Bay Islands Info

It appears that Bay Islands Guide (BIG) app is having some issues this morning.

We are aware of the outage, and looking into the cause at the moment. We hope to have it back online in the very near future.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Did you know that you can check your Go Card balance from within the Bay Islands Guide app?

It's easy, just following a few steps

1) Make sure that your Go Card is registered. You can do this on the Go Card website. (https://gocard.translink.com.au/webtix/)
2) Open up BIG and go to the "Go Card Balance" section found by pressing the MENU icon in the top left corner of the app.
3) Press the + button on the screen to add a new Go Card.
4) Fill in your Go Card details, add a name and choose the type of card.

That's it.

To check your balance, just open the app and go to the Go Card Balance section.

Good morning everyone.

Overnight, TransLink appears to have corrected their data feed, and ferry planning services are back up and running as per usual.

The signage at the Redland Bay Marina showing bus and ferry times are also working again.

I will be doing a write-up on this issue later today, and will post a link on this page, for those that are interested in the technical details of what happened, and what caused it.

I apologise again for the outage, but it was completely out of my control.

Thank you to everyone that sent me SMS, Email, and Facebook messages notifying me of the issue.

Due to a network wide TransLink outage, both the Translink journey planner and Bay Islands Guide are currently not functioning properly.

We are aware of the issue and working to resolve it as soon as possible.

Please note: This is TransLink outage, NOT an issue with Bay Islands Guide.

We have been made aware of a potential bug in the Bay Islands Guide app.

It seems that the bug is only affecting Android users, and only while using the 'Previous Ferry' option.

In some cases, it is possible for the app to return a non-valid result.

As an example, if you were to search for a ferry from REDLAND BAY to LAMB ISLAND on a weekday, after 1:50PM, you will correctly be given the 2:15PM service that leaves Redland Bay at 2:15PM and arrives at Lamb Island at 2:43PM.

HOWEVER, if you press 'Previous Ferry' you will INCORRECTLY be shown a 2:00PM service that arrives at 2:08PM. On closer inspection, the title does say "RUSSELL ISLAND TO LAMB ISLAND" but it's easy to miss.

We are now working on a fix to ensure this no longer happens, but it may take some time. In the meantime, please look closely at the results. This seems to be a fairly rare issue, but it does happen.

We've just released Bay Islands Guide v6.5.2 for Android.

This release fixes an issue that caused the app to crash when trying to set a 'ferry reminder' on newer Android versions.

You should automatically get this update over the coming days.

Do you need a spare car key?
Have you lost ALL of your car keys?

We support most makes and models of cars and motorcycles.

Transponder Keys, Keyless Entry, Smart Keys, Garage Remotes.

Car Keys Need a car key? We can help. Most makes and models.

Today we used the new "Notification" system built into Bay Islands Guide (BIG app) to send out some notifications about the ferry services.

Did you see the notifications today? Were they useful to you?

In the latest app update, you have the ability to select which category of notifications you wish to receive. To take a look at the settings, open up the BIG app and choose the menu icon in the top left of the screen (Android only, currently) and choose "Notification Settings". From there you can select the types of notifications you wish to receive.

Earlier this month, Google removed Bay Islands Guide from the Play Store.

This was due to some changes in their policy, to which we apparently did not conform to.

Today, we are pleased to announce that we have satisfied the Google Gods, and Bay Islands Guide is now available again in the Android Play Store.

While making the required changes, we also fixed a long standing bug that was causing some users to not be able to enter their Go Card information, for the "Go Card Balances" feature. This should now be resolved.

There are a couple of other outstanding bugs we also found, and are working on those at the moment. Expect an app update in the next few days.

SMBI Car Keys now has support for Land Rover Discovery II (TD5) key programming!

If you need a spare key for your Discovery II, get in touch to book in.

Car Keys Need a car key? We can help. Most makes and models.

Due to a data issue (thanks TransLink) there was an issue with the BIG app for trips from the mainland back to the islands this afternoon.

This should now be resolved.

Today's lesson: Never assume that large government agencies don't do stupid things and not check the format of their data.

In short, they had invalid characters in the 'alerts' part of the data, which we check (and are planning to add into the app in the near future).