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chumbysphere forum → Widgets → Live Train Departure Boards for the UK
I'd love a live train departure board for the UK
- using the data from this website
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_far … rtures.asp
Heres an example station.
http://www.livedepartureboards.co.uk/ld … =1&A=0
It could look like one of the TVs that you see displaying the information in the station themselves.
I wish I knew how to make one myself.
I currently have to turn on the PC to check if the train is on its way before I leave the house.
I'm happy to look into this for you. Can't give a time or date on it, though, sorry!
Are there any other sources for this information other than the website above?
Thanks - you really are the (gingerbeard) man.
Well I think all the data comes from here - but there are a few ways to access it. I remember looking at it on my Windows Media Phone in a portable version
and there is a WAP site here..
wap.nationalrail.co.uk/
somebody has made a Java application that accesses this info
http://www.freej2me.co.uk/TrainPage.html
OK,
I have created a simple Yahoo Pipe to grab the data from a train timetable page. It needs cleaning up, and changed to work with any train station code, before it can be used for real.
But it's a start and makes me feel this is definitely doable.
matt
Excellent. Many thanks for looking at this - this would help convince the missus that the Chumby actually has a use that will benefit her (we're 20 mins walk from the Station and both fed up waiting for trains that are cancelled. The Platform is out in the middle of nowhere and doesn't have a display. Even if it did, by the time we've walked there, we might as well just stand and wait 30 mins for the next train anyway.
So you can picture it, its a bit like the station in Trainspotting, a platform and that's it, no benches, no waiting room, nothing.
If we could glance at the Chumby and see the train was cancelled before we left the house we could stay in and have another cup of coffee instead.
I hear you and completely understand your situation!
In the meantime, here's the RSS feed. I'm still trying to fine tune the format of it.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info? … 9V8ACB2yXQ
Add me as a chum and I'll let you in on my test version of the widget. Currently based on my BBC Football scores widget look and feel.
matt
Yes, only Departures for me.
Incidentally my Station code is APB - but there are so few trains from here, it's probably best testing it with a busier station to see if the results all fit on the screen.
Thanks again for taking up this challenge.
Moderators: feel free to move this to the Widgets folder if you think it warrants it...
Here's a teaser for the widget. Just got the config box to do now. Tomorrow!
OK folks, I've just asked for this to go public!
You can configure it to show Departures or Arrivals, and you specify a three-letter station code (see the National Rail site) as well as a user-defined string to better describe the station. Sadly there are 2000+ stations in the list, so I've shied away putting them into a drop down!
Typeface and type sizes are optimised for a real Chumby rather than a virtual one.
Delayed trains have their row displayed in a lovely Amber colour.
Cancelled trains have their row displayed in a dangerous Red colour.
Refreshes every five minutes, or when the screen is touched (however the Chumby caches data for five minutes)
Final screens:
That looks excellent.
Many thanks - I'm sure that this will become one of the most popular apps when the Chumby gets a UK launch.
I think it will even help sell the device.
I'll be sure to feed back any opinions I have.
Thanks again.
Due to someone crashing through a Level Crossing on my line this evening- I've been "lucky" enough to be able to test out what's displayed when things go wrong.
I've noticed that when "Cancelled" is displayed on the website, the chumby shows "Undefined".
Oh, and can you explain the cache situation with the Chumby. Is the most recent information that it can display data gathered 5 mins earlier?
I'll look into the Cancelled issue. Was the row displayed in red?
Caching. I just let Flash take care of it, but I'll force it to reload in the next version.
No, it didn't display the row in red - it was in the same format as the normal 'on time' trains.
OK, a big bug I'll look into it.
I've just uploaded a new version of this widget, 1.01
Fixes:
Cancelled trains displayed correctly
* (delayed) items displayed correctly
Data should now not be cached so aggressively
I've been asked if I can do a similar widget for different countries and cities. The answer is yes: if you can get hold of a live data feed 
I've just uploaded a new version of this widget, 1.10
Added:
Ability to filter results
Example: if you watch Departures from Clapham Junction but are only interested in trains with a destination of London Victoria, then you could enter "London Victoria" or even just "Victoria" in the configuration filter field. You could also do "Waterloo" for London Waterloo. If you filtered on "London", you'd get both "London Victoria" and "London Waterloo". This makes it more versatile than the livedepartureboards website.
matt
There was an issue with the configuration panel. Please reconfigure your widget, making sure the filter field does not say "undefined" and it should work.
Thanks to Sven for reporting this.
Sadly National Rail have introduced a robots.txt file on their site which disallows access from all external processes, including Yahoo! Pipes that I use to read their data. I can understand why National Rail are doing this but I do feel they are a bit heavy handed in protection of their own data.
Anyway, this widget will no longer function. 
I am thinking about alternative means, if anybody has any ideas please get in touch.
Cheers,
matt
Hurrah! Found a way around it.
Anybody interested in how I've done it, get in touch.
The widget should just continue working, no changes needed at the user end.
Many thanks. This is my most used widget and I was already beginning to mourn it's passing. I can't start to count how many hours it's saved me so far. The other week I forgot to look at it before I set off for the station and I ended up getting in work at 10am rather than the usual 8:15. If I'd read the Chumby I could have driven in instead.
May this app live forever.
The Yahoo Pipe that powers the widget has been run 70,000 times since launch. Which is nice to see.
Most, but not all, of those will have come from the chumby widget.
Rock on.
This is a great app / widget / whatever - Thanks
Thanks, please feel free to leave a donation to fund development of this and further widgets on my website.
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