[OSM-talk] Cool uses of OSM

Brunn, Ronnie Ronnie.Brunn at funkwerk-it.com
Wed Feb 6 17:27:19 UTC 2013


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security against vandalism the somehow "outdated" usage of a resistive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.brunn at funkwerk-it.com
Internet http://www.funkwerk-it.com
---------------------------------------------------
Registered office: Koelleda, 
registered in Germany, number HRB 111457 Jena
CEO: Dr. Manfred Lerch



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