Soldato
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What app out of interest?
The thing like GPS that uses 4 words instead of lat / long?
- Thread starter Cromulent
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Soldato
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- 10 May 2004
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- Sunny Stafford
Don't be fooled Proles - the 4 words system isn't in your interest.
It's for the interest of the establishment, The Party, Ingsoc.
It's for the interest of the establishment, The Party, Ingsoc.
I'm confused. That's how the app works. Why are you paying for it? Open app, type in 3 words, select navigate, profit. We've come a long way from your "read these 3 pointless, unrelated and missing the point" articles, which seem to suggest if you're two doors away from where you want to be, W3W will actually send you a thousand miles away to another address because your common sense has failed, to you saying that W3W have dropped a sales pitch. I assume you work for a Trust rather than your imaginary national emergency service? To be honest, if people without common sense are in these kinds of meetings you describe, there's not a lot of hope ..
I work for a fire and rescue service. As I said to Jokester you have to pay to integrate into your C&C.
Which is the ideal situation, and should be received automatically by emergency services, but generally aren't.
But this 3 word system is also not automatically used but the emergency services, the emergency services have to pay to have access to the database and API, but the emergency apps are free for everyone.
I use an app by Rega, app is free for anyone to use. They'll send the helicopter to my exact coordinates at a click of a button wherever I am in the alps. There are plenty of other apps out there that do the same, and will send my coordinates to the emergency dispatch center. The apps are developed by the government so no one has to pay a dime.
As I said above, the 3 word system would have been useful 20-50 years ago before people had smart phones. If you memorized there 3 words for your house, or office building and areas of the public could have notices with the 3 words. then when you were forced to make a phone call then there would be some merit in having a simpler addressing system. But since the system requires a smartphone to operate then it is basically entirely pointless at best, or potentially dangerous in the worse case because there is no gradual degradation of service quality.
It is a a bad solution to a problem that does't exist. The emergency services and government should keep well clear of the snake oil
the app I have installed is Rega, they will send a helicopter any where in the alps at a click of a button. If I am somewhere accessible by a regular ambulance they forward the request to emergency dispatch. Completely free of charge.
Does the emergency services pay for it? Even if it does the point is irrelevant because of the emergency services already have to pay for a postcode DB then why should they pay for an additional service when a simple app sending GPS coordinates is entirely free without any licensing costs.
Indeed, everyone uses an Ordance Survey AddressBase product for property data. Get long & lat, feed into C&C, turn out to long & lat, match against gazetteer db, provide further info to mobilised crews.
I think it makes some quite good points.
What people are more adverse to is W3W's claim that this is an open standard, when it clearly isn't. Their pricing is very secret, and the T&C's seem over-bearing. It's not very open and honest for a company.
Then there's also the fact that this is only useful in English speaking countries. As everyone knows, language translations are never perfect, and one word in English can mean something totally different in French, which means if you reverse translate, you end up with a completely different original word. Which is no good when the words are completely random - your new word could place you thousands of miles away from your actual location.
It's intentionally designed that way. The algorithm that defines the three words is proprietary. If the algorithm constructed a series of words as you mentioned (i.e. first word always UK), then the algorithm would be very easy to copy and then W3W wouldn't really have a product to sell.
I like the idea in principle, it is much easier to say three words than read out GPS coordinates, i just think the company are bordering on the edge of some shady practices.
I'm not sure, that's why I removed my post. I know that you need to pay for access to the postcode database but I'm not sure whether there's any agreement to let emergency services have free access.
You don't always have a data connection to send that via an app. I suppose you could make an app to send a text message with that info, but that's not always reliable in low signal areas. At least if you can easily tell someone the info over the phone you'll know for sure they received the info.
When I was a CFR, I had calls to the middle of nowhere. This would have helped rather than "the caller is saying the unresponsive guy is on a path following the canal behind the pub". Right... so do I go left at the path or right? How far up the path? Oh he's actually in a bush off the path. Great!
The one i used to use text messages.
You point out that it isn't reliable in low signal areas, okay so how would a phone call on the same area be better. At least with text it's sat there waiting and only needs a split second of low signal to send. You then get a reply to say it's received.
Because a phonecall is realtime. You know immediately if your message got through and try to get help by another means if not.
How long are you going to sit there with your text message pending waiting to be rescued? Minutes? Hours? What if you never get signal?
Wow. Not sure what else to say to that. Lol
Soldato
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- 3 Oct 2009
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What if you can't move to find signal? You'd prefer to sit in a no/low signal area making repeated failed phone calls than have a pending text that is far more likely to send in a split second?
I camp in signal deadzones all the time and have had pending texts (even WhatsApps so adding another required layer of data connectivity) go through without my phone moving after hours of no signal. Not sure I'd prefer to rely on sitting there staring at my phone waiting for it to show signal so I can make a call!
Here is a nice little read on the topic of GPS and the NMEA data it spits out, its the RMC sentence which is human readable to plot the coordinates
https://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm
I made my own GPS with a pi zero and a GPS/GRPS hat amazingly accurate so much so it even plotted the exact parking space i was in on google maps!
https://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm
I made my own GPS with a pi zero and a GPS/GRPS hat amazingly accurate so much so it even plotted the exact parking space i was in on google maps!
You really can't think of any situation where it would be useful to verbally communicate your location?
What about in the scenario above (you need help but can't move) but you have a sat phone or 2way radio with you which you can use?
What about in the scenario above but you have a friend with you who can walk to get help and will need to communicate your location to someone.