Developer donation link (map tile gets expensive!): https://ko-fi.com/benbyfax
Live Map of the London Underground
71–80 of 117 posts
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#72https://ben-james.notion.site/tube-data > You will regret using this data. You will regret using this API. > It serves data from individual arrivals boards, which all spell stations differently. > It describes train status in free text that varies between stations. “Approaching Barnet”, “Near Waterloo”, “Heading to Bank”, “Departing Southgate”, “Leaving Hampstead”, etc. I'm not sure what you expected from an organisa…
It's also the organization that rolled out the second large stored-credit contactless payment system in the world (after Hong Kong), and was the first to introduce bank card contactless payments.
For some reason I'm thinking of the classic "Speed cooking" videos:
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#73https://ben-james.notion.site/tube-data > You will regret using this data. You will regret using this API. > It serves data from individual arrivals boards, which all spell stations differently. > It describes train status in free text that varies between stations. “Approaching Barnet”, “Near Waterloo”, “Heading to Bank”, “Departing Southgate”, “Leaving Hampstead”, etc. I'm not sure what you expected from an organisa…
FunFact: I have enjoyed HN for about 10 years even though I have NO IDEA what an API etc. is. A tribute to its welcoming big tent for non-techies like me who wouldn't know a dark pattern from dark matter.
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#74Its a bit confusing as it only shows a single line for places that have multiple lines running on the same track
Yeah, no Lizzy line, for me at least.
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#75Looks great but I'm watching this while sitting on a tube right now. What I assumed was my train was lagging by quite a bit and then disappeared!
This sounds like the start of a science fiction story where you find yourself transported to a parallel world...
Yes, give us a holler when [if?] you return...
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#76I love how it makes life seem slow paced. If this was a wallpaper I would stare at it all day
Well, only because tube trains are a bit slow?
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#77This is very cool, but it is so sad to look at. South of the river has barely any connections far as the underground is concerned. The trains aren't much better.
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#78wonder if it would be worth putting arrow heads on the train direction
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#79I've seen visualisations similar to this before, but this one is by far the most beautiful and I could watch it all day. I echo the sentiments on the TfL API, I've built the same Tube Tracker app over and over for more than 10 years[1] as my go-to for learning new tools[2] or testing changes to frameworks[3] and I'm not sure it's ever improved. A chap called Chris Applegate wrote extensively about his battles more th…
Also this one
Re: Live Map of the London Underground
#80https://ben-james.notion.site/tube-data > You will regret using this data. You will regret using this API. > It serves data from individual arrivals boards, which all spell stations differently. > It describes train status in free text that varies between stations. “Approaching Barnet”, “Near Waterloo”, “Heading to Bank”, “Departing Southgate”, “Leaving Hampstead”, etc. I'm not sure what you expected from an organisa…
FunFact: I have enjoyed HN for about 10 years even though I have NO IDEA what an API etc. is. A tribute to its welcoming big tent for non-techies like me who wouldn't know a dark pattern from dark matter.
If you're curious: An API is more or less just the communication boundary between two pieces of software.
A common sign of a bad API (including this one) is when it presents data in an overly human-centric way rather than something more computer-friendly.
For a human it's really easy to see "Regents Park" and "Regent's Park" are very very likely referring to the same station, but a computer can't know that unless a human goes out of their way to tell it that.
You could argue the TfL API is perfectly fine for its intended use-case of updating the arrival screens (which are meant for humans), but it's generally better to design APIs to grow for future use-cases you haven't thought of yet. Changing an API tends to be hard once it's being used in the real world.
For example: The older TfL stations have LED matrix displays for displaying information, which are very limited in how much text they can display at once. The newer stations have big TV screens instead, which can show a lot of information. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the underlying reason behind some of the inconsistencies, especially ones like "Kings Cross" vs "King's Cross St. Pancras". I'd bet the longer names with punctuation correspond to arrival displays in the newer stations.