If you're in the UK you can buy a depature board that mimics a station departure board: https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/store/product/desktop-depart...
> Note: Please review product dimensions before purchase to avoid any surprises LOL, this must happen quite a lot to them.
Let me tell you about the time my wife ordered some cheap furniture on Amazon once ... it was all doll-house furniture. The photos and title did make it seem life-size, and it was super high-quality furniture at that. Just the wrong size...
There's also https://departureboards.mobi/departures/BTH which mimics the departure boards used in some stations.
Is there a bus version? This is excellent.
You could make your own if you are sufficiently crafty: the data needed in the UK is available from public sources, https://www.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/ being the main one (I discovered this when checking the data sources of bustimes.org, which they helpfully list on an easy to find page: https://bustimes.org/data).
Maybe I'm not understanding the use case. I don't want to "take the train". I want to get from A to B. If the train is broken, the workers are on strike, the route is blocked between 1pm and 4pm, or it's outside of operating hours then I want an alternative. So for me, I actually want what Google Maps gives me (or tries to give me). I do not just want to know about trains. Maybe I want to get from the Ferry Building…
> So for me, I actually want what Google Maps gives me (or tries to give me). One thing I find is that Google Maps really, really assumes that walking is very very bad and no-one wants to do it. So for instance, if I'm going to a particular place I will get a 39 bus and then walk 15 minutes. If I ask Google how to get there, I'll get a route with two transfers; if the stars align it'll take about as long as one-bus p…
I had the same problems with Google Maps. I ended up using Apple Maps in Japan and it gave much more realistic routes
> Maybe I'm not understanding the use case. I don't want to "take the train". The use case is routine. A lot of people, most of the time, do indeed want to "take the train". Heroic feats of real-time planning have their place, and it's great to have tools that help you with that, but routine can be covered with much simpler tools just as well. Even in the Tokyo scenario you gave (which is fascinating -- thank you!) G…
never met that person. as someone that has long lived in cities with amazing transportation (sf is not one of those with good transportation) there are too many options and people always want whatever is best now, not routine. you're out drinking - which mode is last. you're on the east side of X, which route is closest. you're tired, does any route guauntee a seat. etc.... Berlin, London, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore, Ky…
I feel like the OP is overcomplicating the solution, I don't own a car and all commuting is basically either:
- bus/train/tram crosses my stop 5 times a day - its trivial to learn the 5 times
- bus/train/tram crosses my stop more than 5 times a day - i just show up at the stop and wait
Perhaps my point of view is like this because I'm in Europe, I can't tell really.
Given the post's title, I hoped it would work with trains. In Washington, DC, it works with buses but not trains. What help would you need to make it work with trains?
It's really just a question of the transit provider giving you access to the data. My display shows mostly light rail schedules with a few buses. If your transit provider has real-time data for trains you can display it, if not you can't.
I love this kind of observation: > like most truly useful things we need to build it ourselves but I was surprised that the author insists on displaying an image on the Kindle. The last third of the post is dedicated to building that PNG file. Is it possible to send text? It would be easier but maybe it's not possible...?
It's the easiest way to display complex graphics on the Kindle which take over the entire screen. Yes, I could use HTML and the browser, but there's a header and footer that I don't want to see (plus I'm not convinced the Kindle would stay awake). I could have sent text, but the renderer available at the CLI is extremely limited. I'm not sure if I could have tapped into a mobi/pdf renderer to make it show up similarly to an e-book, but I'm doubtful if I could have made a mobi file show up in landscape like this. I was also building on several other tutorials that use PNG files, so it just made sense to do this.
I made a (free and ad free) app for BART that tells you if you need to run to catch your train or not. Instantly upon opening the app, without needing to tap anything, it automatically figures out which train you want and helps you hurry, just a little bit, to make the next one rather than wait.