mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Hi,

I wrote this within a week of getting my n900, mostly because I wanted this info quicker than going via the TFL website and as an exercice in playing around with code on my shiny new toy. Since then there's been at least one other app which does the same thing: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40183, although I just noticed it's been discontinued in favour of a bigger app which does more.

Personally I prefer this particular info to be in a tiny fast-starting app (possibly even as a desktop applet) rather than a bigger app. A comment was made that my version was not particularly finger-friendly (my primary aim was to make it look similar to the TFL website tube status, as well as avoiding scrolling).

For my purposes it pretty much does what I need it to do, but I was wondering whether anybody else is interested in continued work on this app or whether I should just shelve it (so far it's only made it into the developer repository).


Further improvements I was thinking of adding:
* Redo GUI code (is rather inefficient and messy currently)
* Re-write in C (python version is really only proof-of-concept of the UI)
* Auto-update status every few minutes if left running in background
* (Auto) rotate screen
* Desktop applet?

* Alternative screen layout (either replacing the current one, or as an option)


Current Screenshot:
http://mwtube.garage.maemo.org/image...1217_small.png

Alternative Screenshot:

http://mwtube.garage.maemo.org/image...1001_small.png

So far I've not found a way to change the colours of the buttons on the alternative layout. It looks nice and "Hildony", but not very "TFLly".

Anyway, would be interested to know whether or not there's any interest in me spending more time on this app.

Cheers,
- Micha.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Definitely! I also like the look of the "Hildony" screenshot. Perhaps you could auto-generate (or composite, or... - I haven't check the HildonButton API) somewhat shiny background buttons with each of the line colours, and then have the status symbols over the top.

Something square, without text or stripes, like:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/wp-cont...ads/output.gif

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

i likey!!
will definitley test it :)

good idea and pretty good looking.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Hi,
Your application is exactly what I need.
While I enjoy using the browser as much as possible, a separate app is very handy until tfl makes its website much more mobile-friendly (I can't stand the wap version of their site)

In addition to what you've done so far, it would be fantastic to be able to route trips in real time, as done by some android apps. For example, choosing departure and end stations and figuring out where to change line and how long it takes to get to destination.

I'm not a programmer myself, but would be more than happy to contribute in testing the app and possibly getting introduced to learning python too!

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Being one of the Maemo londoners, I can see this becoming very handy especially during the weekends!

I give it a go and report bugs (if any!).

Thanks for the hard work!

PS: i just tried it and it works really well. Just 1 request, could you add a portrait mode please?

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Great - just what i was looking for! Where can i find it, is it in dev repository?

Thanks

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

For portrait mode use, there is also "london-tubes". It shows the lines but you need to click on a line to see a status update - and the status updates are more detailed.
There is also an "ALL" button to see the status similar to mw-tube but it is not colour coded.

[edit]
Please see the first post in this thread for more info
[/edit]

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

mwerle - A future enhancement for you could be to make it a desktop widget and report on an exceptions basis (i.e. only tubes that are delayed/closed).

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

This would be my preference.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Got it and sadly it does not work on mine, it installed ok but when i try it open it nothing happens, screen goes black and then back to the desktop. Tried seeing if its open and nothing showing.

Using Maemo 5 2.2009.51-1.203.2

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

I just enabled the devel repos and found this app. I'd think its a great little app. I definitely think its worth working some more on it.

I happen to have looked at the source and was happy to see that its a python app :D. I'm a python developer and would be happy to help out with anymore development on it. I was thinking about an app pretty much the same as what you've got. Oh and I happen to reside in london as well.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

i got this app working once randomly. now its back to not working? When i try it open it screen goes black and then back to the desktop. Can anyone advise on this?

Thanks

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Seems to be working fine for me. Not sure what to suggest for it to start working for you though I'm afraid!

Very useful app. It would be great if you could develop this further. Perhaps including an option for looking up live departures from specific stations?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravel...partureboards/

Thanks for what you've done already.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Hi airjaff, I'm afraid I have no idea what could be causing your problems.

One thing you could try is launching it from the console instead of from the GUI - it should print some error messages that way.

I currently don't have an N900 (mine broke in Australia a month ago and the replacement I finally got on Friday has a bad touchscreen - so until I get a working N900 again I'm a bit stuck.

Cheers,
- Micha.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Hello Micha

How do i load from the console? Im getting this problem with a few apps!

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Start the console, then at the prompt, just type in 'mwtube' and hit enter. In this case, 'mwtube' is a little helper script installed in /usr/bin which launches the actual app.

For the other programs you'll have to find out what the startup command is - usually just the name of the program.

You can find out what a particular package installed by using:
eg:
That can help you track down what the command is to start an application from the console.


Cheers,
- Micha. "Crossing fingers he'll finally get his N900 back today or tomorrow.."

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Just a quick heads up.

I've mostly rewritten in QT now with custom cellrendering. Still have to package it (and wait for PR1.2) but I prefer this to Python. I had some custom cellrendering going in Python but it was getting unwieldy.

Will see about working on a desktop widget version next.

Here's a POC screenshot:

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Hmm - wasn't even aware that this info was available!! Doesn't look like there's a way to access it without screenscraping the TFL website though. If you have to download the whole page anyway and then screen-scrape it to display the info you might as well just access it from the browser - so no benefits from a data transfer perspective.

It would be trivial to make a client app to enter your query and then display the result page. At least save some bandwidth.

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

hmm, mine was working and then it suddenly stopped working.

I launched from the command line and it said something about keyboad shortcut.

When i ssh from my desktop and run mwtube from there, it works on the n900 weird. EDIT - and then it didn't work. seems to be intermittent.

EDIT - here's what i see on the cmd line:

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

Thanks for this - a new 'tube line' was added and obviously this version of mwTube doesn't handle that gracefully. I'm working on a revised version which should be available soon.

EDIT: V0.0.5 is now live which fixes this.
Changelist
* Changes since 0.0.4
* ~/.mwtube is now directory not file
* logging to file now not stdout
* stability improvements
* gracefully handle new tube lines

Re: mwTube - mini London Tube (Underground ) status app
 

An initial QT version of mwTube is in the repositories, as mwqtubestatus.

This is released as Version 0.1.0 of mwQTubeStatus.

TODO:
* Remove the column selection from the menu
* Fix About & Settings dialogs
* Fix auto-rotation
* Use the QT Mobility API to perform auto-connect and connection detection.
* Improve GUI (?)

Please let me know what you think.

Cheers,
- Micha.