Add Speed camera POI type
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james22
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Hello Rami,
There may be legal issues with speed camera in car navigation in some countries. Therefore I recommend to build GPSmid with OSM2GPSmid by your own and add the POI for it in the style file.
For example:
<key tag="highway">
<value name ="speed_camera">
<description desc="speed camera" />
<image src="speed.png" />
<namekey tag="maxspeed" />
<namefallback tag="name" />
<scale scale="20" />
<textscale scale="23" />
</value>
</key>
Does this help you?
That helps.
In a perfect world it would be a simple build option.
But thanks anyway.
It would be nice to also have a generic "signal on POI" usable on any type of POI nearby.
The signal could be used for speed cameras with an addition to style-file like one below. In all locations could be used to "signal on a fuel station nearby" with configurable distance or "signal on tourism attraction".
When signaling, gpsmid would be configurable to sound a voice signal and view the POI type, and (a configurable option) to offer to open the URL if there's one available.
I copy that. I'd like to welcome such an option as well. The first thing I would use it for is geocaching ;-) Whenever I come across a cache the phone will inform me with a audio signal...
As it seem that everyone has other preference to use such an option, it really should become an option in the style file. like
<audio distance="25" sound="bell.wav">
Is this possible to implement?
I now have speed camera support in the style file, like this:
The style-file addition below works for me, still would need to add the image speed.png.
The better suitable feature request for the more generic "alert on POI" feature can be found at https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2872366&group_id=192084&atid=939977 - I added a note about this thread there.
I've now added the icon to CVS. Please check if they are shown as I don't have an example at hand where there is a speed cam in OSM in my area.
As has been pointed out already, it can be problematic for legal reasons in several countries to implement a feature that will warn you of speed cams acoustically or visually, so I don't want to implement this.
So this topic should be taken care of for now, so I'm closing this request.
I think I'll start on this, maybe first by simply alerting when a POI/way with alert on is nearby. Not sure if to place this check on when the alert object is loaded from a tile for drawing, painted in image collecter, or what.
A more advanced implementation (I guess needed if we require long-distance alerts) would apparently involve a more advanced implementation with indexes/"alert tiles".
I have to say I'm no big fan of this feature as it mostly helps people at speeding.
I agree that there is the legitimate use for geocaching and *maybe* a few people will use it to get notified about nearby tourist attractions or so, probably while walking around.
I doubt that anybody will use it to find fuel stations or toilets or whatever someone might be searching for, as you usually actively want to find such a POI and do that with the search feature instead of aimlessly wandering around, hoping the POI approach feature will notify you that have you found something.
If you really want to work on this then make sure it does not impair performance when not activated as it certainly has the potential to do so as the check needs to be done after every position update if the feature is active.
Oh and if you start work on it then please change the status back to open and assign it to you.
Actually the note was misplaced, was meant for the tracker at https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2872366&group_id=192084&atid=939977
The general-purpose alert function is covered in a separate thread (so if someone has an objection over including the general-purpose alert altogether, that would be the more appropriate thread), but perhaps also some discussion is appropriate about a specific speed-camera alert function.
Here's a summary of an email I wrote in 2010 about speed camera alerts and speedtraps.
I understand in Germany an alert function warning about speedcam is against the law. This probably also shape's people's conceptions about what's sensible and ethical to do, so mentioning it here, in case there are people who don't know about this law.
I'm kind of ambivalent about whether features alerting of speed cameras / traps are a good thing. In Finland GPS alert equipment is legal and navigators are often advertised with speed camera alert features. It seems that navigators with speedcam alert are generally accepted and not frowned upon (not even by the police), but equipment with no navigation function, but only speedcam alert, is considered bad by the police.
From ethics point of view, I feel that on some roads, there's no reason to alert people of speed camers, as the cameras are placed in normal speed limit zones, and people should be driving by the limit. On these roads, I'm inclined against enabling alerts or supporting alert use. However on some other roads, the cameras are really placed so they're speed traps, placed e.g. <100 m after when the limit turns from 80 to 60. For those roads, I'm inclined towards the point that an alert would be warranted in those cases. One possibility would be to mark these cases on "OSM" as a hazard (which they are when many people quickly brake when noticing the speedcam), and alert on hazard tag, not speedcam tag. That would support leaving the "normal" speedcams without an ethically questionable alert.
----
To add to that from today's perspective, a few additional points and thoughts:
* the practical perspective for including a direct, easy to use camera alert - other navigators have speedcam alert, and that's what people at least around here expect a navigator to have. Obviously that's different in Germany (and possibly other countries) where the feature is not allowed.
* one option would be to have a speed camera alert automatically activate the overspeed alert. In this mode, I don't really see how the function would help people at speeding, rather the opposite, it would discourage people from speeding.
* there are probably numerous perfectly valid, useful and non-questionable uses for alerts users will come up, and leaving a generic alert function out because it could be used to avoid justified fines doesn't look like good reasoning to me
* one possible pro-safety use is hazard alerts; currently they don't seem to be used very commonly (e.g. in Germany only a bit more than 100), but hopefully will become more common. Things like warning about animal crossing, school, etc.
Along these lines, I'd be willing to include even a user-settable speed camera alert which would
* automatically switch on speeding alert
* show the speed camera alert in the speed alert signal with e.g. a "C", e.g. "C80". Would be useful also to be shown when not speeding, perhaps with a green or other non-alert color. (e.g. for the reason people might rapidly break when seeing the camera)
However, that said, I don't know if there are legal issues with even that functionality in some countries, and whether they lead to too much complications so it's better to leave the end-user feature out. One possibility would be to use a country-specific pseudo-API in building GpsMid like used now for some web links. The speed camera warning functionality would only be compiled in with certain countries defined. Or it would be compiled in by default, but not compiled for certain countries (where the feature is not allowed). But, as said, could be this would be too complicated, and might be better to leave out, just including the general purpose alert machinery.
>I doubt that anybody will use it to find fuel stations or toilets or
>whatever someone might be searching for, as you usually actively want to
>find such a POI and do that with the search feature instead of aimlessly
>wandering around, hoping the POI approach feature will notify you that have
>you found something.
The POI search is currently quite complicated to use for the purpose of e.g. finding a fuel station on a car trip. The alert function could at best be a much nicer and easier way to approach the issue of finding the services.
When e.g. on a long car trip, there are needs the car & passenger & driver has: fuel, toilets, food, drink, stops. What I'm after is that when one of the needs start to raise head, the user could tap a couple of buttons on GpsMid (instead of the dozen- or-so buttons with lots of looking at small text with the POI search), and have GpsMid be on the lookout for places where to stop. GpsMid would show distance to the desired type of place, the details (fuel station operator, cafe/restaurant type etc.) and limit the search to the "going direction" or to places near the set route.
When on the lookout, GpsMid will alert when a POI of desired type will come close, will sound & show an alert, and will show the POI highlighted (e.g. in a bigger size). This I have implemented already in an experimental version. To be added are distance limit (from current location but preferably also from route), limit to forward POIs only, and showing more info about the desired POIs.
Generally there are suitable places along the planned route at a suitable distance, so the "lookup mode" will work nicer than a POI search which searches for every direction, isn't yet able to show multiple results on map, and is UI-wise much more complicated to use.
Interestingly, there are claims that GPS-based speed camera -informing devices can be used legally in Germany. (as opposed to radar/laser-detecting ones). From a bit of googling around, it would seem that there's no court-tested interpretation one way or the other, but e.g. Tom-Tom says this:
"Driving abroad? You can keep using TomTom Speed Cameras in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK."
By google results, apparently at least in France & Switzerland a GPS-based device can get one into trouble. Based on TomTom's maps & list, also Denmark & Iceland are not listed, though it isn't clear if this is due to legislation or some other reason.
source for TomTom quote:
http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/services/speed-cameras/speed-cameras-europe/index.jsp
Closing the ticket, as the original request has been fulfilled.
Also, regarding camea alerts: I decided to add under a Finland API (meaning that it's not in the Android snapshot, but has to be compiled & distrubuted separately, not available as a snapshot currently) the function to show the speed camera alert in the speed alert signal with e.g. a "C", like "C80". The function is switchable on separately, but works only when speeding alerts are switched on. Audio alert alert file is not included yet, and I haven't yet done real-life testing, probably will need some changes for convenient usage.