London Tube Map App
 

So far I've only found a discussion in N810:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...light=tube+app

However, recently on my Blackberry, I installed a couple of free apps: TubeBuddy (live departure boards and where trains are) and Tube (which is also available on iphone). Both use data from tfl.gov.uk apparently.

The latter (Tube) seems much nicer as it has a scrollable map (on a friends iphone you scroll around with touch rather than the rollerball). You can choose route planner which tells you where you need to change stations and lines. That part shouldn't be too difficult as it's just a database, however the actual time of travel will take longer, unless they just use a set interval between stations.

Anyway, the latter has adverts, which is a little annoying but for a free app, it's ok I guess.

Is there any similar app that could be made for the N900? I have a jpeg/gif image I used before in my N82 which can be downloaded from the tfl.gov.uk site, but a nice fancy app would be nice too :)

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Large Tube Map Image + Hildon PannableArea = Pannable tube map :)

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Maybe something along the lines of MaeMaps that takes whatever Metro/Tube page (e.g. www.wmata.com) and combines it with a map?

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Metromap had been ported at some point, see also this thread.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/metromap/

This is a Python app, which makes modifications nice and easy. I have a version somewhere with a modified screen layout that was easier for me to use, if the standard isn't good enough ping me and I'll dig it out.

I had also planned to hook into TfL and grab journey time estimates, but haven't got round to it (yet...?).

Anyway give it a go and patches welcome.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Is the acceleronometer accurate enought to estimate where you are on the journey?

As a general train 'next stop' would be fun.

Though specific to the metro/subway question...I'm curious as to what other environmental ques there might be down there?

Oh yeah a 'best carriage for exit' would be a nice feature too.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Thanks, I'll have to try it out when the N900 hits.
To make it more universal, does it just use a jpg or gif file to scroll around on? That way the NYC metro etc can easily be added. The tricky thing is to actually use the graphic file and select a station and look up departure times.

I would guess that a database of lines with tube stations can cross reference each table to find where the changes are. eg.

Picadilly Line:
1 Cockfosters
... (intervening stations)
9 Finsbury Park
... (intervening stations)
13 King's Cross
... (intervening stations)
Green Park
etc etc

While for Victoria Line:
Walthamstow
... (intervening stations)
Seven Sisters
Finsbury Park
...
King's Cross
...
Green Park

The table would be equal where they both have Finsbury Park, King's Cross and Green Park so we know they are the change points. The number on the left denotes which station in order it would be.

I'm not sure if that's the best way of doing it, thinking just off the top of my head, but having a database like that could make it easy to load database/picture files for each metro around the world that people may submit?

Re: London Tube Map App
 

I probably should have posted this topic in the morning when Londoners were awake ...!

Re: London Tube Map App
 

liqbase is your friend (at least for the touch scrolling). Where is lcuk

Re: London Tube Map App
 

I'll probably just download the largest resolution tube map I (or rather Google) can find and just pan around it, Also with the browser you can call up tfl.gov.uk and use their journey planner.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Just tried metromap and it runs nice on the N900, although it gives an error while installing as metromap.postinst tries to call maemo-select-menu-location (which I guess doesnt exist in maemo 5). This should be pretty easy to fix in the package.

Its not optimized for the screen and doesnt show a full tube map - but gives routes with changes and journey times.

Updated: Seems the 2007 package does show a map (but the UI takes up almost the entire screen leaving very little space for the map). The 2008 package doesnt show a map but has more space to display the route.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

It's great to have an offline map, so if you find a very big picture, please post the link, I'd like one too... especially on the Tube with no reception.

I find the journey planner on the tfl.gov.uk website a little clunky and slow, that's where an app could really improve things, especially if the bulk of the data required to work out the route is in your phone already.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Here is my favorite, It shows Zones, the Thames and British Rail lines though its probably not the most recent map, Heathrow Terminal 5 is not shown.

The highest resolution, though this one seems even older, no Heathrow Terminal 4 station, no Zones, no British Rail interlinks, however, some may view this map as 'uncluttered'

A Blogger-updated Tube map, Huge size, walking distances, and a bit more info on the stations, doesn't show every British Rail line, The most informative but looks awful

Yeah, I keep going to the journey planner expecting to be able to buy tickets

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Thanks for the links.

This is the kind of useful app that would look good too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8EyFrblAqE

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Hey all,

I spent last night coding a small app (in Python) that gives the shortest route between any two tube stations. Right now there are some rough edges:

- No user interface
- It is mostly line-agnostic: the algorithm can ask you to switch back and forth between several lines when there is no necessity to do so
- It treats all the lines and stations as in operation

I will attempt to solve the second problem this evening (may or may not be trivial, but shouldn't be too hard) if I have the time. The first problem may be a bigger issue: I never coded any GUI apps for Maemo and do not really have the time (although I might this weekend... we'll see) to get into it. What I was thinking of was a widget-style app with two text fields, a button ("Go!") and a display area to show the route (in text form?), plus another button to bring up a high-resolution tube map if required.

The closures problem may be a bit more tricky. I was thinking of subscribing to the TfL closures email and parsing it, then putting a machine-readable version on a server somewhere. The app would then download this list of closures and implement it in its routing scheme.

Right now the app is not optimised at all, but if the demand is there I am willing to streamline the code as much as I can, which may not be much, and make the code for the "engine" publicly available ASAP.

Any thoughts/suggestions/comments/criticisms?

Re: London Tube Map App
 

This is the main project page, the Garage project has just modified the main source slightly to make it work better on a small screen: http://metromap.antex.ru/

Could just scrape the tfl website (for London at least) and get timings, etc.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Thats sounds like a good idea, but how about a quick information panel which pops up underneath the textfields after having entered the information requested, showing you distance, # of Changes and the price for one ticket? In the bottom left you would then have the button to open the map you were talking about.

Im sure we can take this further...

Great idea!

Im sure theres demand! I would love such a widget to ease my tube travels :) I dont know anything about coding, but if someone else could help you out?....

Re: London Tube Map App
 

So just googling about it seems there's no official API for TFL. One guy has made a public beta for the line status which seems to be working. Basically he scapes the TFL website once a minute and makes the results available for query.

tubeupdate.com

National Rail have a very nice API for train (not tube) depature boards.

livedepartureboards.co.uk

Would be great if TFL would get their act together and produce an API for the same for the tube and the buses.

Other things you could do is to parse the live depature boards from here (to be honest even opening this in a browser window would be a great start :

TFL Live Depature Boards

Finally - a lot of thjis info I got from this site here which may be useful to you - scroll down to the travel section:

RewiredState

Hope this helps because a decent london transport app would be fantastic for me.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Note sure if its much help as it is, but ive managed to create a status app ==> HERE
Im testing new features at the moment so hopefull by this weekend Ill have the routing and map viewer also ready. More details follow.
Any suggestions/ideas please post in the link provided.

cheers

Re: London Tube Map App
 

I'm interested in those London underground map applications you guys code. I hope soon to be able to help you and give you more ideas.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Hi all,

There is actually a semi-official API for tfl, which I use for my TflApp: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=56390
Currently the app just routes you from current location to a specified postcode, but you should be able to use the same API to write a proper journey planner.

Some of the APi documentation is here: http://wiki.opentfl.co.uk/TRIP_REQUEST2 ...and the rest can be figured out by just using firefox/tamper data and the tfl website (just change XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2 from the url to XML_TRIL_REQUEST to get the data returned in XML format)

Hope that helps
PS: Note that TflApp also includes an offline tube map, which is just a png: You should be able to overwrite /opt/tflapp/tubemap.png with a higher res picture and it should still work.

Re: London Tube Map App
 

Oh and tfl have been a bit arsey in the past with third party applications using this data. See here, for eg: http://mbarclay.net/?p=842 ...so please be nice and don't hammer the API too hard :)

Also, I'm using the "user" frontend, but might be better to use the ultralite one so save on bandwidth

Some URL examples (route from two random postcodes, for example -- change type_origin to be address, OS grid reference, or anything you want)
Mobile website:
Full XML
ultralite XML

It has always been on my TODO list to do a proper journeyplanner, but here's hoping someone else can take this on :)