Twitter Tool: SBB Train Information System (STIS)

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Please also read follow ups to this post with the tag “stis”.
More stations available: STIS Update and News from October 31st 2009

Photo BY-NC-SA swisscan

I always wanted to create a little (maybe even useful) Twitter tool with their API. I finally managed to create it and I named it “SBB Train Information System” or STIS for short. It is more like a proof of concept and it can be shut down by anybody anytime. I do not have any rights or permissions to use the SBB train data, but I hope they will never see it or if they see it, like it .

What is this for, you might ask. Basically it checks the SBB website for any train delays in one of these stations: Basel, Chur, Jona, Rapperswil and Zurich. Then it will post delays or additional information (cancellation, delay time and so on) to Twitter. From there you can “follow” any of the stations and forward those updates to your mobile phone or Instant Messenger client. Now you always know if any train from a station is delayed.
It is not yet perfect, but I keep improving it and I am also looking for ideas or feedback. Please leave a comment or drop me an email if you have an idea or opinion.

Twitter Feeds:

Popularity: 3% [?]

12 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

rj de heer says

Hi,

Impressive! I’m looking for such a feed for some time now for my site swisstrains.ch. I have some data now from sbb, but this looks interesting as well. How do you do it? Could you get in contact with me?

Robert

11. February 2008, 13:42
Andreas Hobi | schweizweit.net says

Great idea! (Und denn na vomne Bündner. *g*) I’m looking forward to hear more of such tools.

11. February 2008, 18:45
Daniel Lorch says

Do you screen-scrape the data from sbb.ch? Anyway, very cool idea.

11. February 2008, 22:24
CoCaman says

@Andreas
Thanks You might be surprises how many geeks are in Graubünden

@Daniel
Yes, I screen-scrape a special page on sbb.ch and generate a xml. Should I write about the technical background?

11. February 2008, 22:47
Daniel Lorch says

@Corsin

No, not necessary You could also make it available as a plain RSS feed (I noticed that there is an Atom feed on twitter, though, so that’s not an absolute must).

11. February 2008, 22:57
Ralf Braun says

Deine Links sind ein bisschen verwirrend. Du schreibst von Stationen, die Links führen aber zu Städteartikeln bei Wikipedia. Ich hätte da eigentlich die entsprechenden Twitter-Feeds erwartet.

16. February 2008, 02:35
CoCaman says

@Ralf
Stimmt. Hab es mal angepasst.

16. February 2008, 09:35
Moni Nielsen says

Ich schätze sehr, dass der Dienst wieder läuft! Herzliche Bahnfahrergrüsse
Moni

31. May 2009, 20:57
- CoCaman says
  
  Hallo Moni
  Besten Dank für das Feedback. Ich werde wohl in den nächsten Tagen ein wenig an einer verbesserten Version arbeiten.
  
  31. May 2009, 21:06

Continuing the Discussion

Neues SBB-Verspätungstool: SBB Train Information System (STIS) | schweizweit.net linked to this post on 13. February 2008
[...] swisstrains.ch habe ich bereits geschrieben. Nun hat Corsin Camichel (aka: CoCaman) ein Tool auf die Beine gestellt, welches in die ähnliche Richtung [...]
Corsin Camichel linked to this post on 9. May 2009
@moninielsen hier gibts mal einen kurzen bericht, als der dienst gestartet ist: http://10×9.com/c
Corsin Camichel linked to this post on 31. October 2009
Für alle, die es noch nicht gesehen haben, für meine SBB Bots gibt es jetzt eine Twitter Liste http://10×9.com/ha #stis http://10×9.com/c