AWK saves the day!

[Spankin Partier]

I started to play around with my Garmin Nuvi GPS today. Like most GPSs you can add custom Points Of Interest by creating special CSV files. Depending on how you create and name the CSV file you can create automatic warnings if you are speeding, or approaching an intersection that's equipped with a red light camera.

So I started browsing the web and found a site that offers the information to you in CSV format if you subscribe. Well, seeing they still give you all the relevant information, just not in a convenent format, I created this script to do the converting for me:

#!/bin/sh

if [ -e "redlight.csv" ]
then
	rm redlight.csv
fi

for file in *
do

	if [ -f "$file" ]
	then
		awk -F\( '/setLocation\(/ { print $2 }' "$file"|awk -F\) '{ print $1 }'|awk -F\&amp\; '{ print $1 "&" $2 }' |awk -F\' '{ print $1 $2 }' |awk -F\, '{ print $2 ", " $1 ", " $3  >> "redlight.csv" }' 

	fi
done

To use this, you simply go to the site linked above, browse to the city you're interested in, and save the page onto your computer. You can repeat this for as many cities as you like, just so long as you save all the data into one directory. Then in a shell, browse to that directory and run the script. In one clean swoop, you have your fancy new CSV file.

[MrBlack]

cool ...is there a way to get daily speed trap info too?

[Spankin Partier]

Not sure about that. First of all you'd have to find a website with that information on it, and then alter the above awk command to grab the coordinates off of the page before running Gamin's POI Loader (which works in WINE), then move the POI.GPI onto your device.

So with constantly changing data it probably wouldn't be good. Unless you live in Australia where the police announces where all the speed traps will be before hand. Then you may be able to do this while having your morning coffee and be all set for the day.

I created this script to add in the 378 Canadian and Michigan red light cameras into my GPS. They shouldn't change that often. So if I run this once every couple months I should be up to date.

[Ned Slider]

Nice work Spanky