David's Opinions

TrafficCamNZ – Massive Camera update 28 February 2010

With special thanks to a US resident, I’m pleased to release a camera file update for TrafficCamNZ. This update adds over 2000 new cameras for the USA with Las Vegas Nevada and a small area in Florida getting GPS positions for their cameras. You can force the update from the preferences screen by pressing the “XML Merge” button.

Now when you look on the Map screen you will seen pins on the USA map for those locations that have cameras with GPS positions. For those cameras that don’t have a GPS location associated with them, you can access them from the Library screen. Now with there being so many USA cameras, I recommend you use the search feature to find the cameras you want or you will spend for ever scrolling through the list.

Did you know that if you tap on a pin hitting the right disclosure triangle will show you the image for that camera on the next screen. If you tap on the thumbnail of the image (on the left hand side) you can set if you would like that camera to be a favourite and appear on the main screen when it is refreshed.

Some of the screens that appear above are from my development release version of the application. You may have spotted some of the new features coming, including the ability to auto refresh the main screen every 1, 2, or 3 minutes. And I’ve had some really neat suggestions regarding GPS positioning and screen refresh, they’re next on the development list.

The tricky thing now is managing the more than 5000 cameras in the main data file. I’m looking into writing some utility software that will allow me to manage this better. I also have more camera URL’s, I’m testing these first before release. At this stage I have almost 1000 more URL’s for release, however they are not working for me as the web sites are preventing an easy download.

You’ll also be please to know there is a new release of the TrafficCamNZ software under development that includes support for a larger screen, this is very exciting and looks amazing. More on this at later time.

– David