Station Status Boards - Wish List

[neroden]

Sweet. Thanks for all your work on this.

 

[Big Green Chauvanist]

I just discovered this thread. Brilliant project! As CHamilton mentioned, for all its restored glory, not only is there no Solari status display at King Street Station, there is no status display of ANY kind! How's that for a big city terminal? I guess I CAN say that I'm glad the cheap, tacky-looking felt board on a tripod, which was there before restoration, did not return. I like to hang out at the station and never knew exact arrival times. There is a TV monitor, but shows only taped Homeland Security information. For the life of me, I don't know why a TV monitor with train status information can't be installed. It might have more to do with the city of Seattle, which now owns the station, rather than Amtrak. In any event, now I have the Solari display website, which works beautifully on my cell phone. I'm so pleased.

 

[CHamilton]

From Facebook:

Historic Manassas installed Dixieland Product's virtual Amtrak Status (Solari) Board on one of its monitors in the Visitor Center. People waiting to ride trains, pick up passengers, or wanting to view trains can check the status of all trains stopping at the station in the next several hours. This exciting new feature in the Center will free up volunteer's time to help other customers. I am hopeful that a monitor can be added to the Waiting Room prior to the Early June Manassas Railroad Festival. See the video clip to see how the monitor updates the train status. Cool! Other smaller stations should consider installing similar monitors.

Congratulations, John!

 

[Bus Nut]

There's a genuine Solari board in Universal in Orlando, Florida. It's in the fake King's Cross Station in the "London" area adjacent to Diagon Alley. The station is for the Hogwarts Express ride, which is neat, but gave me motion sickness, so never again!

 

[Bus Nut]

From Facebook:

Historic Manassas installed Dixieland Product's virtual Amtrak Status (Solari) Board on one of its monitors in the Visitor Center. People waiting to ride trains, pick up passengers, or wanting to view trains can check the status of all trains stopping at the station in the next several hours. This exciting new feature in the Center will free up volunteer's time to help other customers. I am hopeful that a monitor can be added to the Waiting Room prior to the Early June Manassas Railroad Festival. See the video clip to see how the monitor updates the train status. Cool! Other smaller stations should consider installing similar monitors.

Congratulations, John!

That sounds awesome. Is that the Manassas, VA VRE station?

 

[John Bobinyec]

From Facebook:

Historic Manassas installed Dixieland Product's virtual Amtrak Status (Solari) Board on one of its monitors in the Visitor Center. People waiting to ride trains, pick up passengers, or wanting to view trains can check the status of all trains stopping at the station in the next several hours. This exciting new feature in the Center will free up volunteer's time to help other customers. I am hopeful that a monitor can be added to the Waiting Room prior to the Early June Manassas Railroad Festival. See the video clip to see how the monitor updates the train status. Cool! Other smaller stations should consider installing similar monitors.

Congratulations, John!

Super! Now I'll have to go visit it. By the way, how do you find that entry in Facebook?

Thanks, Charlie.

jb

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Congrats John. Soon we'll be seeing your Solari board at all small stations (I hope).

 

[CHamilton]

Super! Now I'll have to go visit it. By the way, how do you find that entry in Facebook?

Thanks, Charlie.

jb

John, I think you have to be a member of the America's Amtrak group to see it. But that group is run by Linda T who is also on AU, so I'm sure she will approve you if you put in a request. (RyanS runs a similar group called Amtrak Fans. AUers are taking over Facebook )

 

[Guest]

Not a big deal, but just want to note that I am having problems with the status boards recent only displaying the solari format even when I set it up to be the static format as I always had done in the past.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Not a big deal, but just want to note that I am having problems with the status boards recent only displaying the solari format even when I set it up to be the static format as I always had done in the past.

Recently I've had quite a bit of trouble with the networks. That forces me to switch between two commercial web hosting companies. When I do that, it's almost invisible to you (I hope). However, you will notice:

• A slightly different address in your browser's address bar (".net" vs ".com")
• Any display options for both the maps and the station status boards may have been forgotten.

In the latter case, just reselect the options.

jb

 

[Chaz]

I wish we could avoid Facebook login sites! Sigh.

 

[John Bobinyec]

The Solari version of the station display boards now has sound. It's an approximation of what you would hear a real Solari board do.

jb

 

[CCC1007]

Could you please fix the time for 7 at wfh? It currently shows the time as 91:66 for departure.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Thanks. I fixed it. It'll take a little while for the system to catch up.

jb

 

[John Bobinyec]

The Solari version of the station display boards now has sound. It's an approximation of what you would hear a real Solari board do.

jb

I've tested the sound on Firefox and Chrome. Can someone please indicate whether they work on Apple I-products?

Thanks,

jb

 

[Ryan]

Good on Safari and OS X 10.10.4.

No sound on iOS 8.4 (but it looks darn beautiful).

 

[acelafan]

I really like the sound - great addition!

 

[willem]

I have rarely used the Solari board, so I cannot compare it to a previous version on any platform. Just now, however, it seemed to work fine on an iPad.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Good on Safari and OS X 10.10.4.

No sound on iOS 8.4 (but it looks darn beautiful).

What are these running on? Mac? Iphone? Ipad?

Thanks,

jb

 

[John Bobinyec]

For the iPhone and the iPad, Apple disabled the automatic loading of a sound file in Safari. Speculation is that that was done to keep the data charges for downloads low. They will, however, play the sound file upon an interactive initiation by the user - in other words, a click. So for these two products, I've provided a "Start" button which when clicked, will start the solari display and initiate the sound. I also disabled the hourly "flush" of the screen for these products, since the user would have to hit the start button all over again.

I have an iPad and have tested the station status board (solari format) on it. I would appreciate it if someone could check it out on an iPhone and post the results.

Thanks,

jb

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

I-phone 3G software 6.1.6

Work find, short test only. Not much train active in NYC at 0025 hrs. Sound present with a button push.

 

[Ryan]

There is a little bit of lag in the sound after the first two or three lines populate. The sound starts about 0.5 sec after the animation, then runs past the animation for a bit. Not a huge deal, and it may be something in the iOS 9 beta that's throwing it off.

 

[John Bobinyec]

There is a little bit of lag in the sound after the first two or three lines populate. The sound starts about 0.5 sec after the animation, then runs past the animation for a bit. Not a huge deal, and it may be something in the iOS 9 beta that's throwing it off.

I noticed that on the iPad as well. I think it might have something to do with loading up the sound file each time it wants to play it.

Or perhaps the iOS is busy doing something in the background. I noticed at one point it notified me that an update to the OS is available.

jb

 

[John Bobinyec]

Missed stations.

Of late, since the announced changes to the display boards in New York and Philadelphia, the Station Status Boards have been getting an up-tick in activity. There have also been an increase in people using the wrong station codes. The most common ones are:

NYC for NYP

CUS for CHI

PHI for PHL

HOU for HOS

GCT for NYP

Those are the ones that I can figure out. I decided to add a table to convert from the bad station codes to the good ones. At this point I'm not familiar enough to know what people intended when they put in the following over just the last two days:

NCE PIO GEG SMI DNV ISL ILS DLL PJT ABT EMV EMR MTL GSP DCU SQL TIC DCA SFD

RNK RMN ABB NAV ALA RAL NCF UNI PHX ANN OIL BRD WES ABD TTN IMS MIL

If anyone can interpret what people wanted when they input these station codes, I'd appreciate it.

jb

 

[Ryan]

EMV and EMR for Emeryville?

DCA for WAS

PHX for Maricopa?

ABD for Aberdeen?