Live bus updates on your mobile phone

[StubbsUK 10]

Ever since I changed jobs a couple of months ago, I've been using the live bus timetables for the bus stop I use to get home, however the default website that it uses doesn't work very well at all. (I wont go all geeky and explain why, send me a DM if your as sad as me )

 

So a couple of days ago I wrote a little website that takes that information and presents it in a format that should work properly on as many different phones as possible.

 

It's dead easy to use, just enter the stop number on the sign at the bus stop and click "Submit" to see the live info for your stop. You can even bookmark the page so it's easy to get to next time.

 

Hopefully you'll find this as useful as I do.

[njnj 10]

I did the same some time ago - http://www.njames.co.uk/sheffBuses.cgi - getting about zero hits!

 

I agree, the official one isn't too good.

[StubbsUK 10]

That just seems to go through to the official website?

[MartinBrook 10]

Wow, this might actually be quite useful for me! Thanks.

 

What I want to know is, how accurate is the data, and how is it obtained? I've noticed, when waiting at stops with those little screens, that First buses generally arrive at the time predicted but the Stagecoach ones don't...

 

edit.. and why does it sometimes give a length of time (e.g. 5 mins) and sometimes an exact time (e.g. 16:21) seemingly at random?

[StubbsUK 10]

It uses data from the Travel South Yorkshire website, but it makes sure that the HTML is correctly constructed so that it doesn't cause problems on any browsers, also I've designed it to look good on mobile phones specifically, if you look on your desktop machine, the writing is massive :-)

[MartinBrook 10]

It uses data from the Travel South Yorkshire website, but it makes sure that the HTML is correctly constructed so that it doesn't cause problems on any browsers, also I've designed it to look good on mobile phones specifically, if you look on your desktop machine, the writing is massive :-)

 

What I was thinking was, where do they get their data from? Is it just from the timetables, with live updates as needed, do the drivers have to check in at each stop, or do they have GPSes on the buses or something similar?

 

I'm looking at your site on my mobile in Opera Mini and it looks great.

 

It seems to me that it's the buses which say 'LF' that have a 'x mins' ETA and the ones that don't that have an exact time. Very odd. I'm guessing LF might stand for 'Low Floor' but I don't know...

[scottf 21]

I think the bus drivers update there whereabouts as they go along the route?

 

But i could be wrong?

[MartinBrook 10]

Never mind, I looked at the FAQ on the Travel south yorkshire site and it answered my questions.

 

LF does stand for low floor, and the 'x mins' ETA ones are real-time data from 'satellite technology' (woo, space age - I guess they mean GPS) and the 'xx : xx' ones are data from the timetables.

[StubbsUK 10]

Never mind, I looked at the FAQ on the Travel south yorkshire site and it answered my questions.

 

LF does stand for low floor, and the 'x mins' ETA ones are real-time data from 'satellite technology' (woo, space age - I guess they mean GPS) and the 'xx : xx' ones are data from the timetables.

 

yeah, that's just what I was going to say, but I'll admit it took a while to work it out, mainly because my old stop didn't have estimated ETA's for any of it's busses, just the timetabled ones. My new stop has both.

[nohands 10]

Generally I believe it displays the estimated time as X minutes, when it shows a time such as 16.23 that's the timetable time as the system cannot pick up all the buses.

[RPG 10]

I've been using this all week and it's really really good. The data is very accurate (down to about 40 seconds so far) and the actual app is dead easy to use.

 

I usually end up waiting around 20mins in the cold because the buses run so haphazardly but I've timed it perfectly every time I've caught one with this!

 

Great work Stubbs!

[0719254 10]

I'd be very careful when using this and get permission from ACISLIVE who actually own the main system.