commuter

Show commuting time in the Mac menu bar.

Idle (outside commute hours):

Shows travel time to home:

To Use

git clone https://github.com/lokeshrj/commuter
cd commuter
npm install
# update config.json. See #Configuration below
npm start

Configuration

Update config.json with the following values:

workAddress - Address of workplace comma separated e.g. "1000 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto CA"
homeAddress - Address of home comma separated e.g. "100 University Avenue, Palo Alto CA"
pollIntervalMinutes - frequency of polling the API in minutes e.g. "5" means update every 5 minutes.
morningCommuteStartTime - Time to start checking for commute time to work in the mornings. Hours only in 24 hour notation i.e. "00"-"23" e.g. "07"
morningCommuteEndTime - Time to stop checking for commute time to work in the mornings.
eveningCommuteStartTime - Time to start checking for commute time to home in the evenings.
eveningCommuteEndTime - Time to stop checking for commute time to home in the evenings.
commuteDays - Array of zero-indexed days of week that one commutes on. Week starts on Sunday at index 0. e.g. ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5"] implies a Monday-Friday commute.
googleMapsAPIKey - API key for querying Google Maps Directions API

Example `config.json`

{
  "workAddress": "1000 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto CA",
  "homeAddress": "100 University Avenue, Palo Alto CA",
  "pollIntervalMinutes": "5",
  "morningCommuteStartTime": "07",
  "morningCommuteEndTime": "10",
  "eveningCommuteStartTime": "15",
  "eveningCommuteEndTime": "19",
  "commuteDays": [
    "1", "2", "4", "5"
  ],
  "googleMapsAPIKey": "MyApiKey"
}

Above example implies a commute of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The morning commute window is 7AM - 10AM, and evening commute is from 3PM - 7PM. UI updates every 5 minutes.

A note on API usage

We query the Google Maps Directions Advanced API which is a paid API. Signup for an API key and enable Directions API. At the time of this writing, the billing rate is $1 per 100 requests, with $200 free credits per month. The values you choose in config.json determine how often the API is queried, and so affects the billing rate.

As an example calculation, the example above would cause us to query the API every 5 minutes for 3 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evening, 4 days a week. Assuming 4.5 weeks a month, # of API requests = (3 hours * 12 requests/hour) + (4 hours * 12 requests/hour) * 4 days per week * 4.5 weeks per month = 1512 API requests/month. This is $15.12 billed per month, which is currently discounted to $0 since it is under the free allowance. It is your responsibility to stay under the limit, and pay Google for any overages.

What's missing

Ability to set configuration in the app
App distribution
CI