Safety Camera service

[ahasher]

Can someone explain how to select Safety Camera Service better than TT HOME. I am curious to test it and see if it is useful, and I can see it on TT HOME, Safety Cameras - USA CAN Free of Charge and it's location as stored on my computer. I try selecting it to add to my nav device (740 LIVE) . After clicking ADD and, DONE, nothing changes,. OK, anyone mess with this option to try it? And if so, how do you set on the device? Thanks, all.

 

[gatorguy]

I've been using it for a couple of weeks. I've yet to receive an alert other than in response to one I bogus-posted (temporary camera) to test the reaction time. Took approx 5 minutes, maybe a bit longer, before I received an audible alert. I stayed at the same location until I received it. So I think it could be useful if enough TT users had the service and used it. That's a big if tho.

 

[Wave Mechanic]

TT Support Says Safety Camera Service is N/A in US/Can

I've been using it for a couple of weeks. I've yet to receive an alert other than in response to one I bogus-posted (temporary camera) to test the reaction time. Took approx 5 minutes, maybe a bit longer, before I received an audible alert. I stayed at the same location until I received it. So I think it could be useful if enough TT users had the service and used it. That's a big if tho.

Personally I have had not gotten any Safety Camera alert, despite navigating (live and in Demo mode) past documented camera locations. I been also not been able to find anyone on the 'net in the US/CAN who can say where there is a Safety Camera location that will trigger an alert.

I've been regularly updating my One IQ Routes (aka 140S, w/App=8.414 and map=835.2460) via Home2, including the Safety Cameras feature, and in Home2's "Manage>Safety Cameras>Safety Cameras - USA, CAN - Free of Charge>More Info" link it reports that I have Safety Cameras Version 3586 (128K).

in the USA_Canada_and_Mexico_P folder on my TT there are two files that appear to corroborate this: Safety_Cam_US_Canada_TomTomOV2.ver (1kb), and Safety_Cam_US_Canada_TomTom.ov2 (40kb - a mismatch there with the reported size in Home).

And, on my TT, I can see various Safety Camera functions (in the TomTom Services>TomTom Safety Camera menu, e.g. "Report Safety Camera", "Update Safety Cameras" (a tip to use Home), Change warning preferences" (which I have set to sound an alert), "Disable Alerts" (showing alerts are currently enabled), and "Enable Report Button" (for the quickmenu). Finally, in the lower left corner is the text, "Last safety camera update: No info available".

So this morning (9/17) I called TT Support and spoke with Sara. I told her the information above, and asked what "No info available" meant. She informed me that "TomTom does not currently support the Safety Camera Service in North America", that "Safety Cameras are only supported in Europe", and that "I can check back on their website periodically to see if they have begun supporting this service".

She also said that the Safety Camera service was "accidently provided to some customers" but repeated that it was not currently working. She agreed with me that it appeared that the updates in Home2 were working, and the Safety Camera menu item under TomTom Services on my device was active, and the Home2 upload-new-safety-camera-info feature seemed to accept my manually-entered locations when I did a Home2 update, but repeated that the Safety Camera features on my US/Can TT were not going to work until TomTom begins supporting them. She had no information about when this might happen.

SO - in summary, according to TomTom Support, Safety Cameras are NOT working in the US/Canada.

One last observation: in researching Safety Camera files I have seen users in Europe report *three* files in their map directories: the two types mentioned above and a third with a .dct extention, i.e. "Safety_Cam_(nation-name)_TomTom.ov2.dct". I have not found anyone online with a file of this type, which for US/Can I think would be Safety_Cam_US_Canada_TomTom.ov2.dct. If anyone *has* this file, please post here!

 

[gatorguy]

Apparently it does work in the US, tho TomTom may not be making a pre-defined camera list available to NA, so it wouldn't be complete of course. I verified that I can report cameras and get alerts back by setting/reporting a "temporary" camera. Within 5 minutes or so my 740 did alert me that I was in the area of a traffic camera.

 

[Germerican]

I recall receiving a red light camera alert recently somewhere in Palatine, IL. I think it may have been at the intersection of Northwest Hwy & Palatine Rd. I'm at work right now and can't check.

According to a local newspaper article from 2008 I just found, 7 locations in Palatine, IL were supposed to receive red light cameras.

? Plum Grove Road and Illinois Avenue

? Rand and Hicks roads

? Rand and Dundee Road

? Hicks and Dundee

? Algonquin and Roselle roads

? Northwest Highway and Quentin Road

? Northwest Highway and Palatine Road

I'll check 'em out tonight to see if I get any alerts.

 

[Wave Mechanic]

Apparently it does work in the US, tho TomTom may not be making a pre-defined camera list available to NA, so it wouldn't be complete of course. I verified that I can report cameras and get alerts back by setting/reporting a "temporary" camera. Within 5 minutes or so my 740 did alert me that I was in the area of a traffic camera.

Hi Gatorguy - Thanks for your reply.

Sorry that I cross-posted my remarks in the general forum: I saw this forum is dedicated to GO devices like your 740, which unlike One/XLS TT's like mine use Live Services and could possibly get Safety Camera location data through a different mechanism. My thread in the general forum is now locked so I will continue here.

My post was to alert users that according to TT Support, Security Camera alerts do not work in US/Canada. It surprised me to learn that, given how Home2 reports the service is installed and working. And I believe it will also surprise all the North American TT owners that like me have been installing updates to this service.

Like you suggested, I entered a "temporary" camera location in the Safety Camera Service menu. When I set up a route taking me past that location and played the demo of that route, I saw the camera icon and got an alert immediately as I reached the time-to-reach-camera threshold (I used the default setting of 15 seconds). I'm not sure what caused your 5-minute delay: maybe if you setup the location and remained stationary instead of running a route demo, GPS drift set off the alert in your test.

NOTE: If others try doing this, they may wish to pick a real camera location for their test, as I can find no obvious way to delete test camera locations in the ONE/XLS or Home2 menus. Neither removing and reinstalling the Safety Camera Feature in Home2 nor deleting the "reported safety camera" files removed the test camera. I'm trying a complete restore now...

Personally, I hope that Sara, the person I spoke to at TT Support this morning, misspoke. After all, there's 40kb of data in the .ov2 file, so there may be a limited dataset of camera locations available for US/Canada. If anyone reading this knows of a way of translating that .ov2 data into .kml or some other format which can be mapped, perhaps they could post it here so we can confirm this one way or another.

But - if TT support is correct, then US/Canada users like me have been misled into thinking we have a working Safety Camera service. Until my call with TT Support this morning, I was convinced that my TT had that capability. I hope others benefit from what I learned.

 

[doctormstein1]

Apparently it does work in the US, tho TomTom may not be making a pre-defined camera list available to NA, so it wouldn't be complete of course. I verified that I can report cameras and get alerts back by setting/reporting a "temporary" camera. Within 5 minutes or so my 740 did alert me that I was in the area of a traffic camera.

tomtom keeps saying that their are too many rules and regulations that are different in each state so they do not have any safety cameras and have no idea if they will ever have some.

 

[Wave Mechanic]

tomtom keeps saying that their are too many rules and regulations that are different in each state so they do not have any safety cameras and have no idea if they will ever have some.

Hi Doctormstein - Thanks for your contribution. You confirm what TT Support told me this morning, about there being no idea when they would support the Safety Camera service. But the latest version of Home certainly gives the impression that this service is currently available:

Third-party providers of Safety Camera data (mentioned in my earlier posts) seem to have successfully overcome these obstacles. Could you please provide any links you may have where TomTom makes the statements you attribute to them? Maybe we can help TomTom fulfill the expectations their update offering raises for US/Canada customers like ourselves!

 

[ahasher]

Good to see others have looked into this feature.. I'm using traffic alerts and weather daily while in my 3 mos trial.. to see if it's worth the $..and I will be taking a trip to Atlanta soon to really test it, but i have a question about HOME.. I get to the screen similar Wave Mechanic posted (thanks) but don’t see any changes after I click ADD on my options.. I'd like to set a test light, as garorguy did, here in N.O. but not sure how to get to the 740 menu to do this... Interesting how it seems to be offered but no details on its use (that i can find anyway) so I will follow the great information shared here!

 

[azak]

Wave Mechanic:
How very strange! I have the same unit and map version as you but my ov2 file is only 9KB and I don't see a Safety Cameras item in Manage. I've never seen updates for Safety cameras in Home either. On the other hand, I did receive *three* safey camera warnings while driving in Alpharetta (an Atlanta suburb) the other day. I don't know for sure that there are red light cameras at those locations but all three were large intersections and I know there are cameras installed in Alpharetta.
One thing that may be different about my TT is that it came originally with a version 825 map and while it had that I purchased and installed a France map. Maybe the presence of the France map somehow confused the software into working in the US (even though I removed the France map in order to install the 835 US/Can/MEX map).

 

[gatorguy]

When I added the Safety Cameras several days ago, I didn't have to do anything for it to work. It added an icon on the main screen that I suppose is representing a camera with a small green plus sign. Tapping on it allows reporting of cameras and speed traps. BTW, earlier I referred to "temporary cameras". I should have said that I reported a "Temporary Speed Trap". It does go away as it should, tho I neglected to see how long it stayed active.

This is with the 740.

 

[Wave Mechanic]

Wave Mechanic:
How very strange! I have the same unit and map version as you but my ov2 file is only 9KB and I don't see a Safety Cameras item in Manage. I've never seen updates for Safety cameras in Home either. On the other hand, I did receive *three* safey camera warnings while driving in Alpharetta (an Atlanta suburb) the other day. I don't know for sure that there are red light cameras at those locations but all three were large intersections and I know there are cameras installed in Alpharetta.
One thing that may be different about my TT is that it came originally with a version 825 map and while it had that I purchased and installed a France map. Maybe the presence of the France map somehow confused the software into working in the US (even though I removed the France map in order to install the 835 US/Can/MEX map).

Hi Azak -

On my 140S I find the Safety Camera submenu is at the upper right in the TomTom Services menu, which is the lower left icon on the 2nd screen of two in my main menu.

Home can be updated by installing the latest version from the Home page, at TomTom, portable GPS car navigation systems -- hope this helps!

The first "Safety_Cam_US_Canada_TomTom.ov2 " I had on my TT 140S was also 9k. The next Home update was 36k, and the most recent is 40k. Using the online ov2>kml converter at POI Visualizer - OV2 to KML map tool - online POI data tools from GPS Data Team I created three kml files. Only the first, 9k file reads in GoogleEarth - the others get an 'invalid token' parsing error.

But the converted 9k file does show camera locations on GoogleEarth:

http://www.dickbrain.com/TT9K.KML

(DISCLAIMER: the data used to create this file was provided by TomTom as a FREE update: there is no indication of any restriction on its distribution in the open kml format. Furthermore, TT Support says the service is not working for US/Canada customers so this data has limited or no value, and is duplicated (and greatly exceeded) by other datasets freely available online. That said, if there are any objections to this posting I will remove it.)

OK - I'm going to see if I can get an alert from a demo route at one of those locations - later today.

When I added the Safety Cameras several days ago, I didn't have to do anything for it to work. It added an icon on the main screen that I suppose is representing a camera with a small green plus sign. Tapping on it allows reporting of cameras and speed traps. BTW, earlier I referred to "temporary cameras". I should have said that I reported a "Temporary Speed Trap". It does go away as it should, tho I neglected to see how long it stayed active.

This is with the 740.

Hi again Gatorguy -- I've been researching the documentation for your GO 740 Live at TomTom, portable GPS car navigation systems - Support home and there's no mention of cameras anywhere in the manual (created 2/20/2009). On the other hand, there's extensive documentation of the Safety Camera Service in the manual for my TT ONE 140S (created 4/17/2009). So - this is evidently a relatively new feature proposed (provided? we'll see!) by TomTom.

This gets back to my original issue, which is that everything I've seen from TomTom about my 140S suggests that it has this capability. If I don't get alerts at the GoogleEarth locations from the 9k file, I may try reloading that ov2 into my TT device and trying again. Either way I will try to update TT Support with my findings - and post again later today.

One last observation: I encourage those with an interest in this subject to check out photoenforced.com. They're using grydz to crowd-source data on locations, camera operators and GPS device alert capabilities. The allure of easy revenue-generation for local governments virtually guarantees that Safety Cameras will be increasingly common. GPS-enabled Safety Camera alerts can help us drive more responsibly in the face of this development, and everyone will benefit from enriching the available databases.

 

[gatorguy]

Correct, WaveMechanic, on the Safety Cameras being a recent addition to the 740's. My gut feeling is it's been offered more to gather data for the benefit of TomTom more than a service to the 740 owners. Perhaps in a few months it may be much more useful. But as I noted, I've received no alerts even when passing known locations in both Lakeland and Orlando. The 2 Orlando cameras I passed did give an alert to my nuvi using the 3rd party files from POI-Factory.

 

[Wave Mechanic]

<snip>OK - I'm going to see if I can get an alert from a demo route at one of those locations - later today.

Here's an update: the 9k file has garbage data. Some locations looked plausible, but on GE there were cameras out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Next I tried looking at the data in the 40k ov2 file currently loaded on my TT after converting *it* to kml, which as-exported gave that parsing error in GE. I fixed some syntax (and some corrupted location data, where a name string had been replaced by random-looking binary) and it loaded OK in GE. More garbage data - but some tantalizingly locations near me showed up too, like the intersection of 35th Street and the Midtown Tunnel Entrance Road (a very believable location for a camera - I may walk by there soon and look for one).

I tried navigating a demo route past this location on my TT device - but got no alert (or camera icon). Just to check that the kml was parsing correctly in GE, I copied and reinserted a block of the location data in the kml file, and changed the coordinates to those for my home, and that correctly displayed as a camera location in GE.

SO -- at this point it looks like either (1) the ov2 files provided by Home update are only samples and do not contain usable data, and/or (2) the ov2>kml converter is misinterpreting the location data in the ov2 file, and only producing mostly usable kml with glitches like the syntax error and binary inclusions.

GPS Data Team has an online kml editor that can output ov2. So presumably it is possible to create, from manually-entered location data, an ov2 file that could be loaded into my TT and tested. That'll be next on the agenda - after I play with the "saved camera locations" ov2 file that's created when I enter a test camera location, to see how the ov2>kml converter does with known location data...

Are we having fun yet?

 

[gatorguy]

Like you suggested, I entered a "temporary" camera location in the Safety Camera Service menu. When I set up a route taking me past that location and played the demo of that route, I saw the camera icon and got an alert immediately as I reached the time-to-reach-camera threshold (I used the default setting of 15 seconds). I'm not sure what caused your 5-minute delay: maybe if you setup the location and remained stationary instead of running a route demo, GPS drift set off the alert in your test.

All the non-live TT's simply store that location on your device, so it makes sense that it would be immediately available, but only to your own device. The 740's instead send that data to TomTom, who then make it available to all the 740's using safety camera's over their live services connection AFAIK. That's why there's a delay.

FWIW, reports of temporary speed traps look like they stay active at least 45 minutes. I'll try in another 30-45 minutes to see if the one I set up at 11:56am is still alerting.

EDIT: 2:40pm and still active. I'm guessing now that the alert will remain for the rest of the day. If I get another chance later this evening I'll check again.

 

[Wave Mechanic]

EDIT: 2:40pm and still active. I'm guessing now that the alert will remain for the rest of the day. If I get another chance later this evening I'll check again.

So, did it remain or release?

I found one location that triggers an alert (by accident, on a train ride on MetroNorth, while recording a kml logfile in the TripMaster app from webazar.org, which displays quite handily as a tour in GE). Using ver. 3696 of the Safety_Cam_US_Canada_TomTom.ov2 dataset from TomTom (you can check which version you have by opening the corresponding .ver file).

It's in Mount Vernon, NY at the intersection of North 10th Avenue and Stevens Avenue. If you've got that version, run a demo route by it, and there's the icon and alert.

But I haven't been able to convert the ov2 file to a kml format to display *all* the camera locations in GE. I've tried several ov2>kml converters (GPS Data Team, poiedit, even TomTom's own ov2dump.exe) but none of these work with any of the ov2 files on my 140S.

Back when the SDK was supported, the documentation suggests that ov2 was an ascii-based format, but in notepad these files look like binary to me. So, gatorguy (or any other knowledgeable sources), did TomTom change the ov2 file format when they stopped supporting the SDK? Is conversion to kml or csv possible with the new format?

 

[mikealder]

You won't find anything to open the TT speed camera files, whilst they claim to be ov2 files in name the data layout of ahts in the file doesn't conform to the normal ov2 file layout so tool sets that work on true ov2 files throw a fault when presented with these. The origal TT speed cams were of the correct ov2 format but they have been using this revised format for some time now - Mike

 

[Wave Mechanic]

You won't find anything to open the TT speed camera files, whilst they claim to be ov2 files in name the data layout of ahts in the file doesn't conform to the normal ov2 file layout so tool sets that work on true ov2 files throw a fault when presented with these. The origal TT speed cams were of the correct ov2 format but they have been using this revised format for some time now - Mike

Thanks, Mike: you confirm what I've been seeing, which is that TomTom now uses a proprietary binary format for their safety camera datasets.

But it's not just the safety camera dataset that's been made proprietary. The POI dataset that came with my 140S (FuelStations.ov2) is also in this binary format.

Perhaps this strategy is being driven by projected revenue growth from dataset upgrades - POI's, safety cameras, etc. But it would seem to be at odds with the crowd-sourced aspect of TomTom like mapshare, IQ Routes and the many special-interest POI datasets uploaded to Home by individuals.

I haven't found any thread in the TomTom forums where a more general discussion of these matters takes place (Mike or gatorguy, any suggestions there?)

But as things stand, it looks like the many useful third-party tools for managing POI datasets and translating PND file formats won't work with TomTom's latest datasets - until this revised ov2 file format is documented.

 

[mikealder]

I am not too sure there is a specific section for this thread that is anymore appropriate than the one it is currently in!

Some of us could (given time) reverse engineer the file format but I see little point to be honest as the data isn't accurate in the first place IMHO, there has been a lot of theft of POI files over the years and I guess this new file format is one way of preventing further theft until someone publishes the file format - My guess is the format is close to the same as previously used which is well documented and available for download from the TomTom web site but it is heavy going reading through it and you will need an understanding of hex - Mike

 

[Wave Mechanic]

<snip>My guess is the format is close to the same as previously used which is well documented and available for download from the TomTom web site but it is heavy going reading through it and you will need an understanding of hex - Mike

Mike, I have looked over the v.3.0 build 193 SDK documentation dating from 2004, which I found at: http://www.tomtom.com/lib/doc/ttnavsdk3_manual.pdf and I find myself wondering if the safety camera and POI files that were placed on my 140S by TomTom are actually in some new format - or whether TomTom has always had two formats for POI data, one open and one proprietary.

On pps 4 and 11 of that document it states "the POI data that is distributed as part of TomTom products is (a) not in OV2 format" which suggests that there's a proprietary file format (with the same extension!) for files distributed with the devices or downloaded via Home2.

It goes on to describe a layout for ascii location data that can be converted to ov2 format by the makeov2.exe converter (and which can be converted back to ascii using dumpov2.exe). But I haven't found any specifics about the proprietary format, besides some injunctions not to reverse-engineer it. If there is something else on the website about this that I've missed, I would very much appreciate your posting a link.

In light of the injunctions about reverse-engineering, I feel I should clarify my objective here. Ideally, I would like camera locations to be added to the list of "avoids" when route-planning, as with toll roads, HOV lanes, ferries and unpaved roads. But until that becomes possible, the best I can hope for is to map them in GE and use a manual work-around when planning a route. There's 42kb in the 3696 camera dataset, so there must be a fair number of these locations documented in there.

People as a rule drive more carefully when they may be observed, like at known police speed traps. And to me, the prospect of zero-tolerance speed cameras that snap my picture going 31mph in a 30mph zone and mail a hundred-dollar ticket to my home is not what I'd hope for the future of law enforcement in America. The power of crowd-sourcing is clearly a value-add of the TomTom brand, and as Benjamin Franklin put it, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." So I hope TomTom expands its safety camera location data, and redistributes it the way they do mapshare and IQRoutes data.

Oh, and one more thing -- last night I got my first alert while driving, for a redlight camera located at 79th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan (using v.3696). I confirmed this morning that a demo route through that intersection produces the icon and alert, if anyone wishes to test their alert setup.