TramHunter v0.9 RC1

[Andy Botting]

Tram Hunters,

A new development release of Tram Hunter is now available - which
requires some real world testing.

- Allow renaming of favourite stops
- Added route selector for stops with >1 route
- Can now favourite a stop for a specific route
- New faster, experimental JSON API (enable in settings!)
- Updated tram network map to new colourful version
- Minor fix for stops with a 'Special Event' message

I've had a heap of requests for the ability to rename favourite stops,
so it's been a priority for this release. Just long-press an existing
favourite in the list and you can set a custom name. Internally, the
favourite stops are stored a little different, so it would be helpful
for you to test how well the conversion process goes from the old
method to the new. If your favourite stops are still there after the
upgrade, then everything worked fine.

Route selector was a no brainer, if you're after a specific route down
Swanston St! Should have been included sooner. Favourite stops can be
either for all routes, of can be for a specific route. Just select the
route from the list, and hit the star.

Thanks to Yarra Trams, I've now added support for their JSON API,
which is still in testing. It's hard to really gauge how much quicker
it is from London, so I'll need you guys to really test it out on your
phones from the streets. The new API is quicker over the network and
quicker to parse, so should be better all round. I'd love to hear your
feedback on this.

One last thing - Tram Hunter has now surpassed 20k downloads! The
stats, as of now, are sitting at 24666 total installs and 17853 active
installs (72 %), and looks like it's still sitting above 4.5 stars.
Not bad for a dinky little app :)

cheers,

Andy

[Luke Kellett]

Nice work dude!

And it's not dinky, it's bloody useful :-) Yarra Trams should take note...

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[logger]

I cannot see a link to download the RC. What am I missing? Thanks.
Ted.

[Terry Konstandelis]

On this page: http://code.google.com/p/tramhunter/downloads/list

Alternatively, here's the direct link:
http://tramhunter.googlecode.com/files/TramHunter-0.9-rc1.apk

Terry

[Ted Landy]

Thanks, I suspect I missed it because I am on my Nexus in the back of a taxi and not in a full sized browser.

[András Nemes]

You meant Tram right? ;)

[Ted Landy]

Should be tram but as they don't run to Tullamarine I had to settle for a cab! All downloaded fine now Thanks.

[Edgar Mirantz Tan]

I really like this. But I just read from a brochure from YT that they're gonna release Tram tracker for Android and Nokia soon! =|

Regards,

Edgar Mirantz Tan

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Andy Botting <an...@andybotting.com> wrote:

[Ted Landy]

Re " - Updated tram network map to new colourful version"

The colour network map does not look particularly flash on my Nexus1. When I zoom in it is blurry. 

[Andy Botting]

> Re " - Updated tram network map to new colourful version"
> The colour network map does not look particularly flash on my Nexus1. When I
> zoom in it is blurry.

Unfortunately, with the way I've implemented the network map, I can
only load an image of a certain size. Any higher resolution image
basically makes the app force close because it uses up the whole Java
heap size.

The best way around this would be to implement some sort of tiling
mechanism, like how Google Maps works - but it's quite a bit more
complicated than what I have currently.

If anyone has any experience with doing any tile map stuff, I'd love to know.

cheers,

Andy

[Andy Botting]

> I really like this. But I just read from a brochure from YT that they're
> gonna release Tram tracker for Android and Nokia soon! =|

That's interesting. I was contacted by Yarra Trams some time ago -
presumably because they were starting to work on something like this.
Once they found out I was living in London, they lost interest real
quick :)

[Scott Lansbury]

As a non android, android user, any chance to make the gps code timeout longer?
The phone I am on sometimes takes a while to wake up the gps, alternatively, ask the gps for coordinates, then cancel and ask again.

- S
Mobile mail

On Jun 1, 2011 11:39 PM, "Andy Botting" <an...@andybotting.com> wrote:

[Andy Botting]

Hi Scott

> As a non android, android user, any chance to make the gps code timeout
> longer?
> The phone I am on sometimes takes a while to wake up the gps, alternatively,
> ask the gps for coordinates, then cancel and ask again.

Might help if you can explain your situation.

At the moment, we use the existing network location (e.g. Cell tower
and WiFi triangulation) for the initial location. This way you get a
less-accurate location, but in most cases, it's instant because the
phone already knows where you are.

We then ask for a GPS update, and once it gets a fix, the location is
updated. All of this is taken care of with the Android location API,
so we don't adjust any timeouts - it's all handled by the platform.

cheers,

Andy

[Scott Lansbury]

I frequently have the thing tell me I'm at home when I'm at the office, if I close and re-open, all is good.

[Gerard Pace]

Looks good Andy, all the new features are working well on my Desire.

Only thing I can see that could be improved is when renaming a favorite stop, it may be preferable to edit the existing name rather than having a blank text field. I found it a little annoying when I wanted to modify a name I'd already set (I just wanted to remove an extra space), I had to start again from scratch. I suppose this is just a personal preference though, so not sure if you should necessarily change it.

[Andy Botting]

Hey Jez!

That's a good point. It'll definitely be in the next release.

Has anyone done any speed comparison against the SOAP and JSON API's yet?

cheers

[Andy Botting]

Hey Scott,

I'll do some messing around and see if I can replicate it. The location stuff is difficult for me because I'm not in Melb, but I have some ideas.

What sort of phone do you have? What version of Android are you running?

On Jun 1, 2011 3:03 PM, "Scott Lansbury" <scott...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Andy Botting]

Hi Scott,

I've just released v0.9 RC2 with some updates to the location stuff.

http://code.google.com/p/tramhunter/downloads/detail?name=TramHunter-0.9-rc2.apk

Can you test it and see if it fixes the problem?

cheers

[Andy Botting]

Hey Jez,

I've changed the stop name stuff like you said.

http://code.google.com/p/tramhunter/downloads/detail?name=TramHunter-0.9-rc2.apk

Want to test it out?

cheers,

Andy

[Gerard Pace]

Perfect Andy, good job