Have you ever been in a situation where you need to change your settings on a device or application as soon as possible, yet you have no idea what to do? Maybe it’s just me but it always seem that whenever I need to change my setting on a device, it’s at the most inopportune time. And for the life of me, I usually have no idea how to do it. Most likely because I’ve never done it before. So I spend a large chunk of time trying to figure out what means what.

Let’s take Trapster on the iPhone for example. I’m driving up to Los Angeles one evening and hit wall-to-wall traffic. Definitely not an uncommon or unexpected event. However, tucked between my dashboard and front windshield, Trapster is warning me about red light cameras. Well, I’m clearly on the freeway without a red light camera in site. Unless, you’re counting the miles of brake lights ahead of me. Lucky for me I work at Trapster and know exactly how to remedy the situation but this got me thinking. What if our users don’t know what to do? Thus, my idea to write about all the different settings available in Trapster on the iPhone.

Setup

First select “Options” in the top right corner and click on “Setup” in the options menu.

Alerts

After your login information the first set of options are based on the overall settings for all trap alerts.

Alert Me When I am Within: This option lets you choose the distance from a trap before you are alerted of it’s location.

Alert: There are four options in this section. The first one, “Interval,” lets you choose the amount of time between each trap alert. When “Dynamic Alert Area” is turned off it will keeps a half mile radius around you instead of the alert area dynamically changing and narrowing as you drive. Turning ON or OFF “Display in Kilometers” changes your display between miles and kilometers. And lastly, selecting ON for “Repeat Audible Alerts,” makes the trap alert repeat as you approach it.

Notifications

Trapster lets you dig down deep and change the settings for each specific trap type. Because we realize that not all areas have mobile speed cameras, regular speed cameras, or even red light cameras. So depending where you’re located in the world, you might want to adjust your settings appropriately.

Live Police Notifications: Choose how Trapster responds to live police traps with three different options. The bottom two options define whether your phone alerts you of live police with audible alerts or vibrate. The first option, “Include this Trap Type” takes you to a page entitled “Confidence Level.” See next screen shot for explanation.

Confidence Level: To filter the number of alerting traps, you can use the picker to select at what confidence level you would like a trap to be included in the alerting process. Confidence levels are determined by user ratings. A “Low” confidence trap appears green on the map, “Medium” confidence are yellow and “High” confidence are red. If you do not want to be alerted for the trap type at all then you can choose “Exclude All Levels”.

Red Light Camera Notifications: Choose how Trapster responds to red light cameras with four options. The first three options, “Include this Trap Type,” Audible,” and “Vibrate” which was explained above. The last option, “When below,” allows you to select a speed limit that you must be driving below for Trapster to alert you of red light cameras.

This is the setting I changed when stuck in that horrible LA traffic to stop Trapster from reporting red light cameras on the freeway.

Hiding Police Notification & Speed Camera Notifications: The same three options are available for how Trapster responds to police often hide here notifications and speed camera notifications, “Include this Trap Type,” Audible,” and “Vibrate,” which was all explained above.

Check Point Notification & Combo Camera Notifications: Check point notifications and combo camera notifications also have the same three alert options, “Include this Trap Type,” Audible,” and “Vibrate”.

Mobile Camera Notifications: “Include this Trap Type,” Audible,” and “Vibrate” are the three options available for mobile camera notifications.

Photos

The “Photo Settings” option dictates whether photos you take through Trapster, for example when creating a “My Trips,” are saved in your iPhone’s main photo album.

Cache

“Cache Settings” allows you to remove your cached data from Trapster.

That’s What All Those Buttons Mean!

And there you have it folks! That’s what all the different buttons, sliders, and options mean in the Trapster setup area on your iPhone. However, if you ever get stuck or have a question, feel free to ping us! We want to make sure Trapster is easy to understand and use. Suggestions and idea are always welcome!

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