[HN Gopher] Never Missing the Train Again
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Never Missing the Train Again
Author : thimabi
Score : 129 points
Date : 2024-10-23 11:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lilymara.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (lilymara.xyz)
| fatnoah wrote:
| I love this. As a formerly car-free resident of Boston, I cobbled
| together something far cruder to handle the cases of there being
| many ways for me to get from point A to point B, but the "best"
| way depended on time and any stops I'd make along the way.
|
| For example, I walked my son to school before heading to work,
| and sometimes I got breakfast after dropoff. Having the "next
| departure" view let me have a more fluid experience that handled
| the non-deterministic nature of walking with a 4 year old in a
| very interesting place, or deciding whether to hustle to get the
| train because missing it hit a schedule gap, etc.
| pkulak wrote:
| Super cool. I did the same kind of thing with my tidbyt display:
|
| https://github.com/pkulak/tidbyt
|
| My local transit agency (Trimet) is _really_ good with their api.
| It's public, and a single HTTP GET to get the ETA on every bus
| that serves a given stop, so it wasn't event that much work.
| sofixa wrote:
| Nice. I have something similar with a repurposed Lenovo
| ThinkSmart View tablet/conference room device, with Home
| Assistant and its integration to my local transit authority. The
| advantage is that it's much more out of the box (okay, I did have
| to flash a custom Android ROM on the Lenovo, but still), it can
| show whatever I want, and I can also use it to control stuff like
| my lights or robot vacuum.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You don't have to jailbreak your Kindle, or render images.
|
| You can just point its web browser at any webpage you design, and
| disable the Kindle's "screensaver" (its ads or sleep screen) with
| debug commands [1, 2].
|
| You'll be stuck with a browser bar along some edge of the Kindle
| (you can rotate the device orientation to put it at the bottom or
| right edge), but it's a small price to pay for being able to
| write your weather/transit/news screen in easy HTML/CSS/JS and
| whatever backend language you want, and run it on a cheap
| DigitalOcean $4 instance or whatever.
|
| [1] https://blog.notfaqs.com/2018/06/kindle-e-reader-disable-
| scr...
|
| [2] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=198334
| philips wrote:
| I am almost certain disable screensaver was removed for later
| Kindles.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I didn't seem to be last I checked -- the older Kindles
| require the sequence: ;debugOn
| ~disableScreensaver ;debugOff
|
| while newer ones only require: ~ds
|
| I know that for some ad-supported Kindles it doesn't work
| unless you pay to remove the ads (for obvious reasons), but
| if you pay then it will.
|
| But last I checked was a couple of years ago. I'd be very
| curious if anyone can report it not working. (Also note the
| command doesn't survive reboot, you have to re-disable after
| rebooting.)
| laserlight wrote:
| Unfortunately, ~ds was disabled by a firmware update a few
| years ago.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Ugh, that sucks. Any idea how to determine which ones are
| affected? I.e. what firmware version, or which models it
| started affecting?
|
| Older models still support ~disableScreensaver -- at some
| point Amazon just stopped issuing firmware updates for
| them, I have to assume.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| It would be even cooler if Amazon also encouraged and built a
| "Kiosk mode" browser view of the kindle for this sort of
| display hacking.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| (author here) I've also been thinking about this - I've since
| built out a Rust library (https://github.com/lily-
| mara/kindling) for scaffolding the server piece of this and
| I've been considering creating a Kindle client app that
| integrates with it. This is possible but would require using
| the Kindle Java SDK, which does not fill me with excitement.
| stavros wrote:
| That would be fantastic, although even just the way you've
| done this here is great. I've got a few old Kindles that
| would be good to convert to displays, and if I could just
| install a server and a client, it would take a lot of the
| work out of it.
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| No matter what, jailbreaking would be the most difficult
| step in the process, but the library I linked above takes
| a lot of the work out of it. It's entirely undocumented
| atm (I am surely the only one using it), but it comes
| with an install script you can run on the Kindle to do
| the setup once you have the jailbreak done.
| crazygringo wrote:
| They really ought to, it's a fantastic reuse mechanism.
|
| Like I totally understand why they wouldn't for new Kindles,
| since I assume part of their ebook sales help subsidize the
| hardware, but if they enabled it once a device hit 5 years
| old or something, I don't see what they'd have to lose.
| DannyPage wrote:
| I looked into this with my 4th generation Kindle; it seems like
| it won't be able to use any HTTPS website due to invalid
| certificate. However, setting it up to talk to a server on my
| local network would be the way to go. Thanks for the idea!
| pimlottc wrote:
| The CTA (in Chicago) has a nice customizable "next train screen"
| web app that's perfect for this:
|
| https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/diydisplay/
| ramses0 wrote:
| R.I.P. Pebble:
|
| https://developer.rebble.io/developer.pebble.com/community/a...
|
| """ Caltrain is a Pebble app that displays upcoming trains at a
| station, and where those trains will stop along the remainder of
| each of their routes.
|
| Finally, it uses PebbleKit JS to retrieve your location on
| launch. If it gets a response before you manually choose a
| station, it will automatically show the station closest to you.
| """
|
| ...you could literally map that "applet" to long-press on a
| button, and get the info in like 5 seconds.
|
| For extra "dick tracy" spice, call an uber from your wristwatch
| with 3-4 clicks (long-press, ok, next, ok => "your uber will
| arrive in __ minutes"). Actually, reviewing the app docs, it
| looks like it was only two long-presses to request $LAST_USED_CAR
| to $CURRENT_LOCATION.
|
| https://www.uber.com/blog/pebble-smartwatch/
|
| https://pebble-help-legacy.rebble.io/help.getpebble.com/cust...
|
| Buttons, people! Buttons!
| hiatus wrote:
| We've really taken steps backwards since pebble. We used to be
| able to respond to messages by talking into our wrists, for
| ~$100. I switched to Garmin after using rebble for a bit, and
| that's the feature I miss most.
| ramses0 wrote:
| I'm the reverse, I never wanted to "input" to the wrist, but
| really appreciated the notifications, Bluetooth disconnect
| warnings, "the timeline" interface, and the necessarily
| limiting interface of 4 buttons (specifically: music control
| while in the shower... play/pause, next track, pick a station
| from a list, etc).
|
| Totally understand how some loved the ability to
| compose/respond to messages, but that never made sense to me.
|
| Garmin, Amazfit, and BangleJS comes close, but #buttons,
| #battery, and #b&w (well, always on, transflective, sunlight
| readable)
| sourcepluck wrote:
| A. "Busses" should be "buses", I think? Or am I stepping into a
| holy war... Maybe it's a British vs American English thing, but a
| quick look says that Merriam-Webster agrees. Maybe it's a choice
| by the author, in which case, fair enough. If I was the author,
| I'd prefer knowing, anyway.
|
| B. Super cool article! I've an old Nook somewhere being neglected
| which I am now moving up my list of devices to do some messing
| with and find a use for. Excellent stuff.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, IMO the plural noun is "buses", while "busses" is a
| conjugated verb, ex:
|
| "When the regular buses aren't running, he busses people around
| in the minivan."
| BalinKing wrote:
| The OED says that "busses" is an acceptable plural in
| American English (I haven't read the article though, so I
| don't know what dialect the author speaks/writes).
| Terr_ wrote:
| > You might see the plural busses, but that form is so rare
| that it seems like an error to many people. [...] When the
| word bus was new, the two plurals were in competition, but
| buses overtook busses in frequency in the 1930s, and today
| is the overwhelming choice of writers and editors.
|
| -- https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/plural-of-bus
|
| Went ahead and used Google Ngram viewer to show the
| popularity difference, with some context-words to ensure
| it's comparing cases where a plural noun is being used:
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+busses%2C
| +...
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=multiple+buss
| e...
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=took+buses%2C
| +...
| sourcepluck wrote:
| Ooh nice, I didn't know that Ngram tool! I've heard
| references to word frequency but didn't know where to do
| it. Thanks for jumping in with a bit of analysis.
|
| Of course, if USA-based anglophones want to continue
| using a particular spelling or pronunciation, we know we
| don't have the power to stop them. I bow out of this one.
| 43920 wrote:
| Not to diminish OP's project, but the stated goal of "know when
| each transit line has an upcoming train/tram/bus" is probably
| already achieved by https://transitapp.com/ - the default view
| when you open the app is a list of nearby transit lines, sorted
| by distance and showing the next departure for each.
| n4r9 wrote:
| You can also bring up a station's departure board in CityMapper
| by clicking on its marker in the map view.
| mmoustafa wrote:
| If you want a transportation app built for locals I highly
| recommend Transit. When you open the app it shows you the transit
| options closest to you, where they're heading, and when the next
| one arrives. Never have to put in a destination.
| alsodumb wrote:
| This sounds like a fun project, but there are existing apps whose
| default page is "when is the next bus/train coming up on stops
| near me"
|
| Transit App (https://transitapp.com/) is one of them and I
| freaking love their interface overall. This app's default view
| shows you the next bus (in either directions) at the 3-4 transit
| stops closest to your current location. And you can customize/add
| favs too. It's a beautiful app, also allows for multi/mixed-modal
| route planning (part walking, part bike, part bus).
| parl_match wrote:
| To be honest, I found having something physical and on the wall
| and always present _really_ helpful. When the train/bus comes
| every 15 minutes, being able to casually look and see if you
| should make a dash for it is way better than pulling out your
| phone, bringing up an app, and entering your destination.
| alsodumb wrote:
| Oh yeah of course, I personally have a physical screen that
| shows live feed from my local transit agency's GTFS real time
| feed. I was just pointing out the app for those who don't
| have the time/interest to build something physical.
| echoangle wrote:
| I always want to get into rust but examples like this always make
| me reconsider. Every time I want to code something and start with
| rust, I switch to python 5 minutes later because it's just so
| much easier (for me at least). The code to build exactly this
| dashboard would probably be less than 100 lines of python. Rust
| is much better for performance (and maybe runtime correctness,
| but most errors here would be parser errors anyways) of course,
| but for this application, I don't think it really matters.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| "where are you and where are you going?" Is a delusional question
| for a transit system but it's a good question for Uber.
|
| When I was involved with the Green Party we were thinking of
| "just doing" the things the local government wasn't doing and I
| think we set a fire under the bus company's butt to fix a large
| number of usability problems that we were going to fix for them
| (and stick our logo everywhere.)
|
| The bus company was very negative on us extracting schedules from
| their web site because they wanted to see what people were
| searching for -- hypothetically they could have added new service
| somewhere if there was demand for it but (1) it seemed hard to
| believe they'd really do it because changes are so infrequent and
| (2) they never showed any sign of caring what people thought, why
| would they start now?
| pugworthy wrote:
| In truth I rarely ever miss a train, a bus, or a plane. They miss
| me though because they are delayed.
| m463 wrote:
| I think travel by bus/train is more friendly when they have
| "headway".
|
| Instead of a specific schedule, there is a bus/train every "n"
| minutes.
| alilleybrinker wrote:
| It ought to be easier to get a blank slate of a small device with
| some compute power and a screen, like the Kindle here, without
| having to jailbreak something.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| There is one, it's called the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, but due
| to the small volume and the target audience largely being not-
| my-own-money (think educational institutions), the price is
| quite detached from the production cost.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I think more of the issue might be the eink screens. As far
| as I can tell, there just aren't 5+ inch eink screens for
| cheap.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| yes they are: https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-
| paper.htm?___SI...
|
| A 4.37inch E-Paper in 3 colors is $24, problem is need you
| to program yourself (they have code sample in python, for
| raspberry pi), and you need a raspberry pi, case, cables,
| etc.
|
| Also, these cheap epaper displays are, of course, of lower
| quality (slower, lower resolution) than an kindle display.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| They jump up in price pretty quickly as size goes up. The
| cheapest 5+ inch display I found at your link was over
| $40, and it's about 100PPI. It's certainly not
| prohibitive, but certainly priced high compared to "just
| jailbreak a kindle" for any remotely kindle-comparable
| display, right? (remotely comparable in size and
| resolution)
| FrecklySunbeam wrote:
| I imagine the Kindle is sold as a loss leader, plus
| whatever economies of scale/negotiating Amazon does
| pushes the price down heavily vs buying a single unit
| from an electronics retailer
| nvader wrote:
| I want to mention this beautiful physical led sign of the BART
| map: https://www.designrules.co/
| Aeolun wrote:
| I love how they blamed the flake on node and Javascript, then
| switched to Rust and also changed the whole approach, which had a
| hundred times more effect than changing the language did.
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