luqmaan/Instabus

Crowdsource better real-time data from users

Closed this issue · 11 comments

To get more accurate real-time data, we can use the location of users riding the bus to override the stale location data from CapMetro.

We need to be able to determine if a user is on the bus, use that user's location to override the location of the bus, and then recognize when the user gets off the bus so the bus location reverts back to the CapMetro location, or transition to a different user on the bus.

We need to figure out how this will work in terms of UI and in terms of
code.

On Monday, July 21, 2014, Sean Cascketta notifications@github.com wrote:

To get more accurate real-time data, we can use the location of users
riding the bus to override the stale location data from CapMetro.

We need to be able to determine if a user is on the bus, use that user's
location to override the location of the bus, and then recognize when the
user gets off the bus so the bus location reverts back to the CapMetro
location, or transition to a different user on the bus.


Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#99.

There shouldn't be any change in the UI look and feel. As far as code, we discussed using a service to store and stream user location data such as PubNub

How would we handle knowing whether a user is on the bus or not?

Ask them?

Guess because their location is changing quickly?

So the main issue with this as it stands is we don't have very many users, and they don't stay on the website after they get on the bus.

We only have about 50 users/day visiting the website. Most people close the app once they get on the bus, so we won't be able to get fresh location data for very long (including the time a user is waiting for the bus). In fact, the average duration of a session is 1m and 21s.

For that reason, I don't think we'll be able to get fresher bus location data from our users. We'll have to look somewhere else for that, until things change.

I have an idea.

What if we made a native app that we could leave running? Then we could just check the users' locations in the background!

And how do you know they are on a bus? How do you know they are actually on the 801 and not the 1M or something?

We constantly vibrate the phone and ask them to report their SSN and which route they are on.

Naturally

I think we should close this issue. Anybody against it?

👍