Road Angel Professional Connected

[craigyb]

I think I shall be going back to the PogoAlert that I removed in favour of the RA pro.

It was pretty much bang on with everything as long as you updated it regularly.

[sapphire1616]

Thanks for this thread guy's. I was seriously thinking about getting one of these units a while back.....guess what I am thinking now!

[Hopsta]

Can you not set a correction on the RA2 to show new locations? i appreciate that it's far from ideal but it will help others out in the future and if all users did this it would make the data more accurate.

Welcome to TSN Graham, nice to see manufacturers taking on points direct from users, great to see

[craigyb]

I'd really expect a speed camera that has been around for many years to have the correct speed setting, if Pogo can get it right, (it took a month) then RA should be able to after a year.

[grahammackie]

Gents,

Sorry for the delay but I was out of the office all day yesterday. Let me try to answer your questions one by one.

Golfer - the Professional unit can be hard wired in and yes it will then be regularly trickle charged by the 12v supply. Unfortunately the all units from the RA2 onwards use a USB style connector for power, the RA2 used a standard multi adaptor. Usually the hard wire kits go at a female cigar lighter socket anyway so changing shouldn't be too difficult.

Henry - since the introduction of mobile van locations with our RA Plus units we have always fixed the distance at 500m. The database was designed to work this way as mobile van locations are often closer together than fixed cameras i.e. sequential motorway bridges, inter connecting dual carriageways etc. With a distance setting of more than 500m the chances for false alerts increases signifcantly i.e. you pick up a location that may not affect the road you r are driving on.

However we have had a few customers say that 500m isn't sufficient when travelling 'fast' on the motorway. The next release of the firmware (scheduled for end of July) will address this by allowing you to increase the distance for mobile safety camera vans - with the caveat that it may also increase the number of false alerts.

With regard to the quality of the camera database this is something I clearly care about a lot. We are the only company in the UK (that I know of) that uses its own salaried staff to validate every single camera, mobile van, road works or blackspot location. We take our intelligence form a variety of sources (including our customers) and then send our own people out on the road to validate the location.

Craig - if you can give me more detail on the cameras you were talking about I will talk to my Cameras Manager and come back to you as to why we appear to have got the speed wrong etc. With regards to the M1 roadworks cameras do you mean the Luton area four laning ? I drove this personally yesterday and the average speed start and finish southbound and the alerts tied in with the SPECS gantries perfectly. If you give me more information I will happily publish it here for all to see.

regards

[Pincher]

As Hopsta said - good to see a senior bod trying to address issues and respond to posts

[Golfer]

Originally Posted by Pincher

As Hopsta said - good to see a senior bod trying to address issues and respond to posts

Yes I agree with you, this will enable us to get beter service in the long run from Road Angels.

[craigyb]

I emailed the camera locations back to customer support yesterday, they responded by zapping my RA with a factory reset which sent it into a complete download, serveral hours or GPRS activity, and made the unit useless whilst driving as it had no camera locations loaded.

So I left it powered up overnight to reload it's database and sure enough it was ready again this morning. I drove past the locations I emailed to RA yesterday and sure enough they were still the same, no change whatsoever to the database, so why did the support numpty blast my RA if no updates were done?

[Golfer]

Originally Posted by craigyb

I emailed the camera locations back to customer support yesterday, they responded by zapping my RA with a factory reset which sent it into a complete download, serveral hours or GPRS activity, and made the unit useless whilst driving as it had no camera locations loaded.

So I left it powered up overnight to reload it's database and sure enough it was ready again this morning. I drove past the locations I emailed to RA yesterday and sure enough they were still the same, no change whatsoever to the database, so why did the support numpty blast my RA if no updates were done?

It would seem Craige that you have bought to light a problem that is almost a trade "description breech" to me, these new RA's do NOT do what they state , and IF they are employing people to "Update", then they themselves are getting paid for Naf-all.
I for one will NOT be buying one.

[grahammackie]

Craig - firstly apologies for the factory reset on your device. Our support team often assume that 'missing cameras' are caused by a corrupt database file on the device and therefore ask our servers to send down a complete file of camera locations i.e. a factory reset. This isn't an issue on our PC connected devices - however this clearly isn't the best course of action when the data is being handled by a GPRS connection ! A polite reminder has been sent to the team here

With regard to the cameras I have a response from my Camera Team Manager:

1. A56, Cross Street Sale, Cheshire, Fixed Speed camera alert set at 30Mph when it has been 40Mph for at least a year and is clearly signed at 40 Mph.

This camera was on our database as a 30 MPH. On the strength of Craig’s email we have changed it to a 40 MPH this morning. We have also marked it for a verification check. As I explained briefly earlier, speed limits are very difficult to manage (although we do quite well) and given the number of cameras on the database we get a very, very small amount of information back from customers or the camera team that speeds are incorrect.

2. A5067, Talbot Road, Old Trafford, heading East near Gorse Avenue, fixed camera alert, no camera has ever been sited there.[/font]

There is a northbound camera on the A56 Chester Road, between Portland Road & Cavendish Road. The heading of the camera is 28 degrees and when travelling on the A5067 you are at a pretty much a fixed heading of 54 degrees. The distance between the two roads at worst case is 150M or so. With a 250M distance warning set you will see something on the display although I doubt that it will go to the full 5 bars. The greater the distance setting on the unit the more bars will be displayed.

To explain response number 2 a bit further. Our camera locator devices work on a combination of GPS location, vehicle heading (direction) and distance to warn of cameras, blackspots etc. They do not have a database of 'roads' in them as such. When there are two roads or two cameras close together there is the chance of an occasional false alerts, particularly as the warning distance is increased.

Golfer - I'm not sure what part of the Trade Description Act you think we are breaching? We are a UK based company founded on the principle of providing quality products backed up by world class customer service. Yes we make mistakes occasionally, but the important thing for me is that we recognise these mistakes and do something about them. If ever you or Craig are in the Silverstone area feel free to pop in and see the operation here and hopefully your opionion of us will change.

regards