Bicycle barometer lets London commuters decide between taking the bike or the tube

Bicycle barometer lets London commuters decide between taking the bike or the tube

This nifty prototype creation by Brixton-based techie Richard Pope helps commuters decide between cycling into work or getting the tube, based on weather and travel conditions.

Sporting an ultra-simple interface, the bicycle barometer takes data about the weather, the status of local tube lines and whether the local station is open or shut.

All this information is then reduced to a single value displayed on an analogue dial with a bike sign at one end and a tube sign at the other.

Pope explain his methodology:

For example, if it is raining a bit the dial will move a bit towards the tube sign, but if the tube is suffering delays, it will move a bit back in the other direction.

Different data points get different weightings. E.g. snow is more important than a bit of drizzle; the tube station being shut trumps everything.

The bike barometer was built using a Nanode and an old clock  found at a flea market, and uses data from the Met Office’s Datapoint API and Transport for London’s line status and station status API’s.

[source]

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