Hello Everyone, Hi Maarten, Guilty as charged - we are responsible for the Passenger Information Application for the Erzgebirgsbahn - onboard, for mobile phones and on the VMS webpage.
The data shown is based on GPS-position fixes of all the Erzgebirgsbahn-vehicles and calculations of estimated arrival times on the stations along the trip. The source information is provided by a already existent onboard system whose primary purpose until now was to assist the drivers for an economic manner of driving - based on the current position on the trip and the remaining scheduled stations. Our servers preprocess this information collected from all the vehicles and provide it with some extrapolations to be displayed by the onboard display units, the internet-application and the mobile phone apps. The whole system is in an evaluation phase right now and only one of the vehicles of the Erzgebirgsbahn is equipped with display-units, yet, but all vehicles already relay their positions and estimations for the remaining trip in certain intervals. We provide precompiled OSM tiles spanning the area of operations of the Erzgebirgsbahn and quite some more in the vicinity. If the system is left alone it will cycle to different zoom levels depending on the speed of the train and keeping the vehicle in the center. Beneath the scheduled trip to the side the unit will display the departure tables of the upcoming station informing the passenger about connections - until now mostly other trains but perhaps the VMS can be convinced to deliver data on bus services in the future, too. If a passenger touches the unit as you surely noticed the map may be panned and zoomed at will giving quite some details about the territory and giving him assistance in exploring the vicinity. Once it is left alone for a certain time it will reset back to the automatic mode. Since the displays onboard the trains have to adhere to a huge number of regulations concerning the usage of equipment in railway vehicles and security against vandalism the somehow "outdated" usage of a resistive touch screen could not be avoided and the usage is sometimes not quite as intuitively as we would like. While taking some test-trips in the summer I witnessed several passengers trying to use tentative touches and finger gestures which they probably know from their smart-phones and tablets and few dared to exert the necessary pressure for the screen to react to their fingertips. And in fact you could have seen the departure tables onboard the train, too. I admit it is a little difficult to "click" the stations in the map - especially in low zoom levels - due to the restricted resolution of the touch-screen technology and the display itself. Fortunately there is another way which you probably missed - the departure tables can be reached by clicking the entries in the remaining timetable of the train shown at the side, too. In which case they will show a departure table starting with the estimated time of arrival of the train you are on. I am glad you like the application and had fun on your trip with the Erzgebirgsbahn. For everyone who likes to take a look here the URLs to the application: Web: http://www.vms.de/egb/index.html Android-APP: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.funkwerkit.erzgebirgsb ahn IPhone-APP: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/erzgebirgsbahn/id538338817 Greetings from Berlin Ronnie Ronnie Brunn Research and Development -- Funkwerk Aktiengesellschaft Traffic & Control Communication Rotherstrasse 22, D - 10245 Berlin Phone +49(0)30-293489-52 Fax +49(0)30-293489-20 E-Mail ronnie.br...@funkwerk-it.com Internet http://www.funkwerk-it.com --------------------------------------------------- Registered office: Koelleda, registered in Germany, number HRB 111457 Jena CEO: Dr. Manfred Lerch -- Diese E-Mail kann vertrauliche und/oder rechtlich geschuetzte Informationen enthalten. Wenn Sie nicht der richtige Adressat sind oder diese E-Mail irrtuemlich erhalten haben, informieren Sie bitte sofort den Absender durch eine Antwortmail und vernichten Sie diese Mail. Das unerlaubte Kopieren sowie die unbefugte Weitergabe dieser Mail ist nicht gestattet. Wir danken fuer Ihre Kooperation. This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient or have received this e-mail in error, you are on notice of its status. Please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this e-mail from your systems. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly prohibited. Thank you for your cooperation. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk