oisinq / dbikes-planner

dBikes Planner: A predictive journey planner Android app and Python back-end API for Dublin Bikes

Hi! I'm Oisín.

I'm from sweet, sweet Cavan in Ireland. I'm a front-end software engineer at HubSpot. I studied Computer Science in UCD, Dublin. I had a lot of fun there playing a big role in running UCD Netsoc for three years, as well as being an organiser for a student-run tech conference called SISTEM for two years in a row (including the 2020 edition in UCD).

I've tried my hand at a lot of different tech over the past few years, but I'm a big fan of TypeScipt, JavaScript and front-end software development (especially React). I did an internship at HubSpot doing work in React and Java and working there again now as a front-end Software Engineer.

I'm also really into music. Check out my last.fm and Spotify to see what I'm into. I had a student radio show/music/show/podcast thing called Quinntessentials where I talked about some of my favourite albums with friends. It's a good listen, I promise!

I've a few random projects on here that might be interesting:

• dBikes Planner is an Android app and Python API for generating smart cycling routes for Dublinbikes that takes into account bike availability at stations. You can grab the code, an .apk and my Final Year Project report (I got an A+!) in that repo.
• Amhrán is a music site I built in React that showcased a new Irish song every day (or at least until I wasn't able to keep up with updating a website daily).
• Paper Planes was a really fun project to make: it's a distributed messaging app (aka WhatsApp clone) that was really satisfying (and a lil painful) to build.
• JavaScript is good, actually was a lightning talk I gave at ShortStack Conference. I talked about how I think JavaScript gets a bad rap and how modern JS is a really nice language to use. I like public speaking, as long as I can come up with a topic I'm enthusiastic about... 😅

Also here are my socials:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Polywork

Cool? Cool.

dbikes-planner's Issues

Station graphs need to be real-time

Probably easiest to store this locally, but get some real-time info from the station for today's usage? Idk

Notification if your journey time is over the Dublinbikes free time

Add "ultra high" availability?

I'm not sure why I want this, but I think I do?

Go into more detail on Co2 craic

Could be nice to have a breakdown on Co2 usage, compare it to public transport

Migrate from AppEngine Flex to Standard

Kinda badly needed tbh, Flex will be very expensive when my free credits run out

Show graphs for bikestands instead of bikes

Just add the endpoint, Android app logic should be easy

Need to distiguish between bikes and bikestands in map view

Normalise data

Journey info doesn't take into account the walking segments

Shouldn't be a difficult fix. Just add walking stats to each RouteType object.

Use walking distance when finding nearest stations

Currently it uses Euclidean distance, which is generally good but leads to issues like this:

Sometimes walking is better?

Like say if you're in Charlemont and wanna go to Ranelagh. Could be cool to show the walking route instead.

Colour-code text when a station is selected

Better graphs

Via feedback:

my only complaint was the I wish you could make the graph full screen when you tapped or swiped up on it- be cool to see it more clearly. I felt like I could keep swiping up when the graph showed up and it felt weird when I couldn't.

Refactor code

The code (especially the Android code) is not in good shape. It needs a full refactoring to get up to standard.

Collapse bottom sheet when title is clicked on exapnded state

Station icon doesn't rvert from spaces -> bikes after a journey is completed

(The starting station doesn't change either)

Need to add VGI component

This could be a notification after a journey asking "were you waiting long" or something along those lines.

Doesn't let you plan future journeys currently

Could just be a pop-up after you select a place

*urgent* unix_timestamp column is a mess

Need to get this normalisation working throughout. Not a tough fix but important

Black bar when there's hardware buttons

This issue is based on a mix of street views and bottom sheets. Potential fixes I can think of are:

1. Moving from bottom sheet to a different kind of interface when a station is clicked
2. Maybe replacing the StreetView with an image or a custom 360 image that we can use there

Or just some better way of indicating that the bottom sheet can be dragged up

A favourites tab would be cool

What if a location isn't permitted and you plan a journey?

Time selector for future journeys

Expanding on #7

Tweaks to station selection

Would like to fix this up so that it will select a moderate station if it thinks the bikes will be there when the user arrives eg if the rate of usage at that time is generally low, still select it

Support for council bikeracks would be very cool

This is more of a long-term issue. It would be really cool if it also took into account where bike racks are, and uses that info.

Prediction for the ending station isn't correct

Needs to take into account the length of the cycling portion of the route when making a prediction

Doesn't really take waiting into account

Would be nice if the predictor could figure out if you'd be better off waiting until bikes arrive. Kinda hard to do because we only have data from every 10 minutes and we only see the current availability, not exact numbers for how many bikes came in and out.

Migrate files to Google Cloud again

I tried this before, but it didn't work. Would be nice to try again: would make deploying easier and might be able to switch to a Standard instance of AppEngine.

Walking API is sometimes not good

Like in this screenshot...

It like goes back on itself sometimes and just doesn't plan the best route often