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Throughput Calculator

Sam

Sam

TS Member
Cyg4r.jpg


Sam and Furby, with a little help from cotda, present...
Throughput Calculator
#ProjectDrake is finally live.

A staple feature of any TST meet is throughput discussion. It's talked about constantly. “Big Thunder Mountain still getting 2,500 Joelio?”, “Die Glocke only gets 100pph?!” etc. But there's never been an easy and quick way of measuring throughput. In the past, people have had to rely on stopwatches and rough calculations in their head. It's not very reliable, and it's a pain. Until now.

The new tool me and my friend Furby (internet name, obv) have created makes measuring throughput on any ride a piece of cake. It's a simple app that either runs natively on your Android device, or as a web app for other phones. It's been inspired by the living legend that is John Drake, the Father of Throughput (though ironically, he's probably the only person on TST with a phone too old to use the app :p ). He gave his name to the project's codename: #ProjectDrake.

Let me show you the Throughput Calculator.

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We styled it on the neon green and black colour scheme of retro technology.

  • First you enter how many seats there are on each train (or log, or car, or whatever). Then press OK.
  • Next you have to pick a dispatch point. This would usually be simply when the train dispatches from the station, but it could be anywhere on the ride, as long as it's consistent. For example, your dispatch point could be Rita's launch, or when a Nemesis train passes the first corkscrew. This makes it easier if you're not in the station.
  • When the first train passes that point, hit 'Press on dispatch!' The readout will say “Calculating...” The button will vibrate slightly.
  • When the next train passes that point, hit it again, and it'll tell you the ride's current throughput.
  • Each time you click the 'Dispatch!' button, the readout becomes more accurate. It takes the average of all the dispatches you've measured so far.
  • If you want to reset the app with the same ride, you have a button for that, and if you want to measure a new ride, you have a button for that.

It's that simple.

The app has been fully road-tested, at Alton Towers a few weekends ago, and seems to work perfectly, from a mathematic point of view.

No Android? No problem!

At the moment, the app is just for Android. We haven't ruled out other platforms in the future, if it proves popular. But until then, we have a perfectly fine web version, which you can access through your mobile web browser. It might not be as pretty, but it does the job just as well!

http://wildgoosecottage.hostzi.com/throughputNew2.html

Is it available on Google Play?

Unfortunately it isn't at the moment, as you have to pay $25 one-off fee to put your apps on Google Play. If this is popular and successful, I'll consider looking at a way to upload it. If people really like it, I suppose I could ask everyone to donate £1 to get it on the market.

At the moment, it's simply an APK file, which you'll have to download and sync/install onto your phone manually. This is pretty easy to do, so don't worry. :)

Yes!

Download!

But please before you do, I'd like to say thanks to my friend Furby. I just designed the app, he did all the coding, and all the hard work. It wouldn't have been possible without him. If you enjoy the app and want to post below, please also send your thanks to him! I'll be linking him to this topic at some point to see the reaction. :)

Without further ado...



Enjoy. :)
 
Impressive, but anyone that says 'twenty-five hundred' needs deporting across the Atlantic! :eek:
 
Great idea.

Have to say, I love this in the source code - "I don't even like rollercoasters" :p

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Sam said:
It's been inspired by the living legend that is John Drake, the Father of Throughput (though ironically, he's probably the only person on TST with a phone too old to use the app :p ).
Click to expand...

And me!

But I'd feel pretty ashamed if a well trained Mech Eng graduate like myself need a throughput app ;)


Joking aside this is a great idea. Assuming it's accurate (and with John's involvement how can it not be) this will save a whole lot of hassle and hopefully mean we see less stab in the dark attempts when speculating a new ride.
 
Tim said:
Joking aside this is a great idea. Assuming it's accurate (and with John's involvement how can it not be) this will save a whole lot of hassle and hopefully mean we see less stab in the dark attempts when speculating a new ride.
Click to expand...

To be clear, John wasn't involved, he was just the inspiration and the code name! Actually, when he sees this topic, it'll be the first he knows of the project. :D
 
Why has this app allowed me to imagine a large group of enthusiasts stood clocking SW7s throughput in the queue next year?

Fantastic idea :)
 
Sam said:
Tim said:
Joking aside this is a great idea. Assuming it's accurate (and with John's involvement how can it not be) this will save a whole lot of hassle and hopefully mean we see less stab in the dark attempts when speculating a new ride.
Click to expand...

To be clear, John wasn't involved, he was just the inspiration and the code name! Actually, when he sees this topic, it'll be the first he knows of the project. :D
Click to expand...

Well I just checked it anyway and by my calculations it works perfectly so I'm sure he'll approve :p
 
Great idea, will give me the chance to measure the Nash next time I am at BPB - possibly will be the lowest throughput in the history of rollercoasters! I'll be downloading that straight away :)
 
Towers management could use this to check their teams are working hard enough! Love it! :p

Can it cope with the frequency of dispatches at EP, though?
 
AstroDan said:
Can it cope with the frequency of dispatches at EP, though?
Click to expand...

You'll have to test that out for me next month. ;)

Guys, I'd love feature requests and suggestions.

The next version of the app will probably have a list of 'pre-sets' activated by GPS. i.e. when you're at Alton Towers, it'll come up with a list of the rides there, and you can select one and it'll automatically know the number per train. :)
 
Well this is sheer brilliance! Can't wait to try it out sometime!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
mrbrightside said:
Well this is sheer brilliance! Can't wait to try it out sometime!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

now we can find out how dire Enigma's throughput really is.
 
Eventually if popular enough, I suggest putting it on the apple app store as well haha. I'm sure people would pay a simple 69p for it lol

I might test is on the mazes at TP as well, with an average of let's say 8 people per group, would be interesting.
 
Works on android tablets too. Its very good tbh

Managed to work out that air was running around 1072 at best today based on what we saw :p
Gone are the days of getting around 1500 on it :p
 
SamJ said:
Eventually if popular enough, I suggest putting it on the apple app store as well haha. I'm sure people would pay a simple 69p for it lol

I might test is on the mazes at TP as well, with an average of let's say 8 people per group, would be interesting.
Click to expand...

It's not viable to put it on the App Store. Apple charges an extortionate yearly fee just to own a developers account, and even disregarding that the entire app would have to be recoded for iOS which once again would take a lot of time and cost a lot of money through Apple's developer tools.
 
Not even I'm interested in throughput discussion and I think this is amazing! But doesn't this ironically mean that John and his Maths are now redundant because we can literally just get the app out instead? :p
 
Am I the only one who realy dosent give a toss about knowing what a ride's throughput is?

(nice piece of software though, cleverly made!)

;)
 
Thanks cotda! I'll PM you soon! :)

Edit: btw I'm aware this is the saddest thing I've ever done. Never gonna get laid again now!
 
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