Build Your Own LCD Bus Schedule

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."

Comments

Interesting idea

[mikeage]

I have to say... this is one of the more clever "Remote Screen" hacks I've seen. Unlike digitized foosball tables or automatic drink mixing machine, it doesn't require any large investments in hardware, just a simple text LCD. And it actually looks kinda useful. Unfortunetly, NJTransit only makes schedules available in PDF, but... it's a cute idea.

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

[fiddlesticks]

Less homebrewed than this cool hack, London Transport (LRT) has been operating a system of displaying (estimated) wait times for certian routes for a good few years

Some observations:

1. When I lived above a London bus stop, I could lean out the window and see when the next bus was due :)
2. This was great, but *useless* if it relied on scheduled times
3. LRT soon installed receiver/ transmitters into its buses, reporting a far more accurate ETA, as they could report bad delays in real(ish) time
4. sometimes I noticed humans on the end of the LCDs - eg once it reported 'awful traffic...no idea of arrival' :)
5. 
   
   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
   
   Nice image - Nice image
   
   blurb

Re:Amazingly

[helmutjd]

I'm a few provinces over from the guy in the article (BC, Canada), but England's public transit system is far superior to anything we have in Canada, and anything I've seen in the states.

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

[Snuffub]

They just started something like this at princeton for the grad students, the new bus route which goes between the grad students appartments has a system designed by an undergrad and his prof to transmit real time gps information inorder to generate up to the minute schedules. There's more information here: http://www.princeton.edu/pr/home/hmcap.html

Re:You can get electrocuted by phone lines!!

[wkitchen]

Unless things have radically changed you cannot get electrocuted by a phone line. Electric line, yes but not a phone line.

IIRC, the standard ring signal (at least in the US) is nominally 90VAC at 20Hz., and can sometimes be even higher.

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

[zeoslap]

Next Bus based in Emeryville do something cooler, they strap GPS boxes to busses and then using that data beam the info to busstops so you the time to next bus is based on where the bus actually is as opposed to where the scedule says it should be. Very cool. You can see a live map of the SF busses here

Boston T

[RoloDMonkey]

When I lived in Boston there was a pizza parlor right next to a stop that had the brilliant idea of installing a camera focused on the track a few blocks away. Paying customers could stay inside, warm and dry, and see when the next train was about to arrive. On a cold, wet day it was worth a few bucks to be waiting inside eating pizza.

Re:Why a bus? Why not a bicycle?

[Bradee-oh!]

Here in San Luis Obispo, California, which is basically a university town of 45,000 people, the University splits the bill with the city and corporate donors for all Cal Poly students to ride the buses for free.

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!

[RevAaron]

I rely on the bus (in addition to my feet and bike- no car) to get everywhere around town. Carrying around paper schedules was a pain, and sometimes they'd go out of date without you knowing.

Luckily, my city has all the bus schedules on line. 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 for Dynapad 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 ...

[lushman]

At the end of the day, it is a real waste of time for the computer to be looking up timetables which is really where your problem originates - missing the bus is not just about being at the stop at the scheduled time. In my experience, buses can be anywhere from 5-10 minutes early or late, with little way of predicting either way.

What would be useful is real-time tracking of buses and their respective positions ... simply by using existing wireless data networks. Here in Sydney, Australia, all major bus routes have almost perfect access to three GSM/GPRS networks, with Vodafone at least offering a locating system on top ....

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.

Re:Hrm.

[gl4ss]

anon fuckin ass.

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.