The Bicycle Barometer

"Optimise For the Common Case" has a description of a nifty device indicating the best form of transport on a given day in London - The Bicycle Barometer.

The bicycle barometer takes data about the weather, the status of the tube lines I use to get to work, and whether my local station is open or shut.

It then reduces all that data down to a single value and displays it on a dial with a bike sign at one end and a tube sign at the other.

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.

It is built using a Nanode and an old clock I found at a flea market. The data comes from the Met Office’s Datapoint API and Transport for London’s line status and station status API’s.

The code, instructions and design for building one are available here: https://github.com/memespring/bicycle-barometer