Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Idea: Autobahn (Motorway) information app (site)

Imagine you drive on the autobahn and don't have a navigation system. Or you know the way and don't need the navigation system and it's too boring to enter the destination. But you still want to know what awaits you ahead on the way. So you open an app (or site autobahn.com) and it will:

  1. Detect your location with navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(a) {console.log(a);})
  2. Query OpenStreetMaps with Overpass API to find which is the autobahn you're driving and where are the nearest exits, parkings, fuel stations and distances to the nearest large cities.
    Example query: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/7Ao
  3. Parsing the data is described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14946096/read-and-analyze-json-from-osm-overpass-api-get-polylines
  4. It shows the queries information on the site (in the app, it's very easy to make an Android app which works exactly like the site using WebView, see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=spidgorny.noname_reader).
  5. Separately it should download the information from the TMC traffic jams. This doesn't seem to be available for free though. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TMC/TMC_Import_Germany.
  6. It may display local ads. Needs to be popular to make sense.
As most people have a navi hardware or software, this it mostly for nerds.