Widget: Trains NL

Former Member over 7 years ago

Hi everyone,

Please allow me to introduce to you my first Garmin app: the Trains NL widget.

This widget offers real-time information about departing trains based on your current location within The Netherlands. Without pressing so much as a single button, the opening screen shows the next train leaving from the nearest station to a user-set destination, plus the time it takes to reach that station on foot or by bike.

Download: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/1...9-aa8d6d105780

The user location is determined using the GPS, and the mobile phone is used to connect to the internet to find the nearest station and fetch the real-time travel information from the backend server.
The expected travel time to the nearest station is estimated using the distance and configurable walking and cycling speeds, and is constantly updated as the user approaches the station.
The predefined stations and travel speeds can be set in Garmin Connect Mobile using the widget settings.
There is a daily limit of 10 travel information requests, sufficient for normal daily usage and showing off to your friends ;).

This widget is available for most of the wrist-worn Garmin devices. I welcome all users in The Netherlands to try it out and let me know what they think! Questions, remarks and suggestion are welcome on this forum or on my Facebook page. Thanks for checking out my work!

Cheers,
Matt

PS. Ik versta prima Nederlands, maar geef er de voorkeur aan om development gerelateerde praat in het Engels te houden. Bedankt!

Former Member over 7 years ago

Released new version 1.0.1

No new features yet, this is a maintenance update only. Existing users will be notified of this new version in the app itself, and are requested to update. The backend server will stop to service all installs of version 1.0.0 (or older) at the end of March (old versions of the app will cease to function, and only show the instruction to upgrade).

Changelog:

Future proofing (solving some server API issues before they cause backwards compatibility problems)
Minor optimizations
Minor fixes

Former Member over 7 years ago

Released new version 1.0.2

I have been struggling with ideas to increase the user engagement with my app, and I'm now trying the following idea: the new features I created anyway (because I needed them myself) are locked under an activation key that can be obtained for free, after the user takes some proactive steps. I think it's only fair after the weeks of time I have put in to create the best possible value for the user, that the user spends 5 minutes to help me and get the most out of this app's functionality.

Users are free to opt-in or opt-out of the activation scheme. Opt-in users will get access to the two new features and will have a more liberal usage quota. Opt-out users will continue to receive all the functionality up to 1.0.0 for free, but will see a reminder to activate before every third use.

Oh, and did I mention that these two new features both add greatly to the usability of this app?

Changelog:

New feature (activated only): User can select next cached travel info by pressing START (this does not affect the daily usage quota)
New feature (activated only): Indoors mode - use last known location to get travel info if GPS is not available
Activation system

FlipStone over 7 years ago

Cool idea! Though I don't use trains too often so don't think I'll use it myself ;)

Personal opinion here, not too fond of the background image... perhaps add an option to disable it and just show a plain color/black background? It's a bit busy right now but as I say, that's completely personal :)

Former Member over 7 years ago

Thanks for your reply Flip!

I think you may be right about the background image... I've heard others as well about it, and purely objectively I have to say that it does reduce the readability of the info on the screen, especially in less-than-ideal lighting. Given that I always strive to reduce the number of config options (especially the ones that everyone wants to use the same setting for), I think that I will just go for removing the background image from the screen with the travel info.

Cheers,
Matt