RPASys

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  Multilanguage Support

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Inspiration

A desire to solve the problems faced by Indian public at railway stations due to inaudible announcements.

What it does

Collects and process information about your travel itinerary from a PNR registration number or a manual selection of station/train. Creates a customizable voice-based alarm that keeps the passenger alert about their respective train. Can also be used to relay announcements like delays or platform changes.

How we built it

nodejs/Apache Cordova for Android webapp

HTML5 + JS for Web client

ResponsiveVoice for Text-To-Speech functions

Pure Python WSGI based backend hosted at PythonAnywhere for control panel and variable/custom announcements

Challenges we ran into

Unexpectedly complex for a simple problem. Javascript unicode problems during addition of Hindi language Termination of TTS commands midway Geolocation web API problems in mobile browsers Slow railway API speed due to throttling of free-to-use versions

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Addition of Hindi language support is a big accomplishment for us because we intend to make RPASys used by both urban and rural Hindi speaking Indians

What we learned

How to re-use code better and the advantages of modular function-oriented code. Usefulness and versatility of Javascript across different platforms

What's next for RPASys

A real-time VoIP based audio channel for every internet-connected railway station that will directly relay announcements recorded from the station itself.

A more sophisticated control panel and a better UI/UX

Better support for mobile browsers

Push notifications for better visibility

Built With

• apache
• javascript
• node.js
• npm
• python
• wsgi