purplehoisin.com
Hardware
bus arrival display
SHOW HN2022
197points
108comments
#291of 2,570 in 2022
Top 12%of 2022 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
8 positive, 20 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 4 critical, out of 32 comments about the project. Thread score +0.13.
Execution: 3 for, 1 againstIdea: 2 for, 1 againstDesign: 3 for, 0 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Commenters like the form factor and ambient display idea
From 3 comments
I love the form factor of this and the ambient data. TFL do have some quite good APIs so you could use those rather than scraping the HTML.…
omh on HNI love these types of projects. Being able to automate or make a daily chore easier is so liberating. As a public transit user, I too have written a dashboard for my transit…
l72 on HNThese are my favorite kinds of projects. Not some major disruptive application, just a tiny project that solves a real problem for a real person. Great job OP!
mcluck on HN
Objections
Live bus arrival data is often inaccurate, with ghost buses
From 4 comments
The problem I’ve faced is that the official live update arrival times are often wrong. I’ve fantasized for years about engineering a network of self contained + solar powered…
jpribyl on HNFor a moment i though he did a solution for the «ghost buses» . I always used the bus app and it works fine untill, from time to time, you turned 2/3 minutes before to the bus…
quijoteuniv on HNIf only the Chicago CTA api was close to reliable... It's well known for the ghost buses and disappearing trains. However we wouldn't probably need to call Apis, just refreshing…
jaimehrubiks on HNNow if someone can build something to track ghost trains. I’m looking at you CTA!
wirthjason on HN
Requests
Use an official API instead of scraping HTML
From 2 comments
I love the form factor of this and the ambient data. TFL do have some quite good APIs so you could use those rather than scraping the HTML.…
omh on HNIf you’re interested in this you might also be interested in a project I’m currently involved with. There’s a legal obligation in the UK for bus operators to supply live vehicle…
parkersweb on HN
Questions
Where the Raspberry Pi was bought given shortages
From 2 comments
"Error establishing a database connection" Probably HN killed the server. BTW, where did you buy the Pi, or did you already have it at home?
pmontra on HNIt’s sad because I desperately want a raspberry pi or two for some projects I’ve been kicking the can on, but I simply can’t get them for anywhere close to MSRP. The shortage…
noodlesUK on HN
Alternatives named
Woob travel
From 1 comment
This is exactly what Web Out Of Browsers (https://woob.tech/) aims to do: get information stored in websites, and offer a programmatic way to use them. There is an application…
rakoo on HN
Transit App
From 1 comment
The Transit App [1] crowdsources position data for vehicles. It's a gamified thing that rewards you with points or whatever for leaving the app running with your GPS on while in…
mikepurvis on HN
Home Assistant
From 1 comment
Re future work "It bugs me that I’m fetching this information every 30 seconds even though most of the time I won’t use it": Take a look at Home Assistant, which runs nicely on…
sowbug on HN
TfL API
From 2 comments
I love the form factor of this and the ambient data. TFL do have some quite good APIs so you could use those rather than scraping the HTML.…
omh on HNI made a similar thing in London as well: https://twitter.com/ageitgey/status/1383381051154726920 The TfL API is really pretty good - no need to scape pages.
ageitgey on HN