The Pros

Well I was certainly there and I could say hello to folk.  I got the majority of the conversations which is the main point of the night.  I didn’t have to stay there all night, I could break off into a group of one if I wanted to but it wouldn’t have been much fun.

The Cons

Laptop microphones are the main issue as they are designed for one to one conversations and not a public forum.  I kept a chat window open just in case I needed to type something.  Luckily the good folk in Belfast gave me space to speak when I needed to.

The only other real drag was that I couldn’t have pizza.  I’ll have to go back to the drawing board on that one.

My original concern turned out to be no concern.  When you speed past a stop and get the location I was afraid that the GPS would take time to update.  What actually happens is that the GPS lat/lon data will constantly update as the device is moved.  All you then have to do it tap the “Store Location” button and it’s saved.

As well as Code4PizzaCollator there’s a web based app by Alex McRoberts which does the same sort of thing.  It’s in development at the moment but it will work on iPhone, Andriod and other mobile devices with a connection. You can find it here http://www.koachi.com/mapit/

The reason I didn’t go with a fully connected app was simple.  Connections in the NW of the province are up and down.  You don’t get much 3G coverage apart from Derry and Coleraine at present.  So I wanted to be able to collate data and send in one go to a server when I wanted to.

One unanswered (possibly because it’s unasked) is: at a bus station do I register every stop? I think it’s a good idea for the following reason.  Ultimately I’d like to see an app where a tourist could stand at any bus stop and with GPS pull the info on the different buses that leave and at what times. With near field connectivity (NFC) we should be paying the bus fares with our phones as well, this is already happening in some European countries already.

First we need to complete data and that’s where the crowdsourcing comes in.  With these two apps there’s no reason to say we can’t collect the bus stop data for the whole province.

The most useful thing I learned today….. the way that the SDK will copy the SQLite database to a WHOLE new place.  Turns out the insert code was working fine I just didn’t know where it was going.



NSLog(documentFolderPath); is your friend.

So it’s all coming along nicely, the first commit went up to github this afternoon so other people can have a play with it (assuming that you’re all bored with the snow now).  The next job is to bundle up the saved locations and send them to a server (somewhere to be decided).  There’s plenty of resources on getting an iPhone app to pull JSON data in from a URL but not a lot about transmitting it.  This is going to be fun

The basic design from Interface Builder

So what’s the big idea?

A few months ago Matt Johnston organised a small event called Code4Pizza.  The idea being to get the bus stop data for the province and trying to get it out into the community so the community could do something useful with it.

As with all things in Belfast I very rarely get to them.  All my business is really in the north west, the idea is not to get into a pity party about how nothing goes on over here.  It does, we had Barcamp Derry in October and nothing stopped the Belfast folk coming over…. so……..

For those kind folk who heard me talk at Barcamp Derry I did mention a few things about “just doing it” and how I don’t mind how the code is in the first release as long as it works.  Something that some of my collegues at Learning Pool are now making sure I won’t forget

I love the idea of Code4Pizza but I can’t really do anything from where I’m sitting, or can I?  In getting myself back in line with iPhone development and getting my head around Interface Builder’s little ways I wanted to do the following:

• Create an open source project that other members of the Code4Pizza community could work on if they wanted.
• With the app use it to provide Open Data NI, Translink and Code4Pizza more data on where the bus stops for other parts of the province are (Belfast is well documented but it seems from conversations with folk that some parts of the province aren’t great).  Instead of whining about how Translink don’t do anything why not help out instead?
• It means that I can learn some new stuff.  I’m not up on my git and github repository skills so it’s good excuse to polish those up too.
• I get to know the iPhone SDK a lot better by doing something useful than just another bunch of little demos.

All good reasons as far as I’m concerned.

So how does it work?

My commute to Pooly Towers is on the bus every morning. Now I’ve been on the same route many times over the last couple of months so I know where the stops are.  All I need is a method to track them and store them.  That’s where the app comes in.

All I want to store is the latitude and longitude when I pass the stop and what route I was on.  The idea is that developers all over the province can download the source code from github and install it themselves and collate more data if they are on the bus.  If we can crowd source the other data outside of Belfast then I think that will benefit everyone in the province at the end of the day.

So, where is it?

The source code will be hosted on github.  I haven’t put the initial core release of code up but I’ll announce on Twitter when I do.

So, what stage is the code at?

So far the application can pickup the location via GPS.  The button actions work it’s just the SQLite3 database that needs sorting out and the mechanism to upload the data.  There’s a field for the route of the bus number as well but I have left the alphabetic characters in the keyboard as I know there are some route numbers like “FY8″ in the Derry area.

There’s only three buttons: one to get the location, one to store the location and one to upload the stored locations to an online place (like a website/db etc).

The icon is done…. it’s a pizza.