Inforad directional setting

farsat · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 17, 2007 Posts: 8

Hi,

I've been having a bit of an email debate with inforad lately about the "Directional" capability of my V3 device (which I've had for nearly two years now). I'll try to cut this down to the essentials:

Basically, at about the time they started using the PGPS database (and issued a new version of their Manager S/W) my unit appeared to stop being "directional" and started warning of roadside GATSOs in both directions. I found this very irritating as I was being warned of lots of cameras which I knew did not operate in both directions.

For ages I thought it was a fault of the unit and tried loading and reloading the database all to no avail. I even sent it back to Inforad, they checked it and said all OK, no fault with it.

Then I gave them a short list of cameras local to me which I pass regularly and which are all fixed, standard unidirectional GATSOs. They sent back photos of these (I was impressed!) but said:

In our database, those points (101115, 101112 and 101111 on the picture below) are declared as Gatso cameras monitoring on both sides of the road.

I’ve attached to this email the pictures of those 3 cameras that our controllers have taken in January 2009. You can see on these pictures that there are white stripes on both sides of the road, which means that the cameras are monitoring on both sides. If those stripes have been removed since January 2009, please let us know and I will modify those points in our database.

Being as the "stripes" referred to - even though they are on the wrong side of the road as well as the right one - are all in one direction from the camera I took this to mean that my respondent meant the cam would clock oncoming traffic as well at that going away from it. I suggested that this is not the way I understood the system to work and it only flashed the rear of vehicles. Suddenly the tune changed. In the next email I was told:

Indeed, all Gatsos cameras are "rear facing", but it is common for fixed Gatsos to be positioned so they can be turned around to check both sides of the road - but only one direction at a time.

Again, I don't think this is true. I think it is very uncommon and restricted in my experience to centre-reservation GATSOs only, not roadside ones. I again suggested to my correspondent that if this was true then the second set of stripes was in the wrong place (wrong side of the camera). Secondly, if a roadside camera was used in the "turned round" position it would flash in the eyes of oncoming drivers and this is the main reason, I understand, why they are not made bi-directional in the first place.

To be fair, my contact did offer to change the data for the cameras I mentioned if I was sure they were one way only (which I am). But this misses the point. How many other hundreds or even thousands of cameras are incorrectly flagged on the database? My unit seems to bleep all the time now with, I would estimate, more false alarms than genuine!

So, with apologies to anyone who has had the patience to read all this, my questions to anyone who can help are:

1 Is my understanding of how GATSOs work correct and is my contact at Inforad talking baloney? If so,

2 Does my experience accord with anyone else's?

3 Is it the PGPS data which incorrectly flags cameras as both way rather than one way? If it is, can someone please attend to it and correct what seems to be an error based upon serious misconception? Or is the directional info being added by inforad?

I do think this needs sorting out

Thanks again for reading
farsat

MaFt · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 2:52 am Post subject: Re: Inforad directional setting

farsat · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 17, 2007 Posts: 8

Thanks for that MaFt, it certainly does help!

I have now looked up the three local cameras to which I referred in my message and found that all three are in fact correctly labelled on the PGPS database as single direction. so that's good.

However, the mystery remains as to how or why Inforad manages to translate this correct information into "reversible" on their own version of the database?

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that on the map none of these cams actually have a visible symbol? The three in question (all suspiciously close to a speed limit symbol on the map) are:

1744@50H157, 1821@30H10, 278@50H0

If you know where the cameras are and hover and click at the right point then you get the info as you described, but otherwise you wouldn't even know there was a camera there, let alone what type it was! I wonder if the speed limit sign is effectively obliterating the camera symbol? This might explain inforad using an alternative source of data for these cams if they can't actually see them on the map?

Regards
farsat

MaFt · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:59 pm Post subject:

the speed limit sign IS the camera icon! Laughing

for gatso, truvelo, monitron it shows the speed limit sign, for mobiles you get an icon showing a tripod mounted camera and the speed on it, specs are shown by a camera icon on a yellow background etc.

MaFt

john877 · Lifetime Member Joined: Mar 16, 2007 Posts: 468

With regards the Inforad I own a K1 !!I noticed today a mobile camera which states it is reversible you are just get a warning in one direction and none when travelling the other direction .

The directional warnings do work with the inforad as other cameras are warned correctly but for some reason not on this mobile camera .
I have checked to make sure the device had the latest update which it did so I just wonder why its not picking this one up as it should ???

farsat · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 17, 2007 Posts: 8

farsat · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 17, 2007 Posts: 8

Darren · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:42 pm Post subject:

Because like any of these services, how can they possibly be accurate without the help of the user community?

They don't have huge teams of spotters or verifiers, if they did they couldn't afford to offer lifetime subscriptions.

They can only do it by buying in the data but as you see here, even then they can make mistakes in the import and when they do, the only way they will find out is when a user reports it.
_________________
Darren Griffin

farsat · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 17, 2007 Posts: 8

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