Slashdot Mirror
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."
why, back in my day, we didnt have all these new fangled computer bus scheduler thingies. we had to work out the algorithm in our heads in the snow uphill going both ways....kids these days......
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
I hope he doesn't have class tonight, or else his clock is going to be running a bit slow, thanks to the Slashdotting... :)
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
What I'd like to know is why an engineering student is still worried about missing a bus to school..
should be:
http://members.shaw.ca/rosensto/bus/bus.pl
I'm sure he needs more time to look at pr0n, so that's why he actually built the LCD.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
What happened to either 1) looking the routes online, or 2) grabbing the routes from the library? Was this guy just going out to bus stops at random, hoping he got there at the right time? What was so hard about viewing the paper schedule?
And how is he gonna use this thing he made when he's AWAY from home? Come home?
And to think I would have just written down the schedule on a piece of paper (total cost < 1 cent)
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.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
[Singing loudly]
:)
EVERY MORNING I WOULD SEE HER WAITING AT THE STOP!
Sometimes she'd shop and she would show me what she bought!
[/Singing loudly]
AHEM. Sorry... got carried away there.
Transfer. Or better yet, just hang out nearby.
Waddaya mean, "be a grad student my hole life"? He's an undergraduate freshman. And if you want to skip school and jump into the job market as a tester, that's all fine and good, but if you did it for the money (as your post indicates) it wasn't such a good move. Ten years from now, this guy's probably going to be making at least twice your salary.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
"my perl coding abalilities are far from perfect, so..."
Just yur purl coeding abalilities?
Sorry but i'd rather stay on my own software testing track and have enough $ to buy my own car.
Sure i work for MSFT but at least i can afford to drive a car, take girls out to eat, and go to the casinoes.
Don't mean to be discrimenatorie but it's just how i feel. I'd rather spend time working towards a nice professional job that my kid will look up to than being a grad student (TA) my hole life.
Uh-huh. I can see it now...
"Geeez dad, please don't wear that Microsoft shirt when you pick me up from school. And I think I'll find somebody literate to help with my spelling...."
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
In England we have a lot of this technology already.
(Amazingly, too, English people seem convinced their country is heading backwards at full speed towards the ice age, but that's another story.)
In central London all the bus stops contain LED displays showihng how long you'll have to wait for each bus. Likewise, on the tube (underground, subway) their are simialr displays. Normally they say things like "Baker Street 3minutes; Chancery Lane you'll be lucky" but hey...
There are companies like Kizoom (sp?) that offer these same services over WAP so you can make sure that when you leave your home/office then you *will* make your bus, metro, etc.
--- My dad's political betting
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
Nice image - Nice image
blurb
http://milkshake.dexy.org
that he put into the LCD and everything else in the project, he could have worked and bought a car. Sure, there's the geeky challenge of it all, but just as you don't win friends with salad, you don't get chicks by riding the bus.
quite, possibly, like my self, he has a car but chooses to take the bus becasue:
sure i don't get chicks while riding the bus, but who wants a chick that is that shallow?
remember, one person can't fix the world alone, but one can ruin it for all
A lot of replies are why does he need this not a written bus schedule. Well snow and winter tend to disrupt thing up here. The bus does not always run to the exact minute that they obviously do in New York Or London. At times in Ottawa (and Winnipeg) they may be as much as 5 minutes late. With the weather we have that's a hell of long time
Semper ubi sub ubi
If he's using perl couldn't he just as easily use the LWP::UserAgent module (part of libwww-perl)?
use LWP::UserAgent;
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $source = $ua->get("http://slashdot.org")->content;
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
So was this LCD display for a serial bus, or parellel?
A lot of bus companies nowadays have their schedule avaliable in this newfangled fomat called a paper brochure. Not only does it work anywhere, but you don't even need electricity. Additionally, these marvelous contraptions have a more verbose version of the scedule then the LCD bus schedule display.
Maybe things are different in the USA. I've lived in three Canadian cities so far, and I find that busses are usually very good at being almost exactly on schedule at the route's "timed" points. If the stop you are interested in is between two timed points, then you always make sure to be there by the earlier timed stop's time, but don't expect to leave any sooner than the next timed stop's time. Timed stops aren't too far apart, so you almost never end up waiting too long unless there was some sort of abnormal condition. I've never seen a bus leave a timed stop early, and the sure fire way to get a late bus to come is to light up a cigarette.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Because he wants to have more attention to his handheld/wearable?
Luke-Jr
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
--aiee
Voltage doesn't matter, it's amperage that'll kill you... there's upwards of 10,000 volts in static electricity.
Same reason a 50,000 volt taser won't kill you, but a 110 volt outlet can.
... this device could actually make the buses stick to the schedule! =P
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
...to tape the bus schedule to the refrigerator door?
I'd be more impressed if he built a robot that poked him with a sharp stick 5 minutes before the bus got there.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
If someone asks you to hold a couple of stripped wires while they make a phone call, don't do it.
Unless things are a lot different in Canada you cannot get electrocuted by a phone line. Electric line yes, but not a phone line.
I laughed at the electrocuted part myself. No, not even in Canada will the phone line kill you...
But, you can get one hell of a headache:
I was helping a friend wire a new jack up for his phone. Unfortunately the jack was located under his rather large, heavy desk. After I told him how to wire it up he decided that 'Oh, that's easy! I'll do it.' So, ok, yes, it is easy, go for it. But make sure you don't touch the bare wires. It won't really harm you, but if the phone should ring it can be a tad nasty.
Sure, no problem he says and climbes under the desk. Less then a minute later I suddenly hear a gasp followed by a loud BANG... the bang of his head smashing into the top of the desk.
Seems he touched the wires and was unlucky enough to be doing so when it rang. The sensation surprised him so badly he attemped to leap backwards - hard to do when crouched under a desk. I laughed so hard I could barely finish the job for him! (hey Fred, if you're reading "Hi!" :) )
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Crap, would you believe Mozilla crashed on me twice while writing this reply?
I bike to university every day in Winnipeg when it's warm, but right now I need the bus. Take a look at Winnipeg's real time forecast. See that warning box? It means that with windchill, it's -37 C or F, doesn't matter which units at this close to the bottom of the scale.
Big red warning = you'll freeze your ass off. And that's why I'm not biking right now.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
Or have you ever tried to ride a bike on a snow covered road? Enough said.
They literally have artic winters that rival polar cities in the northern hemisphere due to their geography. The reason why the prairies of Canada are so cold is because its flat all the way to the north pole. There is nothing to stop artic air from sliding down south during the winter. The temperatures in Winnipeg are literally colder then Ankerage Alaska and vary only a few degree's of extreme northern canada. No shit. At least in the northeast and northwest there are mountains and ocean influences but not in that part of Canada.
How the early settlers survived? I have no idea. But its so cold that car owners remove their batteries out of their cars at night since they will be dead by morning.
Would you want to ride a bike in this? I think not.
http://saveie6.com/
Unless you are absolutely certain that a power source is inherently capable of delivering only very small current (like your taser example, though that is not completely without danger either), "higher voltage = greater danger" is an entirely reasonable assumption.
To-Do:
[next release] show when the next bus leaves for "way the fuck out of Winnipeg"
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.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
If you are considering building this yourself,
I know several people who have bought from EIO.com (his LCD supplier) and its ran by one guy, and it takes forever for him to ship.
Consider a company called "timeline" instead, a simple google will turn them up.
For everyone out there saying this guy should take a bike, it's no big deal waiting for a bus, etc...
Let me just tell you what it's like up here in Winnipeg.
Tonight, for example, it's going down to -35C. That's damn near -35F for you yank types (ie: DAMN COLD). Cycling to work here is almost impossible, because in addition to the cold we have almost no bicycle lanes, and driving on the road is a joke - ice and snow cover the roads for 4-6 months a year.
In short, busses are absolutely essential, and seeing as how our schedules change every couple of months, staying on top of it is one big pain. Kudos to this guy for coming up with something clever!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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?
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
One problem. Every bus company uses a different thing. No standards exist. Currently, my local bus company allows you to view the schedules on the web, but the labels at the top are JPEGS which mean I can't parse them into a smaller table suitable for my Pocket PC. That also renders the schedules unreadable for the blind. They don't even have a alt tag or a alternate text version. PDF schedules are unsuitable because PDF on a small device sucks. I would rather just like to be able to look at the schedule on my PDA and forget the display in my kitchen.
Gorkman
"(and waiting in the cold)"
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
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.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
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.
... 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 ....
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.
Your signature reads:
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Don't make fun of edlin. It's probably the last program that they released that did not present a huge security risk.
Buses are like women; you wait ages for one, miss it and then use a screen which can represent them instead.