in the cold at the stop for 2-3 minutes". Here's the code if anyone's interested[1]. Looks like my memory wasn't quite right, I did blue/green/red with blue=wait, green=leave, red=missed. [1] https://gist.github.com/kevana/32bfa486d9fb0aa20a19694d1b69d783 https://gist.github.com/kevana/32bfa486d9fb0aa20a19694d1b69d...
  - benj111 7y ago
    Ah ok, I envisioned a screen with train info and a traffic light.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I went that route: https://jrock.us/mta.html https://jrock.us/mta.html Much better than the MTA's website... though slightly less useful if you're not me commuting to work. What I learned from this exercise is that: 1) The estimates are consistently inaccurate; downtown trains at Chambers St. always arrive when the clock says "2" (minutes until arrival). 2) They use some sort of distributed cache that doesn't remain consistent; as you bounce between backend instances you get different results, but often the same two results. (The red/green lines under the station names indicate freshness.) 3) The clocks in the stations don't work when it's too hot, but the actual data collection/processing is fine.
  - infinite8s 7y ago
    This is pretty awesome - I like how simple yet informative the design is. Do you have a license on the underlying code?
  - vidarh 7y ago
    That's interesting. Worked on a service based on TFL (London) data, and they were incredibly picky about ensuring people would not get misled by signage. Of course sometimes there are tradeoffs, but they had extensive rules to ensure the tradeoffs minimised negative experiences. E.g we had to take any buses off the boards if the data was more than x seconds old, never ever allow enough clock drift or other issues to cause our displays to be off by more than a certain amount, clear the whole display if we got no api response within a certain amount of time etc. It was very annoying to implement, but as a user it is very nice to know how much thought has gone into it.
jsingleton 7y ago
I also found that a binary notification is all I needed. I just want to know if everything is running OK or if there are delays. So I built this a few years ago: https://unop.uk/train-disruption-indicator-with-a-blinky-tape-rgb-led-strip-and-raspberry-pi/ https://unop.uk/train-disruption-indicator-with-a-blinky-tap...
- stillworks 7y ago
  :-) I use reactube everyday. It is permanently open on my desktop and also as a home screen shortcut on the phone. :+1:
  - jsingleton 7y ago
    Cheers, nice to know it's appreciated. Someone actually asked me to change it to say "Good Service" the other day! Whoosh... There is a ~mirror at https://unop.uk/tube/ https://unop.uk/tube/ in case CloudFlare go down. Although as I discovered recently, this doesn't help as the API runs on them too! There's another API I could use as a backup but it's not as good. For the curious: https://reactube.com/ https://reactube.com/
modsiw 7y ago
Idk where you live, but it ain’t Boston.

by kevan 7y ago

cameronh90 7y ago

Curiously, I've made almost this exact same thing. In my case it needs to account that some platforms are a couple minutes extra walk. Given that we've both independently implemented basically exactly the same thing, I wonder how many other people would want something like this.

Kipters 7y ago

I made something similar when I was in uni and had to catch a bus to get back home, but with my Pebble and a C application: next bus was one button press away and another press was all was needed to start a carefully calibrated double alarm for "start packing" and "leave" times

steeleduncan 7y ago
Is there any option right now as hackable as the Pebble? I'm not sure how I would build something like this right now that the Pebble is gone.
- Kipters 7y ago
  Not that I know of, sadly. Pebble was a jewel :(

benj111 7y ago

Rather than show red, why not show the next train you could actually catch? A bit more glass half full, and reduces the light count by 33%!

kevan 7y ago
I was using a physical RGB LED so there wasn't much extra bandwidth for conveying information. I live in a cold climate so green really meant "Leave now and you'll only have to wait in the cold at the stop for 2-3 minutes". Here's the code if anyone's interested[1]. Looks like my memory wasn't quite right, I did blue/green/red with blue=wait, green=leave, red=missed. [1] https://gist.github.com/kevana/32bfa486d9fb0aa20a19694d1b69d783 https://gist.github.com/kevana/32bfa486d9fb0aa20a19694d1b69d...
- benj111 7y ago
  Ah ok, I envisioned a screen with train info and a traffic light.
jrockway 7y ago
I went that route: https://jrock.us/mta.html https://jrock.us/mta.html Much better than the MTA's website... though slightly less useful if you're not me commuting to work. What I learned from this exercise is that: 1) The estimates are consistently inaccurate; downtown trains at Chambers St. always arrive when the clock says "2" (minutes until arrival). 2) They use some sort of distributed cache that doesn't remain consistent; as you bounce between backend instances you get different results, but often the same two results. (The red/green lines under the station names indicate freshness.) 3) The clocks in the stations don't work when it's too hot, but the actual data collection/processing is fine.
- infinite8s 7y ago
  This is pretty awesome - I like how simple yet informative the design is. Do you have a license on the underlying code?
- vidarh 7y ago
  That's interesting. Worked on a service based on TFL (London) data, and they were incredibly picky about ensuring people would not get misled by signage. Of course sometimes there are tradeoffs, but they had extensive rules to ensure the tradeoffs minimised negative experiences. E.g we had to take any buses off the boards if the data was more than x seconds old, never ever allow enough clock drift or other issues to cause our displays to be off by more than a certain amount, clear the whole display if we got no api response within a certain amount of time etc. It was very annoying to implement, but as a user it is very nice to know how much thought has gone into it.

jsingleton 7y ago

I also found that a binary notification is all I needed. I just want to know if everything is running OK or if there are delays. So I built this a few years ago: https://unop.uk/train-disruption-indicator-with-a-blinky-tape-rgb-led-strip-and-raspberry-pi/ https://unop.uk/train-disruption-indicator-with-a-blinky-tap...

stillworks 7y ago
:-) I use reactube everyday. It is permanently open on my desktop and also as a home screen shortcut on the phone. :+1:
- jsingleton 7y ago
  Cheers, nice to know it's appreciated. Someone actually asked me to change it to say "Good Service" the other day! Whoosh... There is a ~mirror at https://unop.uk/tube/ https://unop.uk/tube/ in case CloudFlare go down. Although as I discovered recently, this doesn't help as the API runs on them too! There's another API I could use as a backup but it's not as good. For the curious: https://reactube.com/ https://reactube.com/

modsiw 7y ago

Idk where you live, but it ain’t Boston.