[Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Hi all,

I have started programming Quando Parte, an application to check departures and arrivals from Italian train stations. It is still quite preliminary, and basically works only for me at this time, but I plan to use the location services to quickly find nearby stations, and to obtain station data from openstreetmaps.

I have started the application because I find it useful to check if there are delays or suppressions before leaving home (or the office), but I also plan to use it to dip my toes in Maemo (and Meego, I hope) programming. As an incentive to work on it, I have subscribed it to the meego competition. Check it out, it is here:

http://competition.meetmeego.org/submissions/15

and let me know if you like it.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Thanks for the app, that I'm going to test asap. Any plan to include a journey search engine based on trenitalia data?

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Thank you, but do not expect too much from it yet. I have the station display done, but the station list is very short... and sorting and location is not implemented yet.

As for journey search, I was not planning on doing that, but I am open to suggestions. It should not be difficult, though; the web application has a link for that.

The initial motivation for Quando Parte was that the web application was clunky to use from a phone, and it uses post for the query, so I could not bookmark the stations I was most interested into.

My main use case is starting it to see the trains leaving the station in the next hour or so, or if there are delays. So it would immediately show the last station selected on startup, with an option to change it.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I've tested the app, is very preliminary but look promising.

At moment i can see only Genova stations, will be nice if is possibile to select others italian stations, even without gps.

Good work anyway.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Thank you for the encouraging words; I plan to add all the Italian stations as my next step, and filtering and distance sorting afterwards.

It is very much work in progress at the moment, I am afraid.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

are you aware of Fahrplan? maybe some bits of it might be useful for your project...

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

You should have called it "Ma Quando Parte" or "Ma quando arriva" :)

Good work though, hope you'll complete it soon.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I did not, thanks for the suggestion.

It is a very nice program, but it is complementary to what I am trying to do. It even seem to find train schedules for Italian trains, even when using the german data, which is very nice. Maybe there could be some synergy (like a data backend for Trenitalia), but it is a bit early to tell.
I will have a closer look at it, though.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I think you are right... that's actually what pushed me over to start the project. A more apt name would be "Parte? Ma quando parte?" but that may be a bit long... :-D

(For those who not speak Italian, "Quando Parte" means "When is it leaving", referred to the train, in this case; "Ma quando parte" may be liberally translated as "Is it leaving, already?" instead.)

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Well, I'm not likely to do any more work on it this weekend, so I have done another snapshot today.
A new version is avaliable at the project page (http://competition.meetmeego.org/submissions/15).

I hoped to be further ahead, but obtaining the list of stations is harder than I hoped. I managed to generate a short list from openstreetmap data, however, so I'll have a better version soon.

This version has an Italian translation of the gui, station list filtering, and a few more stations included.

I have a few packaging problems, I'd gladly accept some help about:

I tried putting it in the user/navigation category, but the application always show up in other.

I have drawn an application icon and encoded for the control file, but it does not show up anymore. It used to work...

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

A quick update.

Quando parte now loads its data from an external file, generated from the Openstreetmap data. It contains now 236 stations, which is still not all of them out there, but a useful chunk.

Sorting by distance is not yet implemented, but it is next on the list.

I am updating Openstreetmap data as I work on this, so if anybody cares for a particular area: tell me, I will prioritize those stations.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Another weekly update.
Major new feature is a working sort by distance station list view.
Added new stations to the list as usual.
Next week I will have recent station list working, and persistent settings I hope.
The new binary is at the usual place.

http://competition.meetmeego.org/submissions/15

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

In this week update, I have implemented persistent settings and the "recent stations" feature.

Also updated station list, now with 400+ stations.

At this point, feedback from users would be welcome ;)

There are still a few things I would like to include, and the station list has to be extended, but all the core functionalities should be there.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I will take a look in those days.

EDIT: The downloading site seems down, can you attach it or point to a mirror? Thanks

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Sorry, I did not notice your update, I am subscribed to the thread, but updates do not seem to trigger a mail.

In any case, Quando Parte is now a project in the Garage, and I have requested permission to upload it to extras-devel.

So it should be easier for people to test it in the near future, and of courses the sources are available in the git repository.

I uploaded a new image there, it is almost the same as last weekend update, with an updated station list. I have a few changes in the queue, mainly a working settings window with the option to "Show last station on startup". That was the way I meant to use the application, but after using it I thini it should not be the default, it may be confusing to new users.

The garage page is:

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

Thank you for your interest! Hope to hear from you soon.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

We have reviewed your program here.

Bel programma ;)

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Thank you, Grazie! :)

It is nice to see interest in your creation. I'll try to answer the questions in the forum, and I'll ask for feedback.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Quick update: I have received my extras-devel invitation, and I have been trying to create a valid source package for upload, with no success so far... QtLocation include directories are not included on the remote build, although build from sources work fine here.

Today I am going to celebrate the Harmattan announcement with some preliminary test. I updated the sdk, but the emulator is not starting... strange.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I would like to be included in the software the option Quando Arriva.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

It is already there!

- Select your station if you have not yet done so. A page with the departures appears.
- Bring down the menu from the station view page (tap on the title bar)
- Chose "Arrivals" (or "Arrivi").

Similarly, you can chose to sort the station list alphabetically or based on the distance from your current position (or view the recently viewed stations).

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I have tried an harmattan build.

good news: it works, sort of.
bad news: the interface is completely unthemed, and window management does not really work. I will really need to wrap everything in QML.

Oh, well.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I finally fixed the build issue, and now Quando Parte is in the queue for extras-devel!

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Hi,
I just noticed that you entered the station "Messina Marittima" and misses the main station, "Messina Centrale" ... from "Messina Marittima" pass ONLY trains to be loaded into a ferry to cross the Strait of Messina, the rest of the train stops at "Messina Centrale."
Can you add the station in the next update?

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Yes, I will try. I am updating the data set from openstreetmap, but lately i get lots of connection timeouts. So next dataset update may take longer to get ready.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

A very minor update is now ready mainly to fix the localization issues.
While I was at it, I updated the icon, and added a few more stations to the station list (including Messina Centrale! :-) ).

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Why in the fscking world doesn't anyone write an application like this for worldwide usage? Use this for Italy, that for Montreal (with a completely different UI), and God forbid you find yourself in Ukraine, because then you are seriously screwed.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

For sure, it would be nice to be able to find out this kind of data all ovre the world.

The problem is that each operator (if it provides the service to the public) has its own web site, with a different interface and probably different kind of data. So, while doing the work for a single operator can reasonably be done as a few evening project, doing the same globally is a much harder work.

I do not exclude the possibility of extending the program to other operators/networks, if I find out the data to be available, but it is too early for me to tell...

It could be useful to collect railways online services pointers somewhere. If you know online services, let me knowof them.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

In Python, for example, we have that thing called polymorphism. There could be hundreds of scrapers feeding data in some common format.

And then, apart from trains, there are many other different kinds of public transit going more or less on schedule and with more or less fixed routes.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

The main problem as I see it, is finding out the data sources. Do you have any pointer handy, so that I may have a larger sample of data formats?

But, thinking about Quando Parte, also the data model would have to be changed: currently I keep the station list on the device all the time... But if I had to have many more stations that would not work, and I would have to download station location data from some kind of service.

I am not saying it is impossible to have such an application, but to have any chance to do that in any realistic time frame, there would need to be a community of people dedicated to complete the task, clean up data, report problems, etc.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

The problem with the application being online is that in a foreign city of a foreign country, where a public transit app is most important, you are roaming which costs like hell. So a primarily offline application is, kinda, must.

Second, what if you just document carefully the data format used and enable the application (if not already) to work with multiple databases? I think those who find a way to scrape the data from services will let you know they can, once you advertise it.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I forgot to mention earlier...

I updated Quando Parte again, now it is at version 0.4.0.
It fixes the search bar and adds a couple improvements too.

Full announcement:

https://garage.maemo.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7109

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Uh... Packaging is not my Forte.

There was a problem in the optification of the package, now it is fixed with a 0.4.0-2 version.

Thank you for your patience. :)

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

OK, version 0.4.1 is out there!

+ The unreadable text problem has been fixed
+ The number of stations listed is now 550
+ The About dialog now can be used to go to the application web page

- I forgot to update the Italian translation. The About text will not be translated.

+++ I got accepted for the Harmattan MeeGo device program, so I will have to make this really shiny! Although it may slow me for a while.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Version 0.4.2 is out. with an updated station list.

For the full announcemente see:

https://garage.maemo.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7149

I have promoted it to testing, since it has the initial batch of features I intended it to have, and I think it is now ready for wider testing.

Feedback is welcome!

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Works great. Just missing some "back" option to go back to the list once you are viewing a particular train.

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Right, I could do that simply by opening a new window instead of reusing the same window for the links. I will put it on my todo list...

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Quando Parte 0.4.3 is out!

This is a quick bug fix release.

The full announcement is here:
https://garage.maemo.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7159

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I have just updated the development version of Quando Parte.

It is just a minor update to update the train station list. I hope you'll find it useful.

Work is still underway on the next version; I am focused on a QML/MeeGo Harmattan version just now, which I plan to release within the first week of January.

The full announcement is here:
https://garage.maemo.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7311

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

I just tried Harmattan version from garage, and it seems to work pretty well!
I hope someday you will resume working on this useful application, Quando Parte is a must have if you have to deal with Trenitalia...

Thank you!

Re: [Announce] Quando Parte, an Italian train station monitor
 

Thank you for the effort! It is not yet easy to test it...

Actually, I am in the process of getting the application accepted in the Nokia store...
I am currently blocked on quality assurance because I used the garage site as support page, which currently links to the garage area for download. I updated the pages in the git repository, but the site is not being updated from there. I will have to check on how to fix this...

I hope to get the application out soon!