In Use

The first time you start CamerAlert you will see a screen similar to that below:

This is what we call the “Armchair View” or “Couch Mode”. Basically you do not have a GPS position and CamerAlert requires a good GPS location for it to start working properly. This is a feature of the iPhone GPS (and the way GPS itself works). You may get “GPS Fix” inside your house but it will not start to work properly until you get outside in the car which is where it is designed to work.

Of course you can play around with the interface in the comfort of your lounge and get used to its features and functionality, but just do not expect it to work properly.

The first thing you will notice is that there is a red logo in the top right of the screen. This indicates that the GPS has not managed to locate your position yet. When you have a GPS location then this will turn blue as the normal PocketGPSWorld.com logo.

On the top left there is the current speed indicator. As you are currently sitting in your armchair this is showing 0. The space to the right of the speed display is where we will display the average speed when you are in a section of road controlled by Average Speed Cameras. You can also manually activate / deactivate the average speed display by pressing the current speed indicator.

The main display contains the map. When CamerAlert is installed this presents quite a zoomed out view. The normal iPhone pinch gestures zoom the map, spreading zooms in and pinching zooms out. The map can be positioned by moving with your finger and dragging it to the required position.

At the bottom of the screen is the application toolbar with the buttons that control the way CamerAlert works.

The first button is the GPS button which turns the GPS functionality on and off. When it is switched off the system does not update the map position, nor is it able to warn about cameras that you are approaching. You may wish to disable the GPS to allow you to scroll around the map without it being centred on your current position.

The next control is the List button. The list button is used to show a list of cameras in the area. Pressing this button toggles between the list and map displays. When you approach a camera the map mode will be forced, and then remain on display. This functionality can be changed in the app configuration. See below for more details of the list mode.

Next up is the Capture button. This allows you to add a new camera at the GPS position.

This is covered in more detail below.

Then we have the music control button. Pressing this will show the current playing song from the iPod app and allow you to skip tracks and pause/play. It also displays the ‘Audio routing’ toggle.

The ‘Audio routing’ setting allows you to force the audio through the iPhone’s speaker. This would be useful if you had a bluetooth setup that automatically routes the audio to your car stereo – in these instances you may not be listening to that input and therefore you would not hear the alerts. Set the icon to the ‘music notes’ [left] to use the standard output (headphones / bluetooth depending on setup) or the ‘iPhone speaker’ icon [right] to force the audio through the iPhone speaker.

The final button is the setup button. This takes you to the setup screens which allow you to configure the behaviour of CamerAlert and tailor it to your personal requirements. The options and their effects are described in the Configuration section below.