A friend of mine has created a site for tracking speed traps. I tried it out and it's pretty interesting. He wanted me to see if some others in the Bay Area would sign up and start sharing trap locations. If you are interested, here's the URL http://www.trapster.com

Thanks.

 

Hmm, interesting.

 

seems interesting.......there are a few on 280

so our cell phone rings everytime theres a speedtrap as we approach it?

 

Yes, it's like a portable radar detector, but it alerts you of reported speed traps.

 

Guys, I made a video because everyone who sent e-mails seemed a bit confused as to what this is. I really haven't had much time to work on it lately, but ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ZJ85LxBSM

 

Blackberry Pearl for T-mobile, I wish I could help though.

 

Very cool, I'll have to try this out.

 

by that do you mean using my BB8800

 

Guys - I've found an abundance of time to work on this, for reasons I won't go into here ;-)

but since some of you sent me e-mails that you were interested but didn't have a phone that would work ... I added functionality so you don't need to download any app or have GPS on your phone. You just say where you are (voice) and get alerts via SMS or e-mail. It's all here: http://www.trapster.com/downloadurls.php (see option 3 and section below on SMS). It uses a transcription service called Jott. I've tried several of them and this seems as good as any. Even if you don't need Trapster, you should check out Jott (it's free).

Also, JoeyG, I forgot that if you have one of those bluetooth GPS accessories for your Pearl it should automatically work as if there was internal GPS on the phone. I have not tested it though.

 

i'll try it out - you should post this in the NorCal section...

 

Starting a thread might be perceived as a violation of site rules / spam (even though I'm not selling anything ...) so I'd rather not ruffle any feathers. If you want to post it there I can answer questions or more importantly fix stuff that doesn't work.

Obviously it will work better for you if you can get a handful of people in your area using it. You don't need very many to cover an entire city (as traps are usually set up on major thoroughfares at busy times).

You definitely need to speak clearly and say *just* the address, and the complete address or intersection (either city/state, or zip if you know it)... and you can only report live speed traps using voice (you can use Web site to enter red light cams, speed cams, and usual hiding spots).

 

Not too shabby. So far the best implementation of the idea yet. I'd still like to see the site let anonymous users submit reports rather than having to login or be a member. Over time as the site grows and the user base is large enough, I'm sure more will be willing to sign up and be part of the community. Also how do you guarantee "freshness" of the content?

I'd love to see this kind of thing extended to a standalone GPS device. Someone should partner with one of those GPS companies like Garmin. Maybe that's just a pipe dream for now.

 

Well, hopefully it's the *only* implementation of the idea, as it's patented! :-) Photoenforced, Speedtrap.org, RoadAngel, are all speed trap related things, but fundamentally different. AwareSpot/Trapster is a mobile social network that uses a voting based algorithm, for users to collaborate in locating objects of interest. Speed traps is the first of many types of objects of interest - and frankly there isn't much financial upside in speed traps (women's clothing sales - chiqster.com ... now there's some $$). Trapster is a good testbed though, useful to this community, and obviously something of personal interest to me.
Sign up / login required for contributions for same reason it is here on 6 speed and most any other social network. Otherwise you get rampant abuse, can't monitor, etc.
To answer your "freshness" question: Live speed traps live in the system for a rolling window of time (30 min currently). Red light cams, speed cams, and hiding places stay for good. Credibility increases based on 2 factors:
num of votes on given object type in same location
"learned credibility" of users themselves
You can filter accordingly (though that's not a problem until usage skyrockets). e.g. you can say only warn me if more than 2 different users vote on same object in same location, and only if at least one of those is not a newbie user.
I put the red light cam reports in mostly for eye candy. Red light cam locations are public info. One part of me thinks I should scrape the public/govt sites so there are a lot of objects on the map. That would give the impression of a lot of users - sort of like some other sites. That won't help any given user though. The other part of me things I should just remove the red light cam feature completely. Red light cam alerts are just not that useful, for 2 reasons:
1) if there are red light cams in *your* area, I'm guessing you already have those locations memorized? I certainly do in my area. Here in SD we are quickly heading to a cam at every light. So why does someone want to pay for another device to remind you of them? And even with the mobile phone, do you want to leave the app running in foreground for that purpose? Or even have a device beep at you every time you approach one? Passport just came up with a GPS device to filter out nuisance alerts. I think red light cams are a good example of nuisance alerts.
2) what are you going to do with the information? i.e. will you run a red light because you didn't get beeped at? I hope not

Live police speed traps are different - location changes within minutes, and just about everyone tests the "intent of the law" wrt speed - daily. Now the trick is to establish credibility so the prankster doesn't drive around pressing the proverbial button. Any system can be tricked, but this voting based system would mostly take the fun out of it for pranksters.

I initially planned to make a device (many yrs ago when patent was filed). A good friend who manufactures GPS / EVDO devices in mass says he can have a unit built for me and out in probably a couple of months ... I can do it if enough people want one, but so far I don't get the feedback that anybody wants one? Break even cost for me would be about $100/unit or so assuming moderate volume, plus there's the EVDO fee (maybe $10/mo all said and done). But why buy yet another box? Even if you already have say a Garmin, and I got Garmin to integrate this, you would have to buy yet another box (another Garmin but this time one that has the "button" and wireless). Why not just use something you already have -- your cell phone? Garmin won't do it anyway - they already attempted to get in the mobile phone biz and it flopped. GPS is the easy part - the connection to allow sharing is the hard part.

 

some gps units allow you to sign up for traffic warnings and traffic/speed camera locational warnings

 

Are you talking about RoadAngel? They've been around a long time in UK. NavAlert (newer) has that too. Totally different concept. You periodically download a database to the device and it beeps when you approach a red light camera.

This is a totally different concept, totally different intent - almost-real-time, peer-to-peer, system, designed for locating non-stationary objects (e.g. police with radar/laser).