I am so glad you said this. With the boom of the tech industry, it feels like a lot of stuff is getting over engineered these days. Instead of products that focus on something that does it really well, it does its job mostly alright with half-broken bells and whistles.

Sure but if I add all the above complications then I get automated bus tracking system where everyone on their phone can see where the bus is and when it's arriving, I can track and automatically detect issues with traffic, with the bus, with the driver.

Sure you can do the simple announce but the even easier one is to just have the driver talk over a mic, he needs one anyway. There I one upp'd you on KISS. But there is a reason not to KISS.

You can publish wireless / Internet data on where the bus is, but keep the driver pressing buttons as the source of the data.

How often do you want the driver to press buttons? And how do you mark the intermediate positions in between bus stops? Because on any remotely complicated high congestion route, you will not get reasonable estimates if you only update at bus stops.

That's how it works in our (German) city. It works great.

I think you missed the implied /s

I think the GP was being sarcastic ;)

Except asking a bus driver to keep track of button pushing is distracting and could endanger the lives of the passengers or people outside. The stop needs to be announced 30-60 seconds before they arrive at the stop so then is driver is still actively driving. This is something the drivers union would be all over, it's not as straightforward as you assume.

If there's a long gap between the stops, people may forget what's the next stop. Announcing at the opening may be too late or the stop has to be long enough. Even for slow passengers in a crowded bus. Announcing a minute before the stop is a good heads-up that bus is approaching the stop and people should prepare.

Then make the delay for the announcement of the next stop adjustable, configured according to the timetable.

but the driver forgets to press the button and then people are affected. ah, was that my stop, why wasn't it announced?

That's why bus drivers get training. And if they don't perform as expected, it's not that hard to hire a better one.