cernmaps finding buildings at cern is not a treasure hunt anymore adrian alan pol - ph-cmg-ppd...

CERNMaps

Finding buildings at CERN is not a treasure hunt anymore

Adrian Alan Pol - PH-CMG-PPD Andrea Giardini - IT-PES-PS

WARM UP

• HOW MANY OF THE GUESTS KNOW WHERE IS BUILDING 80?

• WHERE IS BUILDING 666?

• WHERE TO LOOK FOR THIS INFORMATION?

CURRENT SOLUTIONS FOR THE NEWCOMERS

• PAPER MAPS• WEB APPLICATION

• NATIVE IPHONE/IPAD APP• MOBILE WEB APPLICATION

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD "MAP APP"

• GENERAL: FAST, USER FRIENDLY AND USABLE

• SPECIFIC: GPS PERFORMANCE, OFFLINE SUPPORT

IF IT IS WORKING PROPERLYWHY REDOING IT?

• UI IS MISSING ANDROID LOOK&FEEL

• UX DOESN'T EXIST

• USER LOCALIZATION ISSUES

• TOUCH EVENTS FOR ZOOM PERFORMANCE

• NETWORK DEPENDENT

• IT IS HEAVY...

IT IS NOT GIS DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE A COOL APP

CERN MAPS ON GOOGLE PLAY

Offline Light Native

SO MANY PROBLEMS,SO LITTLE TIME...

• UNABLE TO USE CERN OFFICIAL CHANNELS

• PROBLEMS GETTING THE DATA

• MANPOWER

STILL NOT CONVINCED?

STILL NOT CONVINCED?

But how do we get all the data?

THE FINAL AIM IS TO HAVE AN APPLICATION FOR OFFLINE USE

WHY:

CERN HAS SEVERAL VISITORS DAILY AND MOST OF THEM DON'T HAVE WIFI/INTERNET ACCESS

HOW:

NEED TO DUMP THE DATA AND LET THE APPLICATIONDOWNLOAD THE UPDATES ON A REGULAR BASIS

WHAT:

 - CERN BUILDING COORDINATES - TPG TRAM AND BUS SCHEDULE

 - CERN SHUTTLE SERVICE

CERN Buildings

-Get a list of all the buildings and get the coordinates for each of them

 - Users are able to select a building and locate it on the map

Unfortunately there is no API to get the coordinates of the building...

TPG tram and bus schedule

TPG offers public API to get tram and bus schedule through their OpenData website

www.tpg.ch/web/open-data/

But it has serious limitations:

 - Schedule only for the remaining part of the day - Full day schedule only at 4 in the morning (thanks cronjob)

Necessity to dump the data in an external server

TPG tram and bus schedule

Currently developing a python module to interact with their API:

https://github.com/AndreaGiardini/python-tpg

Code and examples are available on GitHub

The module is just a draft, it needs further development.Feel free to contribute creating issues and pull requests

CERN shuttle service

We received several comments on the Google storeasking to integrate the CERN shuttle inside our application

We are currently in contact with the GS department to find a wayto get the shuttle schedule and integrate it in our application

Future development - Phonebook?

Several people asked to integrate the phonebook on our app, but...

 - Phone numbers and users data are sensible informations - We should handle this data in a proper way

Maybe the only part of the app that needs to be "online"

Conclusions

We started this project almost 2 years ago as an hobbyand now people are getting interested in it

Thanks to feedbacks and comments we improved ourapplication following the suggestions of users

Now the code is available on GitHub:

https://github.com/AdrianAlan/cern-maps

Now we want your ideas! :)