BRZ OEM Navigation: Adding and using Alert Points
 

Did you know you can add alert points to the Navi, save them, and receive audible or visual alerts when you approach those points? There are a number of alert types to choose from, from things like hospitals to dangerous areas you know about. There are even alerts for traffic cameras (red light cameras) and speed cameras/speed traps. When I first saw this in the settings I got excited because I thought the Navi already had such locations stored in some database and it was just a question of turning the alert on. By default the alerts are Off and when you turn them On, it gives you a warning that using the feature might be illegal in some areas etc and are you sure. Which got my hopes up that it had some of this data already stored. But I have driven past some known and established cameras in my city and it had no indication at all. So I think the system is there for you to use but you have to program in the alert items you know of and then turn on the alert function. There’s some interesting settings you can mess with, the conditions for whether or not it gives a warning as you approach, and a speed limit above which it triggers the alert, that sort of thing.

The specific uses I see for this, is to mark known traffic cameras along my everyday routes and such to provide me a reminder/warning as I approach, especially if I am going above a certain speed. Also when I go driving on the twisty backroads, it pays to do a little pre-drive recon and maybe mark out the most tricky hairpins or other dangerous sections, to give you a little advance warning that it’s coming up. And maybe also mark spots that you happen to know that cops like to hang out and wait for you to come by speeding.

How to mark a spot: Navigate to and then touch the area on the map you want to add an Alert Point. You’ll get a little animated red spot with a red triangle pointing at it. Place that where you want, and then select More menu. Scroll down until you see the option to Add Alert Point. Choose that and then it will let you specify what kind of Alert Point it is (e.g., Speed Camera, Redlight Camera, Railroad crossing, Dangerous Area etc.)

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There’s some brief mention of this feature and how to turn it on and off in the Navi manual, but it isn’t very detailed. See p. 164 of the Navi manual.


I did a quick search and didn’t see anyone else posted about this, so perhaps no one has really messed around with the OEM Subaru/Fujitsu Navigation system or bothered to mention this. I know a lot of people complain the Navi is kind of clunky and don’t bother to learn the system. I’ve felt the same way but decided to put some time into playing with it and learning it, since it’s paid for and included in the car, might as well use it best I can. :thumbsup:

Can you elaborate where did you activate those features ?
I'm looking for it with no luck !

You must have a lot of extra time! :D

From the Navi screen... Menu > More... > Settings > Sound and Warnings > Alert Point settings.

like I said before it's on p.164 of the manual. :D

I found it ok, yet what i'm really interested in is the speed limit sing and speed warning when you go above the speed limit like you would have on any Igo/Amigo GPS.

any luck with that ?

Not familiar with the GPS you're talking about, but from my limited playing around with the BRZ navi, it's a 'dumb' system. It has no data about speed limits, traffic cameras, etc. to begin with. You have to manually enter each item yourself. So for instance if on your daily commute you know there's a regular spot where highway patrol or local PD hang out. And you want a reminder to stay under the speed limit. You could program an alert point at that location, and set warnings to occur if you are moving at say 40MPH+ towards that location. It's all manually input by you there is no existing data to use.

wouldn't it be much easier if this DUMB GPS had the speed limit feature like the rest of them out there, and IGO in general have this feature, but for some reason every time when OEM comes to play they F... it all up. :-(

I wonder if you can store these on an sd card and maybe pass them around?

I'm thinking it would be very useful if you could download a set of known speed cameras from waze or open street map or something else and do a conversion to the correct format and put them on your brz headunit.

it would be cool, but to be honest it's probably way easier to just get a dash or windshield mount for your phone, run Waze and keep it open while you drive.

than why we need this HU with this GPS if its not doing its job to begin with ?

Nooooo shitttttt

Thanks for posting this, I figured it was an extra feature they were going to have you pay for later (i.e. database download).

If your battery dies are you fucked? Would that require re entering all the alerts? I'm in Chicago and we have hundreds of cameras I wouldn't want to have to re enter lol.

I don't know for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say the Navi probably saves these points on the SD card that also stores the Navi data. So if that is true then losing power will not affect the memory, it will be safe on the SD card. I'm not gonna disconnect my battery to find out though. :)

guys? lol, if you're gonna sit there, put every single point by hand, you got waay too much time to spare ;)

http://www.subaruxvforum.com/forum/i...ips-hacks.html

http://fixmygps.info/forum/showthrea...23607#pid23607

So if I am reading this right, you found a way to download existing alert point data and add it to the SD card? Have you tried it and found it to work on the BRZ navi?

This appears to be awesome. I may try it to confirm.

yes, exactly right. Redlight/Speedcameras is what i have put on SD card.

The files seem to be missing from the destination on that forum. :-(

I was going to come post the same thing.

As I understand it I have to download the trapster POI's and convert them to Primo format. I got the trapster POI's in garmin format just fine, but the (sketchy Russian) conversion software is nowhere to be found.

EDIT: I looked around again...I think the POI's from this place will work: http://poiplaza.com/index.php?p=dc&c=49

EDIT EDIT: there is one on page 5 called "fix speed cam" (2013) and one called "speed traps" (2010)

AND: page 10 has "redlight and speedcam" (2013)

Both of these seem to have been updated in 2013. So, that's good news. I have to run some errands, but I may try this later today.

AND: if you look at the map it seems that there aren't all that many POI's for all areas of the US (other countries might be different).

I'll have to find an alternative conversion program to get the trapster stuff into iGo Primo format.

I gave up. If someone figures it out let me know.

i'll write something up this weekend, maybe that'll help :)

Please do, this could be seriously awesome.

sorry guys, didn't forget. I started on a write up in my spare time on friday, but gotta finish up working on my daily driver beater before snow comes in to Chicago. Will post step by step POI as soon as I finish it.

bump. update? @Nissanfan

Hey guys sorry if this is bumping an old thread but I saw it ended a bit abruptly and I wanted to share how easy this is. This is on a 2014 Subaru BRZ Limited:

First off here is the only link you need
http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums/...am-alerts.html

A couple of the steps below are copied and pasted directly from there.

1. With car off eject SD card (alternatively if you want the radio on while you do this for some reason go through the menu and eject the SD card properly don't just pop it out).

2. (Optional but recommended) Make a back up of your SD card. I used disk utility on a mac to make an image of the card. You can also use the HDD Raw copy tool that is on the link, I would not be able to help you as I did not need it.

3. Download the file at http://fixmygps.info/forum/showthrea...23614#pid23614 (If you are in the US of course). This is a zip which when unzipped makes a folder called "speedcam"

4. Rename your speedcam folder on your SD card to "speedcam_OLD" (navigation/content/speedcam) and copy the one you downloaded to this content folder.

5. To enable. Go to Map>Menu>More>Settings>Sounds and Warnings> (scroll down) Alert point settings (tick box) and enable alert types

The end result is this:

http://s1.postimg.org/6zw3rxudb/IMAG0089.jpg

http://s4.postimg.org/3jukh7rx9/IMAG0091.jpg

that's awesome that someone got this to work!
EDIT: dinoniel sent me the ZIP file that you need and I am hosting it on my site for others to download as well.

http://86drive.com/wp-content/upload...-speedcams.zip

also, am I correct in assuming that if you replace the speedcam folder you will lose all your previously set custom alert points? (which would probably be fine for the 99% of people who never used it anyways but I have a few custom points set.)

PMok check your email