Luas times app

Hi Guys,

In case you didn't know Luas times are now available on-line. With this in mind I started to make an app when I got home from work yesterday and I'm going to release a basic version of it in a couple of hours.

I'll drop the link here when I get it done and I'd be grateful for some beta-testers to give it a go!

For those that want to try:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mbcdev.nextluas

Not showing up in market search on my phone yet but you can use the link above or try searching for "Luas Times" later. Thanks!

Warning: The UI is functional but not pretty.

seanybiker

Just installed it there now. Never used luas but the twin should find this handy. Good man

Cheers! One of the next things I'd like to do is have a button to select the nearest luas stop to you. I'll add stuff like defaults too so it opens your last / most frequent stop.

I also have this locked into portrait mode which will have to stay until I refresh the UI. I'll also need to have some sort of a progress bar

seanybiker

I rather portrait mode anyways. The UI is grand. Nice and simple.

davetherave

Portrait mode is good as it shows everything on screen. It looks as if you will need to scroll to see some of the outbound times in landscape mode.

Interface is fine and idiot-proof. There is no unnecessary wastage or functions in it.

Cheers Dave!. Lanscape mode was pretty shoddy on my Desire Z so I locked portrait mode. Does your phone allow the app to go into Landscape?

Mezcita

Nice and simple.

Excellent work.

davetherave

baz8080 wrote: »

Cheers Dave!. Lanscape mode was pretty shoddy on my Desire Z so I locked portrait mode. Does your phone allow the app to go into Landscape?

No no, it doesn't go into or attempt to go into landscape mode. I was just saying from the look of it on the screen in portrait, that if you were to keep the same layout but in landscape then the outbound would be cut off the bottom.

Alternatively, you could have a different layout.xml for landscape and split it into two columns for inbound/outbound. Scrolling probably isn't that big a deal but in my opinion it works fine the way it is everything is presented neatly and compactly on the one screen.

And you haven't felt the need to put ads in it

Cool, never thought about using a different layout xml for landscape, nice one! I prefer it in portrait myself too. If the luas site puts out more than 4 updates per section (inbound / outbound) I reckon it won't render them visible but I'll have to wait and see.

dsrckiyisvddht

Nice start. If you need any help with it drop me a PM. I'm mid development of an augmented reality type app so could help you with the nearest stop to a person and other stuff if you would like . Not saying you need any help I'm sure you're more then competent

Coyote

a nice option might be to allow the user to set a default station or line so people don't have to pick the same info 90% of the time, they would just have to hit refresh.

Coyote

Coyote wrote: »

a nice option might be to allow the user to set a default station or line so people don't have to pick the same info 90% of the time, they would just have to hit refresh.

Cheers! I was thinking about that all right. Probably either an option for default or just have the app remember your last selection.

Victor

More a favourites than a default station - people have to go home as well.

I could add a button / menu option to filter the list of stops and have a settings page where you could define those stops.

Mushy

Just downloaded and installed, will be very happy with this, seems very quick and even easier to use.

EDIT: Yeah to be greedy would be handy to have a nearest stop thing. also, portrait mode is very, very clear on the Europa.

Mushy

Mushy wrote: »

Just downloaded and installed, will be very happy with this, seems very quick and even easier to use.

EDIT: Yeah to be greedy would be handy to have a nearest stop thing. also, portrait mode is very, very clear on the Europa.

Cool, was wondering what it would look like on a smaller screen. Will probably throw up a few updates next week. Thanks for all the feedback so far

Victor

Oh, it might be useful to also included the Luas Status - it shifts from green to orange if there is an issue.

That would be handy all right. I think sometimes that the warning might scroll in the time display area but it would be handier to check the status. My only concern there would be that it would chew up a fair chunk of traffic. The times bit is quite efficient at around 3KB to 6KB per request.

jd83

cool app, i work around the corner from the luas so it handy been able to leave just as one is due. Well done

Larsist

Have it running on a HTC Desire. Works perfect, does exactly what it says on the tin. Well done!

smackyB

Nice work! Do you know when Luas started publishing realtime data on their site? I presume you're just scraping the webpage for each stop, yes?

@SmackyB

Cheers all,

@SmackyB, they started publishing the times on Friday and I got the app out the next day. Edit, yes scraping.

CiaranC

Excellent app, thanks

Victor

baz8080 wrote: »

That would be handy all right. I think sometimes that the warning might scroll in the time display area but it would be handier to check the status. My only concern there would be that it would chew up a fair chunk of traffic. The times bit is quite efficient at around 3KB to 6KB per request.

Oh, you could just use the text, I'm not suggesting how you do it.

Victor

Victor wrote: »

Oh, you could just use the text, I'm not suggesting how you do it.

It is definitely a good idea but even to get that small bit of text I would have to download the full page. I could optimise it a bit and see if it was worth the increase in bandwidth,

CiaranC

Maybe have the app auto select the nearest stop by geolocation. That would be cool.

CiaranC

CiaranC wrote: »

Maybe have the app auto select the nearest stop by geolocation. That would be cool.

I'd like that too , probably the strongest contender for the next feature along with a UI cleanup. I'll probably look at doing everything mentioned in the thread. I just need to go through and make a list and see how long it would take to do.

Gargled

Baz- just getting into making a few apps now myself (Im a student and we had a class in android dev)

Whats the easiest way to parse in the scraped info? Not really sure how it works on android.

Cheers

edit: Great app by the way

Gargled

Gargled wrote: »

Baz- just getting into making a few apps now myself (Im a student and we had a class in android dev)

Whats the easiest way to parse in the scraped info? Not really sure how it works on android.

Cheers

edit: Great app by the way

Will send you a PM with a few pointers.

I have all of the suggestions in a wish-list now. Most of them are based around location based stuff and filtering so they'll be coming.

I pushed out a small update just now so I'd appreciate if you would make sure it is still working fine for you.

The back-end is completely overhauled and is ready for location based features soon. That was a huge change for nothing you can see yet visually.

The only other thing that I did was scale back the font size on medium and low density screens. You can see three lines of times on a Samsung Europa now. A device like a Desire should support four lines.

Thanks for all of the help so far!

Coyote

just updated it now. every thing looks find on my desire HD
could not check how the times would look as no luas running right now.

errlloyd

Awesome work my friend, got many compliments from the lads yesterday while sitting finishing off my pint and timing my walk to the Luas to perfection.

Due to the absence of a Luas app in general you could consider expanding it to have the whole shabang, maps tab, operating times and frequency and fares. (All of that as just information nothing active).

But **** it, if you never touched this again you still would have done us a fantastic service!!

Mushy

First time usingin pratice, on south circular road, checked next one was in 3 mins, quicken the pace and no silly waiting. Perfect app, thanks again

Cool, thanks guys. If it is still working for you all then the back-end changes must be OK. Next step is probably to get some filtering and nearest stop type stuff in there.

kenmc

Works fine on Hero/2.1. Nicely done

Just stuck out another update. You should mainly see a distance in the drop-down list beside the stop name. Not massively useful in itself but if it works out it essentially means the geolocation backend of the app is running OK.

Just going with coarse location as it is probably good enough for the purpose and doesn't need GPS.

Coyote

just updated all seems to be working fine, the distant seems about right no need for gps(nice to see developers thinking about battery). it's a nice idea to show how far from a station. An other idea to allow people to have the stations listed by distant from your location

TeaServer

Tried it out and it looks and works great. I agree with the suggestion to have the option to list by proximity.

Keep up the work!

Cheers TeaServer, actually working on that at the moment. There are a couple of features that go together logically: option to default to closest stop, sort stop list by proximity and have a preference to filter the list according to the stops you want.

New version out. Has some of the sorting / nearest stop features people were asking for. Available at the same place: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mbcdev.nextluas

Coyote

very nice update main screen has less stuff now as no need for picking the line every time, some thoughts: in the settings you might think about changing the text of "select nearest stop" to select nearest station" and "auto stop switch" to "auto switch station"

I would not call this a fault but just to let you know if you use the "menu/change line" button to change from your default line and then go to the settings when you leave it asks you "switch to new default" - "you have changed your default line switch to new line now?" "OK" or "no" if you click OK you go back to your default that you set at start-up/settings if you click no you stay on the other line. but here is the thing you have not changed your default line(it stays the same if you restart the app) so the text might need changing to something like "reset back to default line" "yes" or "no"

the auto sort by distance works well.
just one other idea in the long run it might be nice to have a map showing where the luas lines.
great work on the app Luas should be paying you for it

Coyote

Coyote

Coyote wrote: »

very nice update main screen has less stuff now as no need for picking the line every time, some thoughts: in the settings you might think about changing the text of "select nearest stop" to select nearest station" and "auto stop switch" to "auto switch station"

I would not call this a fault but just to let you know if you use the "menu/change line" button to change from your default line and then go to the settings when you leave it asks you "switch to new default" - "you have changed your default line switch to new line now?" "OK" or "no" if you click OK you go back to your default that you set at start-up/settings if you click no you stay on the other line. but here is the thing you have not changed your default line(it stays the same if you restart the app) so the text might need changing to something like "reset back to default line" "yes" or "no"

the auto sort by distance works well.
just one other idea in the long run it might be nice to have a map showing where the luas lines.
great work on the app Luas should be paying you for it

Coyote

Thanks for the feedback! makes sense. I caught the other issue you mentioned a few minutes after releasing the app. I think I'll change the text to something like you said as it would cause less confusion.

I might stick out a paid version at some point in the future with a few more features so you could pay me if you liked to

Victor

Coyote wrote: »

very nice update main screen has less stuff now as no need for picking the line every time, some thoughts: in the settings you might think about changing the text of "select nearest stop" to select nearest station" and "auto stop switch" to "auto switch station"

The language used by RPA/Luas is "stop", even for Metro.

What of creating a combined Luas/DART/Commuter app? http://irishrail.ie/your_journey/results_mobileInfo.html

Think the dart is covered by next train Ireland. Would be happy to stick a button to launch that app in if the author is ok with it. Don't think it would be an idea to reinvent the wheel and do it in the luas app

Just stuck out another update. I have tweaked the geolocation stuff for more frequent updates. I noticed the power requirements for the app were way too high if you left it running in the background too so I'm now turning off geolocation updates when they're not really needed.

There's also a new feature to allow you to filter the stops. In preferences you'll be able to select only the stops you want to show for each line. A whole lot changed from 1.5 so please submit bug reports if the app crashed on you please

kearneybobs

Quality app you have there. Nice updates. Dare I say it, but why aren't you charging for this app? I'd pay some change for it.

briankearon666

briankearon666 wrote: »

Quality app you have there. Nice updates. Dare I say it, but why aren't you charging for this app? I'd pay some change for it.

It was always in the plan but I was more concerned with getting it up an running first I have put ads in the free version and made a 'pro' version for €0.99. Right now it is functionally identical to the free one but I have a few ideas to put in it to give it more value.

The paid version is here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mbcdev.nextluaspro

kearneybobs

baz8080 wrote: »

It was always in the plan but I was more concerned with getting it up an running first I have put ads in the free version and made a 'pro' version for €0.99. Right now it is functionally identical to the free one but I have a few ideas to put in it to give it more value.

The paid version is here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mbcdev.nextluaspro

You've just earned yourself 99c for your hard work. Thanks.

Thank you!, much appreciated

Just wanted to mention that the times seem to be a little bit out on luas.ie which is having a knock-on effect with the app. Some stops are fine but others like James' seem to be out by a couple of minutes. Hopefully the luas.ie people will sort it out soon.