Build Your Own LCD Bus Schedule 409
MikeLRoy writes "An engineering student in Winnipeg, tired of missing his bus to school (and waiting in the cold) created an LCD bus stop. It displays the next bus times for several stops and routes, all from the heated comfort of his kitchen. And yes, there are pics and code on the site."
Interesting idea (Score:5, Interesting)
On another note, my school (Rutgers) has a site called www.whereismybus.com (appears to be down at the moment), which uses a java applet to track buses in real-time. Only problem-- none of the bus terminals are within range of access points, and it takes a year to load (major java-bloat, methinks), but an interesting idea nonetheless.
how it works in London (Score:5, Interesting)
Some observations:
Plans are afoot for the following: audio repeater, large Countdown signs at bus stations, hand-held Countdown terminals for operations staff and a central real-time travel information desk
Loads of info [ertico.com]
Nice image - Nice image [ferrograph.com]
blurb [ferrograph.com]
Re:Amazingly (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the first thing that struck me the first time I visited England - cellular technology (incl. WAP) is far, far more widespread and advanced (just about everyone--senior or 8-year-old, has a cell), and the public transit system (esp. the underground) is incredible... you can get just about anywhere via bus/tube... whereas out here, if you don't have a car, you're basically screwed.
Anyway, point being, it makes sense that your public transportation has a higher budget than out here (or in Winnipeg); yours definitely gets much more use.
Something like this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You can get electrocuted by phone lines!! (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone asks you to hold a couple of stripped wires while they make a phone call, don't do it.
NextBus uses GPS to predict bus arrivals (Score:2, Interesting)
Boston T (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why a bus? Why not a bicycle? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, granted, the price difference between free bus fare and maintaining a bike is very small, the buses are FREE...
I would be very surprised if this arrangement were unique to S.L.O. - any other college/university towns have the same type of deal?
Bus Schedules on my Newton and Jornada 720! (Score:4, Interesting)
Luckily, my city has all the bus schedules on line [duluthtransit.com]. For me, it was a simple matter of downloading the PDFs of the schedules and putting them on my PDA, which is usually a Newton 2100, but also a Jornada 720 (for research).
I've been meaning to write a small app in Squeak [squeak.org] for Dynapad [swiki.net] that does something similar to this hardware solution. It has all the data for the all the bus routes in town (as well as the Greyhound route I take to my parents house), and gives you available bus times out of a given location. Creating a multi-route iternerary would be pretty easy as well.
Unfortunately, I've not gotten around to this yet. The code side of it would be pretty straightforward and IMO fun to write. But the Duluth Transit Authority has opted to only have the schedules online in paper form or as PDF- which would mean I'd have to do some serious PIA data entry. It would be a pain to maintain, looking over a lot of numbers to find a couple of minor changes in bus schedule.
So, I figured I could dick aroudn with pdf2txt or pdf2html converters, parsing from there. But parsing never is fun to me, in any language, so I've kind of not bothered, just dealing with the plain old PDFs for now.
A nice toy with little utility ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What would be useful is real-time tracking of buses and their respective positions
Now if you could access all this information via WAP/GPRS on your cell phone, you would have an inexpensive and accurate way to know whether there actually is time for another beer without missing the bus. It could also mean that you would waste less time sitting around at a bus stop with your fingers crossed.
I'm sorry if this is a bit off-topic but maybe we shouldn't cry revolution every time someone homebrews an LCD with Linux to display something.
Minneapolis (Score:1, Interesting)
The 1st part would be better for me, since I have neither a PDA, laptop, or cell phone. But the 2nd part would be less prone to being destroyed by some gang banger, teenagers, and drunks.
Re:Hrm. (Score:2, Interesting)
you do realise that sometimes public transport is helluva lot better than your own car?
you can't drive drunk.
you can't drive high.
you can't drive out of cash and the main axle is busted.
what the fuck is it that you got against public transport? can't stand the poor people sweating in there?
i don't know who the hell rides bus to college, but i do know for a fact that ~70-80% of people who live further than walking/cycling distance away from our university use bus to get there.
yeah they're poor bastards who all should get a job at mcdonalds to get an used toyota now instead of studying to get a mercedes later.