Comments on Create your own personal transit screen at Hack Day - Greater Greater Washington

Comment by Brian McLaren

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:19:03 EDT

I missed the hack day in November.... any plans to do a round 2?

Comment by Matt Caywood

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:44:30 EDT

If anyone wants to go but doesn't have a laptop, a few loaner laptops are available -- please sign up for the event and then click "Contact the Organizer" button to let us know that you will need one!

Comment by Jack Love

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:45:59 EDT

Doh! Should have read the article more closely.

"Nevermind." -E. Latella.

Comment by Jack Love

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:42:19 EDT

Is Capital Bikeshare info available in real time?

Comment by Matt Caywood

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:22:19 EDT

@Jose -- Nice catch, I have that bugfix too. If you can submit a github pull request, I'll take your patch, otherwise I'll add mine ASAP.

@MDE -- Sorry! We hope to host more hack days in the future and hope you will be able to attend.

Comment by Ward 1 Guy

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:07:07 EDT

OMG this is awesome. The entire post is scary to me, as I am not a developer or really have any understanding of anything in the post except for the possible end result, something I've been fantasizing about: a screen (on my phone) with the bus stops and metrorail stations I normally use plus Car2go and bikeshare info. I am constantly having to choose among these four modes (plus my personal bike) and switching between applications (Spotcycle, Car2Go, DC Metro Transit) isn't working for me. Combining these into a single display to rule them all would be something I'd be happy to pay for. Good luck, programmers! You're doing important work.

Comment by MDE

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:53:10 EDT

I'm sad this is over what for some is a holiday weekend.

Comment by Jose Pecho

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:26:19 EDT

Hi I notes something in user_model.php in the function validate. you are calling $user->username = $row->username;but username doesnt exits in the database i changed it for $user->username = $row->email; and start to working.

I just wanna point that.

Comment by Matt Caywood

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:06:25 EDT

@Kev29, the answer is yes if you can help us write a screen scraper for MarcTracker -- I don't believe they offer a real-time arrival API.

The best local reference I know of is David Alpert's survey of which transit agencies offer open data from January 2012. See the rightmost "Tracking API" column, and the comments.

Comment by Kev29

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:40:50 EDT

Would love to do this from Union Station. Can MARCTracker go in there too? http://www.marctracker.com/PublicView/status.jsp

Comment by Matt Caywood

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:08:15 EDT

@Lucre - In theory, any transportation service that provides an API for getting their data could be added.

Capital Bikeshare works already.

Car2Go has an API and we'd love to see that added.

Someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, Zipcar, Uber, and myTaxi don't offer APIs yet.

Comment by CJ

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:07:27 EDT

can you add Car2Go? And maybe Uber?

Comment by Matt Caywood

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:02:45 EDT

is the code such that you can just install a program on your tablet that will provide all this as pictured with an address entered?

A personal transit screen is basically a web page -- it runs on a web server provided by Mobility Lab.

You build the screen using the web interface. It's not quite as simple as typing your address, but we (Andy Chosak, Eric Fidler and I) have developed some tools that make it almost that easy.

When you're done, you just load the web page into any "kiosk mode" app on your tablet, and it runs automatically.

Comment by Matt Caywood

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:54:06 EDT

H Street LL & Richard & others,

As long as you're willing to participate in the hack day, stay around and help out to the best of your ability, we welcome everyone. Sure, we're hoping for a force of hardcore web coders, but we'd really like to build a community of engaged users and activists!

Comment by Lucre

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:39:28 EDT

The exciting thing about this is that any place could cheaply put something like this up: every shop, bar, deli, etc could have a display letting customers know at a glance how they can get where when.

I don't know if it's possible, but integrating information on nearby taxis from mytaxi or black cars from uber would be amazing.

Comment by OctaviusIII

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:10:56 EDT

Dope indeed. I'm not a coder, but I can do design and debugging.

Building a GUI around the various parts might be the most useful thing to do because it would let anyone build this for wherever they want. If non-NextBus agencies have their schedules in GTFS form they could be integrated, which is something missing in the original.

Comment by Davin Peterson

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:37:32 EDT

Why doesn't Metro put that on the screens installed on the Kiosks in the stations or replaced the outdated PID screens

Comment by H Street LL

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:21:36 EDT

Dope. I was thinking the same question as R. Layman, also.

Another question, is the code such that you can just install a program on your tablet that will provide all this as pictured with an address entered?

Comment by Richard Layman

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:01:13 EDT

Very cool. are you ok with people coming who just want to "use" you people who aren't programmers?