On Apr 12, 4:46*pm, Ian Jelf wrote:
In message
, MIG
writes





On Apr 11, 6:52*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008, Mizter T wrote:
On 11 Apr, 17:20, MarkVarley - MVP
wrote:

I have no idea what they're called, the LED signs in some bus stops
that tell you how long the busses are supposed to be, my question is,
how do they work? how do they update?

The system is called Countdown, and as part of the iBus project it is
set to become much more reliable and accurate.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that the present system is not very
reliable or accurate :P.

As another poster pointed out, the present system is rather Heath-Robinson
and failure-prone. It was, though, the best that could be done with the
technology of the time it was implemented. Frustrating as it is, it's
better than nothing.

Was it a development of the BESI system used in the 1970s?

There was something else between BESI and Countdown and I can't for the
life of me remember what it was and can't be bothered to Google.
Someone will tell me any time now.......

I can't find much about it at all, but I've seen pictures of "radio-
controlled" buses in the 1970s passing some kind of scanners in the
street. (It stood for "Bus Electronic Scanning Indicator"?)

It would have been used for managing buses, but I suppose that once
you've got a system for locating and identifying buses, the next stage
is to link the information to PIS.

Would the system in between have been perfecting the management part,
or would it be to do with the PIS part?