Great work on this project!
I’m envious that you have available data on your public transport! Where I live they’re still working on an API that has been advertised as “available soon” for multiple years :(
I have a very similar project with a pi zero and waveshare e-paper display! I’m showing the weather, a countdown to events I’m looking forward to and a virtual pet that changes pose every so often. Here is an older picture of it:
“Listen. I just have the best body. My ear did all the healing and it did it so good. The doctors can’t believe it, they say no human has ever healed this fast before.”
I wish I had your optimism.
The only thing I’d note is to be careful with your issue #2, because this sounds like it could break with autofill. Some autofill implementations may fill invisible fields (this has actually been an attack vector to steal personal info), so blocking the IP because an invisible field labeled “email” has been filled could hit users too. Otherwise, 100% agree!
<deleted>
As others said, Tile or AirTags would probably be your best choice. AirTags have a better chance of being located (due to the large amount of iPhone users) but you’ll need an iPhone yourself. Tile should work too if you are in a more densely populated area. I have an AirTag on mine, but it hasn’t been stolen so I don’t know how useful they really are. But there are tons of ways to hide them on your bike. Just look for “AirTag bike mount hidden”. Under your bell, under the saddle, behind a reflector or even in the fork. If you want to go maximum security, disable the speakers (you’ll need to cut the AirTag open for this) and use 2 AirTags in different locations. The thieve might eventually be notified that an AirTag is moving with them, but you can hope that you’ll find your bike before the thieve found both of your trackers. Good luck with securing your bike!
I think it can be considered doable, although I highly recommend some kind of trial run to get an estimate on all the parameters. I used a free day to commute to work and back the first time, just to get a feel for the distance. Infrastructure, your bike, physical condition, weather, what you have to carry, all these (and more) have an effect on how doable it is. As a baseline: I live in a larger city with decent infrastructure, have a fixed gear road bike, am in decent shape, carry a laptop + charger and my commute is 9km. During spring, summer and autumn (usually temps between 10°C (50°F) and 20°C (68°F) while biking) I commute by bike, in the winter I avoid it because of the salt on the road and because I don’t like the cold winds. It usually takes me somewhere between 20 and 35 minutes to make one trip. I hope that helps you estimate your commute a little better.
I think loops tend to be faster, but well done recursion might be just as fast. I just wanted to mention performance being a point of consideration when making these decisions. I 100% agree that poor (API) architecture is probably one of the biggest reasons for slow software. It’s just that every bit of poor performance adds up along the way, and then we end up having fast computers (that are orders of magnitude faster than anything 15 years ago) running bloated electron apps (that are sometimes even slower than their equivalent 15 years ago) and it’s just frustrating.
I agree that junior devs should focus on readability, rather than focusing on everything and just getting it all wrong. but as you say, if you have more experience, performance should be a point of consideration.
On a side note: not caring about performance “until you find performance issues” is a huge problem with modern software imho. That’s the reason apps are so slow, updates take so long, everything uses so much space. I’d wish that performance would always be a point of consideration, not an afterthought once there are problems.
The thing is, I do see ads when I open the embedded video/playlist on youtube! I don’t think businesses would specifically avoid embedded playlists, but then happily advertise on playlists on youtube. It just looks like an oversight rather than a business decision to me.
yeah I know, makes no sense. I’ll use this workaround for as long as possible, but I’m sure I’ll have to move to Piped or Invidious sooner or later.
I selfhosted Invidious a while back, but gave up on it when it stopped working and I couldn’t figure out why. I have no experience with Piped.
I settled on a third alternative, but I don’t want to point too much attention to it because I think it might be flying under Youtubes’ radar at the moment. But let me say this: if you embed a youtube video on a third party site and have it be part of a playlist with only the video in it, you won’t see any ads. so for example I’d be embedding a link like this: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ?playlist=dQw4w9WgXcQ&vq=hd1080&autoplay=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0 on my own page and can then watch it without ads :) if you have any questions, feel free to hit me up.
EDIT: Well, I just got the first ad using this method. So it seems youtube is cracking down on all ad avoidance methods and they found this one too. Only one ad so far, so it doesn’t seem to be as bad as their own site, with (sometimes multiple) ads before almost every video, but I’m sure it’ll happen. Guess Piped/Invidious it is!
Wow, good tip, I didn’t know of that. Sadly, where I live this is still ‘in preparation’. But I’ll keep looking in case this happens before my cities API! Thank you!