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Comment by tjohnell | Hacker News Reader

Hi all - author of Pike here. Happy to answer any questions.

Hi, using the app now and it's been great fun. (Now if my wife would actually take an exit so we could eat!)

However, we're on 290 E and it's showing me the exits that are behind us – as if it thinks we're westbound. Is there any way to convince it we're not?

Hi, great write up and very cool project! I was wondering how you arrived at the idea to use OSRM and pre-computing the drive time from every exit to every POI. Was that something you learned existed along the way? Did Claude/codex point the way to this?

Hello, I appreciate the kind words. When I realized that radial search just wasn't going to be accurate (and potentially harmful given people might exit onto another interstate thinking they could grab some Wendy's), I posited to Claude: "I need to understand reachability of a POI from an exit, reachability being defined as driving time less than X amount of time". Claude then suggested two open-source projects: Valhalla & OSRM. I haven't done much research on Valhalla - Claude ultimately recommended OSRM for its "simplicity" but again, I don't honestly know if that's true. Claude can definitely be credited with my decision to choose OSRM.

Hi Tom, this app looks great! Would you consider making it available in App Store regions outside the US?

(I understand it's meant for US drivers but e.g. my Apple Account predates my move to the States)

Hi jmx, I hadn't considered that scenario. I'd be happy to as long as Apple doesn't have me jump through too many hoops. I don't mind a few hoops though.

Not available on Android? I do notice several other apps with the same name and different purposes on the Play Store.

No Android app - however, using the current app as the spec, it would be interesting and fun to take on creating the Android version. I really don't believe it would be that hard. Stay tuned.

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