Some of you might remember that I tried to make this Bus/train countdown display but unfortunately the ePaper display didn’t work this well, and was eventually damaged beyond repair.
So please keep the old 4:3 Dell monitor by the entrance (I assume it has a DVI input), I might be able to get this to work again sometime in the next week or so.
P.S. Not sure how easy or difficult it’s going to be to bring back the lovely TfL font, but I kinda like the Ceefax/8-bit vintage look
A bit more progress, now showing all buses grouped by “direction” (SE/NW), I assume if you’re taking the bus you know where the bus stops are. And it now includes the 37 for @Kyle
This project has historically been a massive bikeshedding magnet, so in that tradition here are my suggestions:
The destination of the bus is not important. Any regular traveller already knows where they’re going. Any irregular traveller will already be using their phone to plan their journey.
Therefore, you can omit the destination information and have both North and Southbound buses displayed at the same time. Even the trains too?
It can be - it certainly is for me. Some buses go part way, others go to different destinations weirdly (a 3 can go to Tottenham Court Road or Oxford Circus as it’s destination). It would be nicer and simpler if that destination info wasn’t needed, but unfortunately it is.
Thanks Tom. My day job is UX design, so I’m used to anyone having an opinion, you won’t hurt my feelings
The good thing is that this is written in Micropython so it’s super easy to experiment with different layouts, I can give it ago.
I was going to say the same thing as Dan though, I don’t know for sure that the destination of a bus is always fixed and irrelevant. I might be able to squeeze it in though, perhaps on a smaller font, once I see what this really looks like on a larger screen.
Assuming everyone plans ahead is a really very big assumption
I’d also like to see which side of the road said bus departs from, like the 71 that goes to elephant and castle does so via a different path than what I thought was sensible and I nearly took the wrong bus.
For me, the screenshot with buses grouped by direction looked really good. The only thing I’d like as well would be a button to quickly switch between screens rather than having to wait.
That’s interesting, how would you describe the “side of the road” where the bus stop is? The closest I can see is that bus stops have a single letter code on them (e.g. the Brockwell Park southbound, towards west Norwood, has the code “F”).
Thanks, Tom. Sounds like an interesting idea, and we’re not limited to 4:3, the Picovision can do widescreen if we have a spare 16:9 widescreen monitor somewhere.
I’ll try to come to the space sometime this week and install the “MVP” version and then we can improve it once people have seen this working in the space and we get more user feedback.
