Product 2: Sleepy Bus

← Back to the goal: 6 products in 2026

The second product in my goal of building 6 products in 2026 is Sleepy Bus — an app for everyone who takes a nap on the bus and is terrified of waking up three stops too late.

The idea came from Erik

The best part of this project is that the whole idea is my nephew Erik's. He and some classmates kept falling asleep on the bus and waking up way too late — and that is when it struck him that someone should make an app that wakes you up in time. That "someone" turned out to be the two of us: Erik with the idea, and me with the code. We built Sleepy Bus together.

And it is a good idea, because we have all done it: closed our eyes "just for a bit" on the way home, only to wake up far past where we were supposed to get off. Sleepy Bus solves this. You pick the bus line and the stop you are getting off at, lean back, and let the app keep watch. As the bus approaches, it wakes you up — so you can sleep safely the whole way.

"Sleep well – we'll wake you up!"

What it looks like

Features

• All Norwegian bus lines using data from Entur
• Choose your alert time — get woken 2, 5 or 10 minutes before your stop
• Powerful alarm with vibration and a custom wake-up sound that wakes you even with noise-cancelling headphones
• Sleep mode that monitors your location in the background, even when the screen is locked
• Favourite stops for quick access to the routes you use most
• Privacy first — your location stays on your device

How I built it

The app is built with Flutter, which makes it possible to write a single codebase for both iOS and Android. Bus lines and stops come from Entur, which collects route data for all Norwegian public transit.

The core is location monitoring: using the geolocator package, the app tracks where you are, calculates the distance to your stop, and triggers the alarm in time. When it goes off, flutter_local_notifications and vibration are used to wake you properly — sound and vibration at once. Location data is processed only on the device.

Flutter was a good choice because it lets me build a clean, responsive interface that works the same on both platforms, without maintaining two separate codebases.

More about Erik

Besides coming up with good app ideas, Erik is also a musician. You can find his music on Spotify — well worth a listen.

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