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

TrafficCamNZ – Latest updates – V 1.3.2 31 January 2010

Version 1.3.2 of TrafficCamNZ has been submitted to the Apple App Store for approval and release.This release contains an important fix and more new enhancements:

1.3.2 Preferences screen altered to display the total number of cameras loaded
1.3.2 Help screen altered to display the application version
1.3.2 Added ability to drag and drop cameras (in order to move and position them) in the mapview.
1.3.2 Added check for non blank data before sending an e-mail (no point otherwise).
1.3.2 Fixed a crash that might occur on the All Images tab if the Camera URL was blank
1.3.2 Fixed an issue with URL escape sequences – this prevented some images from displaying

The important fix was required to deal with URL’s that contain escape sequences, i.e. %20 where this represents a space character. These were not being correctly handled and thus the image would not be displayed. Ironically this problem does not occur in the free version of the application. Also due to the keyboard that is displayed when entering a URL, you cannot actually key a space character.

The big change is to the Map tab. You can now add cameras on the Map tab, and pick up and move the camera pins around as well to accurately position them. Also if you now tap on the picture that is shown when the pin is selected you are asked if you would like this camera to be made favorite so that it is shown on the main window. See the screen snapshot below.

And if liv in New York and don’t have the latest data file loaded, do to the info screen (main start screen and tap the i in the top right) and choose XML Merge. This will get the latest set of camera updates which include a whole bunch of New York cameras with GPS coordinates. These show up on the Map as shown in the screen snapshot below.

– David

David G. Wilson
https://dgwilson.wordpress.com
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/dgwilson/

TrafficCamNZ – New features coming soon 28 December 2009

I was inspired recently when I received a very encouraging e-mail from Chris. His e-mail has already resulted in a new release (out now) that allows you to assign a TAG number to images so that they can be sequenced on the main viewing screen. The next suggested feature involves GPS tagging every camera – this is a big job.

First off the enhancements to TrafficCamNZ are to show the captured GPS locations and Cameras on a map screen, and to show these locations in relation to you and provide zoom in/out abilities. That looks like the screen capture below. By tapping one of the pins the software tells you what camera this pin is. Then by tapping on the “disclosure triangle” you get a full screen image of that camera:

Next step is to provide an ability to capture the data, so the camera data entry screen has been altered to allow for the manual entry of Latitude and Longitude coordinates. This can be somewhat tedious for data entry, so I’ve also modified the bulk data import routines to allow for bulk update by me to all users. To facilitate easy coordinate capture I have also added an ability to “use this location” – as the location data is being obtained the coordinates are shown in red, then as the samples improve they turn black and the GPS locator shuts down (to conservce battery). So if you are standing next to a known traffic camera, you can capture the current location for that camera (no data entry required). I’m now thinking I’ll add in an ability for you to e-mail these updates to me as there appears to be no known reference database for traffic cameras and GPS coordinates (unless they are related to speed cameras!).

This screen will scroll up (when I get that working). At the moment by touching the button (where the image is shown in the screenshot) it will got and test the retrieval of the image. Tap that image and it will show it to you in full screen.

This version is still in development and not yet submitted to Apple.