GPS-based Police Checkpoints Alerts

What is Police Checkpoint Alert ?

Police Checkpoint Alert (PCA), is a mobile application designed to help users pass police chekpoints without a violation of speed limits. Within a simple user interface, users are provided with a button to publish a new alert once they pass by a police checkpoint. Each user's phone also receives a list of alerts that have been submitted by other users. It is a GPS-based application that works in real-time as we drive. The phone's GPS receiver is used to receive the actual coordinates of the user's location and calculate the distance between the user and the police checkpoints.

PCA Highlights

PCA 2010

What phones can run PCA?

PCA is developed with Nokia Qt SDK. In 2010, we developed PCA for GPS-enabled phones using Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 and above (i.e. Symbian S60 3.x.x, FP1 and above). These phones were mostly Nokia and some Sony Ericson phones.

In 2011, we were primarily developing PCA for touch-phones that are based on Symbian^3 OS. Additionally, we developed an Android-based version of PCA.

Here is a list of some compatible phones (i.e. below are just some devices, but PCA should be compatible with all other touch-phone devices that are based on Symbian^3 or Android 2.1 and higher:

Disclaimer

In our early tests, the application exhibited great reliability when tested on Nokia N97 mini mobile phone (in 2010) and Nokia C7-00 (in 2011). However, it is known that the user interface does not appear equally on every phone model and more testing should be done on various phone models to compile a list of phone models the application is compatible with.

The developers of this application offer no guarantee that the application will work on your mobile phone model and take no responsibility in case of any problems after the installation.

Download PCA

The files listed below are stable and without any or major glitches. In the beginning of installation on the Symbian phones, there will be a warning message reading "...not compatible with the phone..." A user can basically ignore it since this message is because the application did not go through Nokia approval center and therefore does not have a special identification code embedded in it, that would kind of make it compatible with the phone. A user does not need to worry about this in terms of the operation of the application on the phone.

On the bottom of this page, an interested visitor will find:

PCA Installation for Symbian^3 (pca_installer.sis)

PCA User Manual (PCA User Manual.pdf) - written based on the PCA for Symbian phones, but the functionality is equal for Android phones, except for slightly different screen appearances

PCA Installation for Android (PCA 1.1.apk)

History of Development

2010 (Symbian S60 3rd ed. only)

- PCA version 1.0 with major functionality was developed with intern Guillaume Lachaud. The application was tested on Nokia N97 mini and showed stable work.
- Major Features:
  - set radius for the alerts list to be displayed,
  - set radius for sound alerts (smaller than the alerts list)
  - sound mute button
  - prevent multiple alerts for the same checkpoint

2011 (Symbian^3 and Android)

Symbian^3 (developed with intern Christophe Jegouzo): although the features of the application were not changed in terms of their operation, several improvements were done such as:

- account creation using mobile device was added (in 2010, users had to create their accounts using a web page)
- accidental closing of the application is now prevented (primarily for Symbian) by using a pop-up window with a confirmation question
- the size and distribution of the buttons was improved
- the screen background color, the shape and color of control buttons were improved to make the usage more comfortable
- menu options were reorganized in a more convenient way
- simple, one-file installation package is enabled for both Symbian^3 and Android phones

Android (developed with intern Yann Soliman): An Android-based PCA was developed from start, following requirements and functionality of the Symbian version.

Google Sites

Report abuse