Never Missing the Train Again
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Never Missing the Train Again
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Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#2I 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.
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#3Super 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.
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#4Nice. 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.
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#5You 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
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#6The CTA (in Chicago) has a nice customizable “next train screen” web app that’s perfect for this:
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#7R.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!
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#8You 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 wea…
I am almost certain disable screensaver was removed for later Kindles.
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#9A. "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.
Re: Never Missing the Train Again
#10You 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 wea…
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.