Station Status Boards - Wish List

[John Bobinyec]

The URL is case sensitive, and a station code that's lowercase in the URL will produce a station not found message. For someone who might just be editing the URL directly instead of always going back to the start page to query different stations, it would be nice if your program would accept a lowercase station code there as well.

That's harder than it looks. Two servers have to work together in sequence. They bounce requests back and forth off of each other. When the user sees the final page come up, it's at the end of this sequence. If they bookmark the page at this point, and use a lowercase station code, it'll fail. The first page contains this instruction:

To create a bookmark for a particular station, it should be in this form:

www.dixielandsoftware.com/cgi-bin/solari_relay.pl?data=xxx

where xxx is the three-letter code for the station.

I'll look into fixing this so that no special bookmarking is necessary.

Thanks,

jb

 

[TVRM610]

It's not an Amtrak station (yet?) but seacaucus jct. has some really cool brand new solar boards for each line

 

[John Bobinyec]

The URL is case sensitive, and a station code that's lowercase in the URL will produce a station not found message. For someone who might just be editing the URL directly instead of always going back to the start page to query different stations, it would be nice if your program would accept a lowercase station code there as well.

That's harder than it looks. Two servers have to work together in sequence. They bounce requests back and forth off of each other. When the user sees the final page come up, it's at the end of this sequence. If they bookmark the page at this point, and use a lowercase station code, it'll fail. The first page contains this instruction:

To create a bookmark for a particular station, it should be in this form:

www.dixielandsoftware.com/cgi-bin/solari_relay.pl?data=xxx

where xxx is the three-letter code for the station.

I'll look into fixing this so that no special bookmarking is necessary.

Thanks,

jb

I don't think I'm going to be successful with this one. The reason is that the setup has to be done on my server, with the presentation done on the commercial (public) server. If the user bookmarks the page as it comes up (not following the special instruction that I have indicated), he is bypassing the setup part of the process. I can get around the lowercase issue, but not the fact that the preliminary processing hasn't been done. So until I have some sort of flash of brilliance, bookmarking will have to be done as I have indicated.

jb

 

[Aaron]

The URL is case sensitive, and a station code that's lowercase in the URL will produce a station not found message. For someone who might just be editing the URL directly instead of always going back to the start page to query different stations, it would be nice if your program would accept a lowercase station code there as well.

That's harder than it looks. Two servers have to work together in sequence. They bounce requests back and forth off of each other. When the user sees the final page come up, it's at the end of this sequence. If they bookmark the page at this point, and use a lowercase station code, it'll fail. The first page contains this instruction:

To create a bookmark for a particular station, it should be in this form:

www.dixielandsoftware.com/cgi-bin/solari_relay.pl?data=xxx

where xxx is the three-letter code for the station.

I'll look into fixing this so that no special bookmarking is necessary.

Thanks,

jb

I don't think I'm going to be successful with this one. The reason is that the setup has to be done on my server, with the presentation done on the commercial (public) server. If the user bookmarks the page as it comes up (not following the special instruction that I have indicated), he is bypassing the setup part of the process. I can get around the lowercase issue, but not the fact that the preliminary processing hasn't been done. So until I have some sort of flash of brilliance, bookmarking will have to be done as I have indicated.

jb

Understandable. At least if I pass lowercase in a bookmark to the script on your server, everything works correctly, so there should never be an issue for those who are following instructions. I personally tend to break code more often because I don't bother to read the instructions. While it's nice to protect against people like me in all scenarios, sometimes you just have to put your foot down and demand that users RTFM.

 

[daveyb99]

1/ Does anyone think an ARRIVAL and DEPARTURE need to be spelled out somewhere ? The TO column is great, it can list a City ... but how do arrivals appear.

2/ automatic updating. is there any? if so, how often. (so I can leave it running and not hit 'refresh' . . . .

3/ a "current as of" time stamp somewhere, or the current time

 

[John Bobinyec]

1/ Does anyone think an ARRIVAL and DEPARTURE need to be spelled out somewhere ? The TO column is great, it can list a City ... but how do arrivals appear.

2/ automatic updating. is there any? if so, how often. (so I can leave it running and not hit 'refresh' . . . .

3/ a "current as of" time stamp somewhere, or the current time

1/ This is modeled after Amtrak's Solari boards which have a TO and a FROM column, so I won't be doing ARRIVALs and DEPARTUREs. The FROM column won't fit the current rendition but will be added when the static version is done.

When a train arrives at its final destination, its status will change to ARRIVED. It will be left on the board for a short time. When a train arrives at an intermediate station, its status will change to BOARDING. This is only shown for those trains which have a scheduled arrival and departure time which are different. If a train only has a departure time, like most of the station stops in the timetables, ARRIVED is only shown for the final station. Otherwise, DEPARTED is shown.

2/ Yes. The trains are updated individually about every 5 minutes or so, depending upon how busy the server is. The whole board is "flushed" and recreated every hour. So yes, you can leave it running and do not have to hit 'refresh'.

3/ A local clock has been requested of the solari board display code author. When he implements it, I'll add it. It'll show the current time at that station. It will not show an "as of" time for the last board refresh, since theoretically, the refreshes are continuous - almost.

jb

 

[John Bobinyec]

There's a couple things that I can think of:

1. On the Solari board, could the first result be loaded immediately, instead of waiting a few seconds to load the first result? Sometimes I wonder if the page is loading at all if I don't see that first result right away...Millenial impatience, I know.

2. Could a mobile-friendly version of the information be made (sans Solari board, of course)? I'm not sure if there's a way to nicely format it, though, without chopping off relevant information, so this is more of a "brainstorm of something cool" than anything else.

1. I delved deeply into the code and was able to remove the bulk of the delay in loading the first line. The rest follow at uniform intervals.

2. I had a friend of my display the Solari board on his iPhone. He turned it sideways so that the long axis was left-to-right and it looked and performed great. What shortcoming did you observe on a mobile-friendly device?

jb

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Looks good on my iPod, though there are a bunch of service disruptions & late trains (I'm looking at WIL - affected by the downed wires).

 

[John Bobinyec]

Looks good on my iPod, though there are a bunch of service disruptions & late trains (I'm looking at WIL - affected by the downed wires).

Yes - but the board itself is working perfectly, even if the trains are not!

jb

 

[jebr]

There's a couple things that I can think of:

1. On the Solari board, could the first result be loaded immediately, instead of waiting a few seconds to load the first result? Sometimes I wonder if the page is loading at all if I don't see that first result right away...Millenial impatience, I know.

2. Could a mobile-friendly version of the information be made (sans Solari board, of course)? I'm not sure if there's a way to nicely format it, though, without chopping off relevant information, so this is more of a "brainstorm of something cool" than anything else.

1. I delved deeply into the code and was able to remove the bulk of the delay in loading the first line. The rest follow at uniform intervals.

2. I had a friend of my display the Solari board on his iPhone. He turned it sideways so that the long axis was left-to-right and it looked and performed great. What shortcoming did you observe on a mobile-friendly device?

jb

You're right, though the "scanning" is a bit messier than on my computer. I'm thinking more from the non-Solari version...when you create that maybe have a mobile-friendly version of some sort with a bit larger text (I have a Nexus 4 and my eyes are decent, so the current size works, but it's a bit smaller than some "mobile-optimized" websites.)

 

[Notelvis]

Cool!

I anticipate being in Philadelphia (coming off SEPTA from the airport, catching a Keystone train on to Harrisburg) one Saturday in October.

Perhaps I'll spend my dwell time just avoiding panhandlers and watching the solari board.

And what is it about 30th Street Station? I can honestly say that it is the only railroad station where I have been approached by a panhandler every single time I have been there.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Cool!

I anticipate being in Philadelphia (coming off SEPTA from the airport, catching a Keystone train on to Harrisburg) one Saturday in October.

Perhaps I'll spend my dwell time just avoiding panhandlers and watching the solari board.

And what is it about 30th Street Station? I can honestly say that it is the only railroad station where I have been approached by a panhandler every single time I have been there.

That's not a panhandler, it's Acela150 looking to finance his next trip. :giggle:

 

[John Bobinyec]

As of 6 p.m. EDT, the Station Status Boards are down. The web hosting company is having issues. I'm in the process of switching to the other web hosting company (I work with 2 just for these kinds of issues). The switch should be complete in an hour or so.

jb

 

[John Bobinyec]

I'd love to see the digital board with a font like one on a real Solari board. I've only seen the board in New Haven, and I believe it has a font similar to Gill Sans MT. It would certainly be a nice touch.

I don't think I'll be doing that. Each character is "artwork" and would have to be redrawn. I'm not much of an artist.

jb

 

[John Bobinyec]

I'm trying to be reasonable!

1. I know the current version has "Boarding" listed for On-Time trains, but when a train is late it won't list as "Boarding". Is it possible to fix that?

2. Spell the whole word "Early" and "Late"??

TIA,

Steve

1. I'm not understanding your dilemma. "BOARDING" shows up in either of two situations:

a) When a train becomes active (is put on the map) at its origin, until it departs.

b) When a train arrives at an intermediate station which has a scheduled arrival time.

2. There are 10 columns - so they won't fit. Four characters for the hour (e.g. 12H - don't forget

the space) and four for the minutes is 8 characters taken up already. The static version of the

board will have more information, and will have "early" and "late" spelled out.

jb

 

[dlagrua]

Not working this morning. Tried NYP and PHL with no results.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Not working this morning. Tried NYP and PHL with no results.

Sometimes it needs a kick to get going. Hit F5 if you can. It's working for me.

jb

 

[dlagrua]

Still not working even after a refresh (F5). I am using IE. Maybe that has something to do with it. I will try on my Windows 7 laptop and see what happens but I have all pop ups blocked. I will also try a slightly lower lever of security.

 

[Ryan]

Working here.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Still not working even after a refresh (F5). I am using IE. Maybe that has something to do with it. I will try on my Windows 7 laptop and see what happens but I have all pop ups blocked. I will also try a slightly lower lever of security.

It doesn't work on IE. Sorry.

jb

 

[CHamilton]

John,

We are planning to show off your Solari board site in SEA at NTD tomorrow, since King Street Station doesn't yet have train status boards of its own. I've been setting up the site on an iPad in kiosk mode, which I think will work well. Unfortunately, when I put Safari (or another browser) in full-screen mode, we lose a couple of columns, including the L for late, from the right side. Any suggestions on workarounds for this (short of getting the trains to run on time )?

Thanks!

 

[John Bobinyec]

John,

We are planning to show off your Solari board site in SEA at NTD tomorrow, since King Street Station doesn't yet have train status boards of its own. I've been setting up the site on an iPad in kiosk mode, which I think will work well. Unfortunately, when I put Safari (or another browser) in full-screen mode, we lose a couple of columns, including the L for late, from the right side. Any suggestions on workarounds for this (short of getting the trains to run on time )?

Thanks!

Charlie,

Thanks for doing that. On a mobile device you would "pinch" the screen to zoom in or out. On a regular computer you would use Ctrl + and Ctrl - to zoom in and out. Don't know if iPad has a way to zoom. Can you use an on-screen keyboard?

John

 

[CHamilton]

The pinch to zoom function doesn't seem to work in full-screen mode, but I fiddled with it some more and it seems to be working now...not entirely sure what I did, but oh, well. Thanks!

 

[CHamilton]

Can you set up the board to show VAC as VANCOUVER BC or VANCOUVER CA (BC would probably be better)? It looks like you have enough spaces.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Can you set up the board to show VAC as VANCOUVER BC or VANCOUVER CA (BC would probably be better)? It looks like you have enough spaces.

OK.

jb