2 ms·

Nope: those are not anonimized nor real time. Basically, Google knows a road is congested by having dozens of people (with their Android phones and location se

Nope: those are not anonimized nor real time. Basically, Google knows a road is congested by having dozens of people (with their Android phones and location services turned on) slow down on a road where they would usually go much faster. I want the same thing with better privacy guarantees and that's open source and free to use.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
You’re looking for a sensor fabric that can track mobile devices with their signal strength and time of flight, as it’s likely you’ll never get enough critical mass of devices to do this with open source apps. This allows you to distill traffic velocity without device access or onboard device telemetry being shipped. Google can do this because they control the Android and Google Maps ecosystem. Without such scale, you’re at a significant disadvantage.
- necovek 4y ago
  Yes, I understand that. But the same variation in resources holds true for eg. Google Maps vs OpenStreetMaps, yet OSM is still sometimes much better than GMaps. And Google also crowdsources their data even with all the resources at their disposal. Whether there'd be a critical mass depends on a lot of factors, and it's a safe bet that there wouldn't be one. But I would wish us to try :) FWIW, there would huge commercial interests for other parties to provide these, eg all the taxi and delivery services could have their drivers participate, while allowing their app developers to integrate that traffic information into their own route estimations and optimizations.
- necovek 4y ago
  Btw, your suggestions make me think of another interesting approach that local governments could take. Instead of devices reporting themselves, we could have hotspots observing mobile phone signals (eg. integrate them into traffic lights): we'd need at least 3 nearby for triangulation, and they'd have to be everywhere, so it would require government support and desire to provide traffic info for the public.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    https://rx-tx.info/map-sdr-points https://rx-tx.info/map-sdr-points

toomuchtodo 4y ago

You’re looking for a sensor fabric that can track mobile devices with their signal strength and time of flight, as it’s likely you’ll never get enough critical mass of devices to do this with open source apps. This allows you to distill traffic velocity without device access or onboard device telemetry being shipped. Google can do this because they control the Android and Google Maps ecosystem. Without such scale, you’re at a significant disadvantage.

necovek 4y ago
Yes, I understand that. But the same variation in resources holds true for eg. Google Maps vs OpenStreetMaps, yet OSM is still sometimes much better than GMaps. And Google also crowdsources their data even with all the resources at their disposal. Whether there'd be a critical mass depends on a lot of factors, and it's a safe bet that there wouldn't be one. But I would wish us to try :) FWIW, there would huge commercial interests for other parties to provide these, eg all the taxi and delivery services could have their drivers participate, while allowing their app developers to integrate that traffic information into their own route estimations and optimizations.
necovek 4y ago
Btw, your suggestions make me think of another interesting approach that local governments could take. Instead of devices reporting themselves, we could have hotspots observing mobile phone signals (eg. integrate them into traffic lights): we'd need at least 3 nearby for triangulation, and they'd have to be everywhere, so it would require government support and desire to provide traffic info for the public.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  https://rx-tx.info/map-sdr-points https://rx-tx.info/map-sdr-points