4WM Review: MoDaCo CamerAware
Introduction
Safety Cameras, or as they used to be known, Speed Cameras, have become a fact of life in modern motoring, and like them or not they are here to stay. Even the most diligent of us runs the risk of a moment's inattention finding us a few mph over the limit. As it is legal to provide motorists with the wherewithal to locate cameras, presumably because this will achieve the result of slowing the traffic in high risk areas, a number of products have become available for that purpose, ranging from paper maps, to stand alone GPS location devices like the Road Angel, to software based solutions.
Until now, most software based safety camera detection has been part of satellite navigation systems. MoDaCo have identified a gap in the market for an easy to use and relatively compact application which does not have the overhead of large maps and processor intensive scrolling displays. Does it fulfil it's objectives? Read on to find out!
- Supplier: MoDaCo CamerAware
Price: £19.95 (£9.95 for MoDaCo Plus subscribers). No recurring charges.
Compatibility:WM5, WM2003SE PPC and Smartphone, QVGA, VGA, Square Screen, Portrait, Landscape. Microsoft's .net Compact Framework V2 SP1 is required.
With thanks to Paul O'Brian of MoDaCo for supplying the review software.
CamerAware uses a novel 'Proximity' system to alert the driver to safety cameras in the current area, and communicates via easy to see colour indications. It is based on a well established and frequently updated commercial safety camera database which provides co-ordinates, speed limit and camera type information for about 10,000 cameras in the UK. This can be updated via the program's user interface.
Other goodies include the display of your current speed and direction, and the option to upload your position to MoDaCo via a GPRS connection, for display on a web page showing a tracking map, of which more later.
The program is compatible with all versions of WM5, and with WM2003SE for Pocket PC, and is compatible with QVGA, VGA, Landscape and Square displays, with the default skin loading automatically for the display type. Needless to say, it requires a GPS receiver, and works with built-in, wired or Bluetooth models.
The User Interface
We normally present our reviews with installation and configuration features before explaining the program in use, but this time I think it would be better to show how it works in practice, and present the options later.
Assuming all the options are setup and the GPS system is connected with a fix, the various windows will be showing relevant information regarding camera proximity, current speed, current heading, camera type if in range, speed limit at the location of a camera in close range, number of cameras in range, GPS fix status and program status.
The most important of these is the Camera Proximity window. This is the topmost square on the right of the display, and can be coloured Green, Amber or Red, according to the following parameters, and according to which Camera types are selected in 'Options'
The window below the camera warning window shows the type of camera if in a Red zone, otherwise shows the status as 'Active'
Green: No safety cameras (of those types selected) within one mile of current position.
The other elements in the view are:
- Speed: Your current speed
Heading: Your current compass point, and bearing direction.
Satellite Status: The number of visible satellites and the type of fix (No fix with less than 3 satellites, 2D fix with 3 satellites or 3D fix with 4 or more satellites)
Program Status: The current time, number of cameras loaded (depending on camera types selected to detect in Options), and tracking position upload status.
Arrow Buttons: To notify additional or erroneous camera sites.
When in a Green or Amber zone, the three arrow buttons are selectable, and are used to log the position of new cameras in the current direction, opposite direction or both directions. See later for more details.
Amber: One or more cameras within one mile in any direction
When in an Amber zone, the small amber window under the camera status window shows how many cameras are within range.
Red: One or more cameras within 30 seconds in current direction of travel.
When entering a Red Zone, there will be a voice prompt alerting you to the type of camera, and if you are exceeding the speed limit, to slow down. The Red square will decrease height the closer you approach the camera; once you have passed, the square will return to Amber, unless you are approaching more cameras within 30 seconds.
While in a Red zone, the direction window will change to show the speed limit at the site of the next camera.
When in a Red zone, the small red window under the camera status window shows how many cameras are within range.
The 'Red Cross' button also becomes selectable whilst in a Red zone; this is to mark the position of a wrongly notified camera, of which more later.
Installation
Having run through the basic operation of CamerAware, perhaps I can now backtrack and explain the installation process, and configuration of the various options.
Before installing CamerAware itself, you must have Microsoft's .net Compact Framework V2 installed. This is available
from Microsoft . The current version can be installed to a memory card, as can the CamerAware program itself. Once the .net framework is installed and the device soft reset, you can proceed to install CamerAware. This is supplied as a PC based installer or a device 'cab' file. Running the installer prompts the usual message about location to install to. WM2003 users should install using the PC ActiveSync installer if they want to install to a location other than main memory, as the WM2003 OS doesn't prompt for location when running from a cab file. The installed file size is just under 3MB including the camera database, default skin files and a range of warning message sound files.
CamerAware can be run as a trial version prior to registration, mainly to assess whether it is compatible with your hardware. In trial mode, you can connect to your GPS receiver, and see a display of your current speed and heading, but you cannot access the camera database. Once you are satisfied that the hardware works, you can pay your licence fee and await your registration details. This is not an automated process- MoDaCo will email you your registration code. Once you have the code, open the application and select 'Options/Register', at which point you will need to enter your registration details, following which you can download the latest revision of the software if appropriate, then the safety camera database itself. The camera database is only about 80KB, so should be fairly quick to download, even over GPRS.
When running for the first time, the application is in Trial Mode until the first update is performed. The opening screen is the same whether registered or not, showing a number of empty text boxes, some coloured squares, a large grey square and some arrow buttons. At the bottom of the screen are menu buttons for Connect and Options.
Configuring CamerAware
Before running for the first time, it is necessary to set a few options. The most important of these is the GPS setup screen, accessed from Options/GPS Settings. This will allow you to set the COM port and baud rate of your GPS receiver. If you use the WM5 GPS Intermediary Driver (an integral part of the WM5 Control Panel, which allows you to select a software COM port rather than the hardware port) leave the settings at 'Auto', otherwise make the relevant selections from the dropdown boxes. Now tap 'Save' to return to the main screen. When your GPS device is turned on and communicating with the device, tap 'Connect' at which point the bottom window will show the current time and the number of cameras loaded; the next window up shows the GPS status- how many satellites are visible, and the status of the fix.
The Options menu has three entries: - Position: this is only available when the device has a GPS fix. Tapping 'Position' pops up a dialogue box showing your current latitude and longitude, useful for notifying your location in the event of a breakdown.
Cameras: This is only available when GPS is inactive, and selects for which type of cameras you wish to have notifications. These are for Gatso, Truvelo, Mobile, Specs, Temp and Other. The Mobile category is the largest forming 5600 of the total database of 9800 cameras. Next is Gatso with 3600. The large number of mobile sites means that you will be alerted to these positions even though there is unlikely to be a camera present at the site. It is your choice whether to turn off these notifications so save spurious warnings.
Settings: The items in this menu are:- Backlight always on: When selected, this keeps the backlight turned on at all times the program is active. When deselected, the backlight turns off according to your device settings, but turns on again when there is a camera warning.
Speed display setting: to select whether to display in KPH or MPH.
Upload Settings: This opens a screen to input your MoDaCo username and password if you want to take advantage of online tracking
Upload Enabled: This is a tick selector to enable your position to be uploaded to your tracking page. Your position, heading and current speed are sampled at one second intervals and uploaded at one minute intervals.
GPS Settings: Covered above
Check for Updates: When connected to the internet via any connection method, this will check first for any program updates, then for any camera database updates, giving the option to download the newer version if required.
About: Opens the 'About' screen showing the current program and database version numbers.
Additional Functions
Notifying Camera Sites
CamerAware has a row of four buttons near the bottom of the screen which create entries in a log file when new cameras are notified, or if there is an incorrect camera warning. Your local database (and indeed MoDaCo's central database) is not modified in itself- appropriate modifications are passed to the main database supplier, to preserve the integrity of the whole system.
During normal driving, in a Green or Amber zone, if you come across a new or previously unmarked camera, you enter its position by a finger press on the corresponding button- Up for current direction of travel, Down for opposite direction or Double for cameras in both directions. When pressed, you will need to dismiss a Yes/No dialogue box to confirm your intention.
When in a Red zone, and you are sure there is no camera present, a press of the red 'X' button will log the incorrect position, again after a confirmation dialogue box. If using this facility, make sure you are not notifying an inactive mobile site- if you simply don't want mobile cameras notified on your system, then use the Options/Cameras facility to stop being warned of mobile cameras.
These notifications are stored on your device until you exit CamerAware, which means you don't need to have a GPRS connection to make use of the feature- you can keep CamerAware open in the background until you are connected to the internet, then close the application and respond to another dialogue box asking if you want to upload the information.
The upload file will include your user credentials and MoDaCo will be using a number of safeguards to prevent erroneous camera site modifications to be entered into the master database.
Position Display
Tapping Options/Position when GPS is active will pop up a dialogue box showing your current position in Latitude and Longitude. This could be useful if you have a breakdown, or you want to accurately mark a feature for future reference.
Journey Tracking
An exciting and useful feature of CamerAware is the ability to send your GPS data stream to a MoDaCo server where it is processed into a visual track of your journey using Google Maps, Google Earth, or a hybrid of both. The data is collected every second and transmitted via GPRS once per minute. If GPRS is temporarily unavailable, the data is cached until the connection is restored.
Be warned though that this is fairly data intensive, and works out at approximately 250KB per hour, so make sure you have a sufficient data bundle in your airtime contract. The development version of CamerAware used one minute logging, which resulted in a much lower data rate, though the results were obviously less accurate. Even so, it would be nice to see an option for a lower data rate in a future release.
To utilise tracking, you need to be registered with MoDaCo. Registration includes a free of charge option, so ought not to present a problem. On your mobile device, you set the Upload Options with your MoDaCo username and password. Once set, the system will automatically connect and upload data whenever there is a GPS fix and GPRS connection, and if Options/Update is ticked.
To view your tracking data, you need to enter a special URL which includes your MoDaCo member identification. This can be protected from within your MoDaCo user profile to prevent anyone else seeing your map, or you can authorise any other MoDaCo member to have access, by entering their member ID's in a field in your profile. If you want to access your own tracking page from a public computer, you need to log into MoDaCo first, then your own tracking page will be available.
At the top of the map display is an option to view the GPS data for the current journey. This can be opened as an embedded Excel file, or saved as a CSV file containing per second information about location, heading, speed and time. As for the tacking page itself, this can be privacy protected by a setting in your MoDaCo Profile.
Currently, a 'New' journey is created whenever there has been a break of 30 minutes or more between uploaded data. The new track doesn't appear until you start uploading again, so your last journey will remain visible until you start a new one. Each journey is saved, but the facility to retrieve archived journeys is yet to be implemented.
For a real-time example of CamerAware tracking and the various ways to manipulate the view, you can visit Paul's tracking page
Here with thanks to Paul for allowing us to link to his map.
Due to the Java implementation, you can't view your track in Pocket IE, but you can see it using Opera for Pocket PC.
The following are examples of the types of map display- each can be clicked to show a bigger version.
Using CamerAware with other GPS programs.
The Windows Mobile 5 operating system has the ability to distribute GPS data to a number of applications simultaneously, using the GPS Intermediary Driver. The options for this are set in the Control Panel/GPS applet, though unfortunately a number of device manufacturers disable the control panel by default. For those Pocket PC devices which don't have the GPS Control Panel, there are registry modifications to enable it. The situation with WM5 Smartphones is more complex- the GPSID kernel is present, but there is no GPS Control Panel available, rendering the system virtually useless. There are specifically written routines which software developers can use to access the Smartphone GPSID, but it would require all developers to use the same configuration criteria to work in practice.
Until WM5 for the Pocket PC, all GPS devices and software needed to communicate through a specific COM port. Once an application had opened the port, other applications would be locked out of it, meaning you could only run one GPS program at once.
Using the GPSID, CamerAware can run at the same time as other GPS programs, so for example it is possible to have TomTom Navigator open and running at the same time as CamerAware. In this situation, if CamerAware is in the background, and senses that you are going into a Red zone, it will play the warning and pop-up into the foreground. Once minimised again, it will monitor in the background until the next Red zone is entered. Currently it doesn't auto minimise, so it is necessary to tap the titlebar 'Cross' to reset focus to the Navigation program, which is a bit tricky while driving, but something which is being addressed by the developer.
There are caveats I'm afraid! For some reason, TomTom Navigator (and most other navigation programs, so I believe) doesn't fully support the GPSID system of 'soft' COM ports. TTN is unable to open a GPSID com port, and will simply report 'no GPS Device'. But if a fully GPSID compliant application like CamerAware is opened first, so initiating the GPSID, TomTom will happily share the GPS connection. So, to have CamerAware and TTN operating together it is necessary to set TTN to use the software COM port as defined in the GPSID control panel, but to open CamerAware first.
Customisation
The CamerAware interface is fully skinnable, and Paul has developed a masked template, available in the CamerAware forums, for those who want to make their own skins in Photoshop. These are available in all the current display formats. In addition, the various elements of the interface can be included/excluded from the XML definition file, and there are likely to be new elements of display available in the future- journey time, average speed, max speed etc.
Audible notifications can be customised at will- as long as the name of the file in CamerAware/sounds folder is not changed, you can create your own files in WAV format. There may also be some alternative sound files available from the CamerAware website in the future.
As well as the various skins, you can see here the effect of the different screen sizes. The square skin has not yet had 'camera modify' arrows added.
Summary
Pros
Usability
Active development by MoDaCo
Low initial price
No recurring charges
Journey tracking facility
Potential for customisation
Use of WM5 GPS Intermediary Driver
Cons
Potentially high data charges using tracking
No 'Finger Press' minimise button, or Auto Minimise
No 'Night Mode' display
Conclusion
4WinMobile Rating : 95%
Paul at MoDaCo has produced an excellent and easy to use program that delivers exactly what it promises- a clear and accurate tool to warn of Safety Cameras in the vicinity in which you are driving. For compatible systems, this is a great adjunct to Satellite Navigation systems when run simultaneously. It is failings in the Operating System, or other developers which prevents this being a universal facility.
Most of the 'Cons' are being actively addressed, leaving only the high data costs to contend with; but as this is optional, it remains at the user's discretion how many journeys to track and how much data needs paying for.
Linear Mode
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