Friday 8th July 2005

Scamera detector price war is go

RoadPilot cuts its prices by £100

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The now-cheaper Roadpilot

There's a price war going on in the GPS-based speed camera detector market -- and that can only be good news for us.

Prompted perhaps by the entry of low-cost detectors from Talex, RoadPilot has announced both hardware price cuts and the availability of its international speed camera location database to existing and new customers at no extra cost.

From Monday this week, the price of Micro RoadPilot fell by £100 to £299.95 while its bigger brother, the RoadPilot Pro fell the same amount to £399.95.

RoadPilot's international database includes locations for speed cameras in the UK, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Norway. By the autumn of this year, the database will be extended to include Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, said the company.

Company boss James Flynn said that a fall in production costs and an increase in volumes prompted the price cut.

• Talex story

[aston67]

pity that if you are caught in France with such a device you will be in trouble... :(

A67

[oc7]

have they brought in the law that if you are caught speeding in Europe, you are given points on your license. . Heard a rumour a while ago, but not sure if it came into action??

[Marty_aoeu]

Here's an idea.. program these devices with all future speed camera locations, and you don't actually need to build the cameras. Crazier still, program these devices with all the accident black spots and remove the cameras.


>> Edited by Marty_aoeu on Friday 8th July 14:04

[matopping]

I wonder. Could this price war be something to do with these gadgets about to become illegal? Anyway it's about time they stooped ripping us of for something that probably cost a tenner.

[LancsDriver]

GPS camera detectors wont become illegal just the Laser/radar detectors that can pick up radio waves from such devices, not GPS devices which are deemed to be 'warning devices'.

[james_j]

Have I missed something obvious here, but could not revenue camera locator / warning software be loaded onto a mobile. Maybe it's been done and I haven't heard, but if it could be done, the French BIB would have trouble monitoring what software is on your mobile.

[Millard]

you can already load tomtom software on to a smartphone, but you still need a GPS reciever that operates via bluetooth.

[james_j]

Millard said:

you can already load tomtom software on to a smartphone, but you still need a GPS reciever that operates via bluetooth.

That would be fairly undetectable. I've just done some searching, I guess Tomtom 5 mobile should do the trick.

Though I was thinking just the software could be loaded on the phone as the phone already knows where it is. Why the need for a separate GPS receiver?

>> Edited by james_j on Saturday 9th July 09:44

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Phones only know fairly approximately where they are, but yes if you were willing to put up with this inaccuracy it could be done.

All new phones in the USA will soon have a GPS built into them anyway (so 911 calls can be traced) so I don't doubt it is a matter of time before this is introduced in Euope.

Rob

[omitchell]

Rob_the_Sparky said:

All new phones in the USA will soon have a GPS built into them anyway (so 911 calls can be traced) so I don't doubt it is a matter of time before this is introduced in Euope. Rob

a lot of phones have DGPS (differential gps) on them already in europe, all phones that 3 supply have it

[tog]

oc7 said:

have they brought in the law that if you are caught speeding in Europe, you are given points on your license. . Heard a rumour a while ago, but not sure if it came into action??

I accidentally set off a couple of cameras on French motorways in April and haven't heard anything yet...