We’ve got a quick prototype up for the kiosk app. You can see it here:
http://www.opentucson.org/busted/
This is the kiosk app that you would see if you were sitting at the bruegger’s at the corner of Campbell & Speedway. This is live data from the sun-tran website that’s been scraped and repackaged by Kit’s earlier work.
What’s left to do:
- rotate the ads
- show countdown times, i.e. (next bus in XXX minutes rather than just “at 5:30″)
- better error handling (for instance, will this work at 7 tonight when there are no further busses?)
- pretty up the interface
- it’d be cool to show the bus(s) on a map every 10 seconds or so
Any other suggestions or ideas?
We’ll have our next meeting this coming Thursday, July 8, at 6pm at SkyBar on Fourth Ave. We’ll be discussing the transit data API that Kit developed last week and potential applications. See you there!
Kit Plummer cranked out a feed proxy for the SunTran data over the weekend, allowing anyone to develop web and/or mobile apps based on both static route data and live bus tracking data. Check out his demo page here:
http://busted.kitplummer.apigee.com
Comments? Ideas?
We had a good meeting with SunTran yesterday and got some good results.
First, SunTran has two kinds of data:
1. route data: schedules, mapping shape files, names, etc. This data changes once every three months.
2. real-time data: where buses are at any given moment +/- 30 seconds.
Both data sets are managed by software provided by Trapeze, which has a near-monopoly on transit data systems throughout the country.
SunTran has offered to give us a data dump of the route data; live access to their system is not going to happen since the system also contains sensitive data about employees and pretty much their entire operation. But they’ve said they’re happy to give us an export, and when they do it should be pretty easy to set up a database and web service to feed that data.
The real-time data is somewhat more problematic, since it’s not possible to do data dumps in any real-time way, and the chances of us getting our own code onto the server are very slim. However — they already do some basic google mapping on their site:
And since that’s google maps, it didn’t take us long to figure out how to get the raw JSON data queries in a somewhat useful format. So — provided they don’t take issues with us doing it — we can pretty easily tap into that *already published* data source and repurpose it however we want.
So this is all good news! Kit has a couple days open to work on this, and he’s planning to get a basic demo up by Monday, which may also include translation to KML so we can actually see real-time bus locations and routes — in google earth! for instance. And possibly even overlay multiple routes on top of each other.
Our chief goal is to make this data more accessible on an immediate basis so that we can all start using it in creative ways. We’ll publish our API to the wiki as it gets developed.
Open Tucson will be holding our next gathering this coming Thursday at 6:30 at SkyBar on Fourth Avenue. This is a social/brainstorming meeting, so just come with any ideas you’ve had lately about potential projects or things you’ve been working on that might be of interest. Andrew Greenhill will be attending, and will give us some updates from the City’s side of things as well as recent work on SeeClickFix.
Email with questions! SkyBar is right next door to Brooklyn Pizza, and serves their pizza in the bar as well as good espresso and lots of beer.
Please join us this Saturday December 12, 2009 from 11am to 4pm for the first ever meeting of OpenTucson. We’ll be doing an one-day version of the “Great American Hackathon.” You can learn more about the official Hackathon here:
http://www.sunlightlabs.com/hackathon09/
In a Nutshell: we’re inviting civic-minded coders, designers, and others interested in using their skills to make Tucson a more livable community to come together to create apps that can make a difference. Some of the ideas we’re exploring:
- City Radar: build an app that can take multiple data sources and automatically report and display events of different types within a specific distance of a user’s home. Imagine getting an automatic email when a liquor license is applied for down the street, or when demolition permit is issued. Or being able to see google maps of clusters of certain types of permit activity throughout the city.
- Historic Tucson: build an app to make it easy for people to share and tag historic photos of tucson, and promote interconnections between people while doing it.
- BuffelTracker: build an app to make it easy to report and map buffelgrass infestations in the Tucson area. Help build the already active community of volunteers in Tucson. This could include photo uploads as well as iPhone versions.
- Tool Lending site: why should everyone have to buy their own post-hole digger when you only use it once a year? Build an app that makes it easy to find tools to borrow, to lend your own tools, and establish trust with other members.
You can see a lot more ideas for inspiration here. (This one is great)
When & Where?
Our first meeting is this Saturday, December 12 from 11am to 4pm and is being generously hosted by Bookmans and will be held at their corporate offices (1135 N Jones, Tucson, AZ, 85716). They will also be providing pizza and beer (as in free). You can reach me at 520-248-9810.
What are We Going to Accomplish in Five Hours?
Hard to say. Some groups are already well along on various projects and are using this weekend as a coding session. We’re not there yet. But if we can walk away from the meeting with an idea for a pilot project, a basic application architecture, and a sense of the resources we have to execute it, we’ll be successful. If we can set up some of the infrastructure (wiki, github, svn repo, what have you) all the better.
What Should I Bring?
Bring a laptop; you may want to install RoR since there’s a good chance we’ll be using that if we do get started.
We hope to see you Saturday! Please do RSVP so we can make sure have enough food and chairs.
