On 03/07/2010 07:40, Mizter T wrote:

On Jul 2, 10:15 pm, "Paul


There are a fair number of ITSO smartcard gatelines already operational on
SWT's main routes (although outside London), so St Pancras is not the
first...

You mean (I think) ITSO *and* Oyster compatible gates - all SWT
gatelines within the London zones (e.g. the massive array at Waterloo,
Surbiton, Earlsfield etc etc).

There are are readers (though not gates) at least as far away at
Brockenhurst and Sherbourne, and I don't those non-London ones take Oyster?

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Mizter T wrote on 03 July 2010 07:58:32 ...

On Jul 3, 7:34 am, Paul wrote:

In message
,
Andrew writes

Oyster was meant to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear
to be happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

I think that the basics for Oyster/ITSO compatibility must be in place,
because all Freedom passes issued in the last few months speak ITSO as
well as Oyster (although I imagine that the Oyster implementation is
quite basic on Freedom cards).

Though the Freedom Pass change need not necessarily have meant any
changes on the validator side of things - the new Freedom Pass being a
combined MiFare (Oyster) and ITSO standard card.

According to the London Councils site, TfL did have to make changes to
their gates and reader network to handle the new cards.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

On 2 July, 23:30, Matthew Geier
wrote:
On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:47:15 -0700, Andrew Cullen wrote:
Oyster was meant to
be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be happening. I
believe its a similar situation at SWT.

*They have changed something, last year when in London, I discovered the
LU readers were responding to my Singapore CEPAS card, where as the
Oyster readers on the buses were ignoring it.

*In fact they were responding to the CEPAS card while it was still in my
pocket and I was holding the Oyster in my hand next to the gate reader.

*Experiments with the ticket machines at Earls Court revealed the ticket
machine would respond to the Singapore CEPAS card at 30-40cm where as the
Oyster had to be with in 10cm. It's actually a surprise the security
people didn't come over and ask what I was doing :-)

If that's not fixed it would be a disaster. It's about the distance
one's pocket would be from the reader when going through a gate with a
paper travelcard or other ticket, or walking past a reader in a
crowded corridor.

On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:52:20 -0700, Mizter T wrote:

All that said, I realise I'm making the massive presumption that the
Singapore CEPAS card might be similar to the ITSO standard, but that's
hardly self-evident

It would expect that like the 'over the air' protocol, the 'file system'
would also be covered by appropiate ISO standards.

- ITSO is a British standard, of course that doesn't
mean that it can't be adopted elsewhere, but a quick glance at the wiki
article for CEPAS doesn't instantly betray it as being an ITSO

I doubt there is any thing in common, BUT if the file system is
standard, an ITSO reader is going to authenticate with the card, list the
files and then find it can't actually make sense of any of them. One
would also hope that it would refrain from damaging any file it doesn't
understand the content of.

Particularly in Europe it's not going to be uncommon to find foreign
cards with in the reader field when people travel and forget to remove
the other card from their wallet. The long read range I was seeing with
the Singapore CEPAS card is a bit of a worry though.

My wife actually noticed it - I was putting my Oyster on the reader, the
gates were opening, but as I walked past the gate erupted in a beeping
frenzy as it tied to read the CEPAS card in my pocket.

On Jul 3, 9:15 am, Arthur Figgis wrote:

On 03/07/2010 07:40, Mizter T wrote:

On Jul 2, 10:15 pm, "Paul
There are a fair number of ITSO smartcard gatelines already operational on
SWT's main routes (although outside London), so St Pancras is not the
first...

You mean (I think) ITSO *and* Oyster compatible gates - all SWT
gatelines within the London zones (e.g. the massive array at Waterloo,
Surbiton, Earlsfield etc etc).

There are are readers (though not gates) at least as far away at
Brockenhurst and Sherbourne, and I don't [think] those non-London
ones take Oyster?

I can only assume that these standalone smartcard readers don't read
Oyster - because they have no need to read Oyster, given that Oyster
ticketing is not valid outside of London (ok - a Travelcard loaded on
Oyster in conjunction with a Boundary Zone extension ticket is valid,
but you know what I mean!).

So we have gatelines with smartcard readers that have dual-capability
- Oyster *and* ITSO (for the forthcoming SWT smartcard) - the question
in my mind is whether they'll manage to sort out standalone smartcard
readers that also have this dual-capability, for installation at non-
gated stations within the London zones.

Example - North Sheen is an SWT station within the London zones that's
unlikely to ever be gated. At present it has a standalone Oyster
reader - what needs to happen is for that reader to be capable of
reading ITSO-standard railway smartcard (e.g. the forthcoming SWT
smartcard). The situation that absolutely needs to be avoided is for
there to be two separate smartcard readers side-by-side - an Oyster
reader and an ITSO card reader - because this would just cause maximum
passenger confusion. The worry, of course, is that it's all to easy to
see something utterly daft like this happening!

I *think* part of the reason SWT were so difficult about coming round
to the idea of accepting Oyster PAYG within London was that they were
in some dispute with the DfT as to how their ITSO smartcard scheme
would function alongside Oyster - I speculate that one of the problems
may have been the details as to how to get these two systems to mesh -
with DfT perhaps attempting to wash their hands of the details, and
TfL only really being interested in deploying the Oyster system (what
with the ITSO smartcard system being an SWT franchise commitment,
rather than something that directly involves TfL).

On Jul 3, 10:05*am, MIG wrote:

On 2 July, 23:30, Matthew Geier
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:47:15 -0700, Andrew Cullen wrote:
Oyster was meant to
be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be happening. I
believe its a similar situation at SWT.

*They have changed something, last year when in London, I discovered the
LU readers were responding to my Singapore CEPAS card, where as the
Oyster readers on the buses were ignoring it.

*In fact they were responding to the CEPAS card while it was still in my
pocket and I was holding the Oyster in my hand next to the gate reader.

*Experiments with the ticket machines at Earls Court revealed the ticket
machine would respond to the Singapore CEPAS card at 30-40cm where as the
Oyster had to be with in 10cm. It's actually a surprise the security
people didn't come over and ask what I was doing :-)

If that's not fixed it would be a disaster. *It's about the distance
one's pocket would be from the reader when going through a gate with a
paper travelcard or other ticket, or walking past a reader in a
crowded corridor.

Not sure there's much if anything TfL could do about it - it sounds
like it's an issue with the design of the Singaporean CEPAS card (or
card system) which is 'over-sensitive' and wakes up and pings back a
'hello I'm here' message when there's any RFID smartcard reader
vaguely close by. The fact this doesn't happen with an Oyster card
means the Oyster system was designed only to work in very close
quarters ('touching distance' away).

Of course this does mean the entire system is a white elephant and
should be abandoned immediately before the world falls apart. ;-)

On Jul 3, 9:55*am, "Richard J." wrote:

Mizter T wrote on 03 July 2010 07:58:32 ...

On Jul 3, 7:34 am, Paul *wrote:

Andrew wrote:
Oyster was meant to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear
to be happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

I think that the basics for Oyster/ITSO compatibility must be in place,
because all Freedom passes issued in the last few months speak ITSO as
well as Oyster (although I imagine that the Oyster implementation is
quite basic on Freedom cards).

Though the Freedom Pass change need not necessarily have meant any
changes on the validator side of things - the new Freedom Pass being a
combined MiFare (Oyster) and ITSO standard card.

According to the London Councils site, TfL did have to make changes to
their gates and reader network to handle the new cards.

Yes, I recall that. I wonder whether those changes may have actually
been about equipping the gates to handle the new "MiFare DESFire" card
type that TfL is now using for Oyster cards (as opposed to the older
"MiFare Classic") - presumably the Oyster side of the Freedom Pass (as
opposed to the ITSO side) is a DESFire card, IYSWIM.

"Mizter T" wrote

I *think* part of the reason SWT were so difficult about coming round
to the idea of accepting Oyster PAYG within London was that they were
in some dispute with the DfT as to how their ITSO smartcard scheme
would function alongside Oyster - I speculate that one of the problems
may have been the details as to how to get these two systems to mesh -
with DfT perhaps attempting to wash their hands of the details, and
TfL only really being interested in deploying the Oyster system (what
with the ITSO smartcard system being an SWT franchise commitment,
rather than something that directly involves TfL).

From the point of view of the passenger with a travelcard season from
Guildford to Zone 2 he wants a ticket which will open gates wherever his
ticket is valid. He also wants to load PAYG on to it for journeys into zone
1. His card will presumably have to be both ITSO and Oyster compatible, but
he won't want complications (or double charging) if he goes through a gate
with both capabilities.

Peter

"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

On Jul 2, 10:15 pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

There are a fair number of ITSO smartcard gatelines already operational on
SWT's main routes (although outside London), so St Pancras is not the
first...

You mean (I think) ITSO *and* Oyster compatible gates - all SWT
gatelines within the London zones (e.g. the massive array at Waterloo,
Surbiton, Earlsfield etc etc).

No, I meant 'outside' the London zonal area, where they are ITSO compatble,
but not Oyster compatible, and the 'Stagecoach Smart' card is in use.

AFAICT the ITSO/Oyster dual operation within the zones is still not ready.

Paul S

"Mizter T" wrote in message
...



I *think* part of the reason SWT were so difficult about coming round
to the idea of accepting Oyster PAYG within London was that they were
in some dispute with the DfT as to how their ITSO smartcard scheme
would function alongside Oyster - I speculate that one of the problems
may have been the details as to how to get these two systems to mesh -
with DfT perhaps attempting to wash their hands of the details, and
TfL only really being interested in deploying the Oyster system (what
with the ITSO smartcard system being an SWT franchise commitment,
rather than something that directly involves TfL).

AIUI, in SWT's franchise spec [mostly now redacted information] it stated
that DfT would ensure that TfL would make Oyster compatible with ITSO cards.
This hasn't happened in the timescales DfT stated, hence SWT possibly
believe DfT have defaulted.

Paul S