webBART - Bus, Rail & DART times on your browser/phone/pda/iphone

Jonathan

Ive created a little webui for getting dublin bus, rail and dart times on your browser/phone/pda/iphone. The aim is to be able to check the timetables and realtime information without having to load the whole bulky webpage, thus keeping costs to a minimum. It should transfer about 5kB worst case scenario. Data costs range from of 0.5c/kB to 2c/kB these days so it should cost between 2.5c and 10c to check.

The backend php files are modified versions of sam vimes' BART scripts. I've changed them so that the input data and output data are easier to read. A big thanks to sam vimes for letting me use and modify his scripts.

I have included a meta tag specifically for iphone/itouch so it *should* render ok (not zoomed out etc) on the iphone.



http://jmccrohan.com/bart

Total size of the main site (contains bus, rail and dart) is 3.48kB.



Dublin Bus
Here is a sample output from the bus timetable:

From LWR. ABBEY STREET

2015
2055
2135
2210
2255

From SANDS HOTEL (Portmarnock) / COAST ROAD (Malahide)

1945
2015
2045
2115
2155

Total size: 0.22kB
Bus only url: http://jmccrohan.com/bart/bus


DART
Here is a sample output from the Realtime DART timetable:

Pearse to Maynooth
20:07        4 Mins

Bray to Howth
20:12        9 Mins

Pearse to Drogheda
20:17        14 Mins

Bray to Howth
20:28        25 Mins

Greystones to Malahide
20:53        50 Mins

Bray to Howth
20:58        55 Mins

Total size: 0.53kB
DART only url: http://jmccrohan.com/bart/dart


Rail
Here is a sample output from the rail timetable:

Depart: 19:23   Arrive: 20:02
Depart: 19:34   Arrive: 20:12
Depart: 19:42   Arrive: 20:21
Depart: 19:54   Arrive: 20:33
Depart: 20:14   Arrive: 20:52
Depart: 20:33   Arrive: 21:12
Depart: 20:40   Arrive: 21:21
Depart: 20:53   Arrive: 21:32
Depart: 21:12   Arrive: 21:50
Depart: 21:34   Arrive: 22:12
Depart: 21:51   Arrive: 22:29

Total size: 0.57kB
Rail only url: http://jmccrohan.com/bart/rail



OPEN ISSUE: webBART will always return mon-fri times for bus routes with intermediate times eg 17, 102. This is fault with the script and exists in sam vime's BART application too. All other routes should be returned as normal eg: routes with only times for two locations, espresso routes and nitelink routes.


Report any bugs please.


jmccrohan

Random

Nice to see various people getting on board with these different projects.

Hopefully the various companys will start to see there's a market for these products and start to provide them also in an official capacity.

Sam Vimes

i heartily endorse this event or product......

Rowley Birkin QC

Cheers lads, handy little app.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

whisht

Very good. Nice simple page and does the job exactly as needed
Just tried it on iPhone for rail and the output is wider than the page
Not a big issue, you just scroll across, but just some feedback for you

Truck

Sweet ! A lad in college done something similar as a project.

Nice application though

CapnMark

Congratulations on a wonderful app!

One suggestion would be to put the stops on the dart app as not all northbound and southbound trains stop at every station.

Ive been considering designing something like this myself for years but never got around to it.

Nice work!

Jonathan

whisht wrote: »

Very good. Nice simple page and does the job exactly as needed
Just tried it on iPhone for rail and the output is wider than the page
Not a big issue, you just scroll across, but just some feedback for you

Thanks. Any chance of a screenie so I can see how big exactly?

whisht

Good question
Are there any iPhone screen capture apps?

By the way, its not much, it cuts off the minutes of the arrival time

Sam Vimes

the real time dart page doesn't give the intermediate stops so the app can't show them. I suppose the two scripts could be mixed, the real time script could get the info from the standard timetables about trains leaving that stop at the scheduled time. Hmmm...

It'd be extremely complicated to do tbh

aidan_walsh

Yes, iPhone 2.0

Press and hold the Home button and press the Sleep/Wake button once. The screen will flash white to indicate it worked.

Jonathan

CapnMark wrote: »

One suggestion would be to put the stops on the dart app as not all northbound and southbound trains stop at every station.

Thanks for the idea. But I dont think the information is there in the original webpage that the app gets its information from

You can kinda gauge if it is a dart or commuter by the route it takes, eg: bray to malahide or pearse to drogheda.

95% of darts stop at all stops on between the two listed stations, so listing the stops would massively increase the data transmitted thus increasing cost for everyone checking it.

If it is a case of wanting to check if say a commutor stops at howth jct or whether donabate is the first stop after leaving connolly, you could just the rail app and enter connolly to howth junction. That will always give you the next train home.

whisht

Cool! Never realised that!
Gonna take it now

Jonathan

Sam Vimes wrote: »

the real time dart page doesn't give the intermediate stops so the app can't show them. I suppose the two scripts could be mixed, the real time script could get the info from the standard timetables about trains leaving that stop at the scheduled time. Hmmm...

It'd be extremely complicated to do tbh

I'm thinking of rewriting the dart script to use this site.
It would make the loading marginally faster than the current method, I'll see how bothered I am

Still wouldnt show the intermediate stops and you would also loose the time at which the train is leaving at, it would just show how many mins away. I'll see what people want.

Creamy Goodness

really nice app guys, very handy.

kudos.

Jonathan

whisht wrote: »

Cool! Never realised that!
Gonna take it now

Any chance you (or anyone else with an itouch/iphone) check the 4 of these and see which ones of these chop off the sides?

http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone1
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone2
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone3
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone4

Any then tell me which one looks the best? I'll change the output then to which ever one you choose.

whisht

Just tried all 4 and I'm afraid none of them!
Will stick pics up. Just give me a min

Victor

jmccrohan wrote: »

Realtime DART timetable

Note that this defaults to the timetable when things go wrong - which is the wrong thing to do.

Jonathan

whisht wrote: »

Just tried all 4 and I'm afraid none of them!
Will stick pics up. Just give me a min

Humm....

Mind trying these two?
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone5
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone6

Random

They're local links to your PC mate (when you hover on them or click them).

Jonathan

Victor wrote: »

Note that this defaults to the timetable when things go wrong - which is the wrong thing to do.

Which are you talking about:

http://www.irishrail.ie/your_journey/results.asp?station_name=Malahide&station=MHDN,MHUP&direction=N&mins=60

or

http://www.irishrail.ie/realtime/index.asp?action=search&direction=N&mins=60&station_name=MHDN,MHUP~Malahide

Jonathan

random wrote: »

They're local links to your PC mate (when you hover on them or click them).

I made a complete balls of that

Random

jmccrohan wrote: »

I made a complete balls of that

Yes you did. You're lucky I don't have the powers to ban you ..

Jonathan

random wrote: »

Yes you did. You're lucky I don't have the powers to ban you ..

Trainee mod and all that jazz?

Random

jmccrohan wrote: »

Trainee mod and all that jazz?

Just can't find a reason that the other mods won't argue with

whisht

jmccrohan wrote: »

Humm....

Mind trying these two?
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone5
http://jmccrohan.com/bart/iphone6

Hi. Just tried them and 5 is perfect!

Jonathan

whisht wrote: »

Hi. Just tried them and 5 is perfect!

Updated the script. Should work fine now. Thanks for the help.

whisht

No bother at all
Will try it out now again

<EDIT>Works great now </EDIT>

MOH

jmccrohan wrote: »

Which are you talking about:

http://www.irishrail.ie/your_journey/results.asp?station_name=Malahide&station=MHDN,MHUP&direction=N&mins=60

or

http://www.irishrail.ie/realtime/index.asp?action=search&direction=N&mins=60&station_name=MHDN,MHUP~Malahide

Both, as far as I know. The second is just a scaled down version of the first.

They're also not exactly realtime. On the first one, the ETA column is generally correct. However, the current time shown at the top is often wrong - it was 3 minutes fast last week. The 'Due In' figure seems to be calculated by subtracting the current time from the ETA, so if the current time is 3 minutes fast, the 'Due In' figure is going to be 3 minutes shorter than it should be.

Also, once the current time passes the Scheduled time, the train disappears from the list. So if a train is scheduled for 12.05, but its current ETA is showing as 12.10, it will vanish from the list as soon as the current time hits 12.06. (And again, that's going by the current time according to the system, so you could check at 12.03 and it wouldn't show up, if the system clock is 3 mins fast).

Finally, for trains beyond the first few listed the ETA always seems to match the Scheduled time. I think this may be for trains which haven't actually left yet. So even if the line is closed at Landsdowne and there's 10 trains waiting to get through, that train from Dun Laoghaire due at Tara St in 30 mins will show with ETA = Scheduled, even though there's no way it will make it.


(All of this is of course all down to issues with the IE system, and I'm in no way criticisiing jmccrohan's interface - nice one!)

whisht

Hi. I dont know what changes you made since but it displays very odd on the iPhone now
See the attached file

Jonathan

whisht wrote: »

Hi. I dont know what changes you made since but it displays very odd on the iPhone now
See the attached file

Sorry about that. I had made a few little changes a while back but made a balls of them so when i fixed it i forgot to change the individual ones aswell.

All fixed now.