Avantix Machine & "Not Via..........."

[transportphoto]

They, from what I can tell, are a PDA slotted into a printer. As to if it is a Dell PDA for example I am unsure.

TP

 

[Paul Kelly]

The printer was designed for Atos Origin (or Sema as it was then) by a company called Blazefield. Blazefield sub-contracted another company called IDAC to do some ruggedness testing - some interesting details here: http://www.idac.co.uk/consulting/casestudies/Blazepoint/

So the hardware design was done by other companies. The shoddy software would seem to be the sole responsibility of Atos Origin.

 

[trentside]

They, from what I can tell, are a PDA slotted into a printer. As to if it is a Dell PDA for example I am unsure.

That's correct - they're a standard PDA slotted into a printer. I'm not sure what make or model the PDA is, but I imagine it is an adapted commercial product - it certainly runs on Windows. I think a major problem with the Avantix is that the PDA element already suffers from being 'yesterdays' technology - not that this is an excuse for poor performance and lack of fixes for software problems.

My contact with Avantix is just setting up bags for conductors going out on duty - just loading the PDA up to check the battery levels can take quite sometime. There also appear to be regular problems of various kinds with the PDAs, printers and Thyron card readers - that's without throwing in the Smartcard readers (though I'm not sure that they communicate with Avantix). It's genuinely surprised me how shoddy they are!

 

[Flamingo]

PDA is a cassio Cassiopeia pocket pc (IT-10M30BR) running an old version of Windows Mobile

 

[Matt Taylor]

I rarely have issues with the PDA itself but frequently have trouble with the connection from the PDA to printer, 'No printer connected' is the most common error I get. Another annoyance is having to do a timetable enquiry followed by a check of ticket restrictions before being confident of issuing the correct ticket for the journey being made if someone is doing an unusual journey (cross London/Reading in particular).

 

[GadgetMan]

I rarely have issues with the PDA itself but frequently have trouble with the connection from the PDA to printer, 'No printer connected' is the most common error I get. Another annoyance is having to do a timetable enquiry followed by a check of ticket restrictions before being confident of issuing the correct ticket for the journey being made if someone is doing an unusual journey (cross London/Reading in particular).

I had a passenger a few weeks ago request a ticket from A-B and asked if they could travel via X. I wasn't sure so I sold them the ticket and said I'd find out for them at the next station we stopped at as we had a couple of minutes dwell time.

When I asked the clerk in the ticket office, she put in the origin, destination and via X. Her screen came back with No Tickets matching criteria (or a similar message), therefore not a Valid route she says.

Putting aside the argument that her system may have been wrong, why can't the Avantix be loaded with similar software making it possible to check if certain routes are valid with available tickets.

 

[SickyNicky]

Putting aside the argument that her system may have been wrong, why can't the Avantix be loaded with similar software making it possible to check if certain routes are valid with available tickets.

I'm not sure a mobile system of that age would be capable of doing this. The routeing guide is pretty complex and coding it accurately is not easy and would need a fair amount of memory and processing power.

When (if) the new base maps come out and replace the routeing guide, the need for complex algorithms will disappear but there will be an individual map for every combination of origin and destination to store, which will consume a fair amount of memory.

 

[island]

I think the answer to the question "why is such an old system still in use" might well be "because of ticket gates". Imagine the hassle if we were still in SPORTIS world and didn't have the capacity to mag-encode the tickets! The handheld machines carried in Germany/Switzerland/etc. have larger screens but don't need a bulky printer with fan-fold stock, as they use thermal roll-fed stock.

It's worse in Ireland, where the Creuzet mobile machines are the size of about half a briefcase and the conductor has to carry eleventy billion different types of manual-feed stock.