Hitting the road - Who we are?
spiXe is a crowdsourced system for monitoring, measuring, and mapping obstacles and bumps on the road.
spiXe enables you to be alerted and receive information about road conditions such as whether the roads are faulty and whether they have obstacles such as potholes, pits, speed bumps, or peeling asphalt. In a sentence,
spiXe ensures that you will enjoy a smooth ride.
The royal road - Why are we here?
The purpose of
spiXe is to map road conditions so that drivers can know in advance about the quality of the roads they are going to be traveling, furthermore, to alert drivers in real time as they approach obstacles, they can slow down in time. The information can assist both non-professional drivers and professional drivers such as those who transport goods.
spiXe is beneficial for anyone who wishes to protect his or her vehicle and passengers from unwanted shocks.
Getting the show on the road - How Does It Work?
spiXe collects road status information by using a unique application installed on the driver’s mobile device. During the operation of
spiXe, information about the bumps on the road and the location of the vehicle (according to GPS) is collected from the mobile device. The information provided is processed. Then, the level and quality of the specific areas of the road are determined.
spiXe is based on crowdsourcing, meaning that the information is collected from many devices and that information processing is done considering a large number of devices. Therefore, the effect of a single mobile device on the reliability of the calculation is minimal. This is, of course, provided that the number of vehicles passing through a specific point is large enough.
After sufficient information has been collected from many mobile devices, a rating is determined for each point on the road that vehicles have passed through. That rating is divided into 4 primary levels, visible as 4 different color groups.
Each level is divided into 5 sub-levels (with 5 levels of color intensity).
Here is where it gets a little bit tricky. The higher the rating level, the lower the quality of the area of the road, and it indicates a more massive pothole that requires a more considerable slowdown.
The intensity of the bumps can be seen on the map by color:
- Bumps intensity 1-5 - Shades of green (Minor bumps - usually uninterrupted roads)
- Bumps intensity 5-10 - Shades of blue (A road with minor bumps)
- Bumps intensity 11-15 - Shades of red (A faulty road that requires attention while driving)
- Bumps intensity 16-20 - Shades of Gray - Black (A faulty road that can cause damage)
The indication of the level of the bumps on the road is displayed as different-colored circles on the map, including an arrow showing the direction of the journey (and the side of the road) in which the bump was felt.
Go down the road - How to Use spiXe?
To see the status of the roads in various locations,
spiXe must be started. Make sure that Location Services (GPS) are enabled and that
spiXe has permission to use the mobile device's Location Services.
As soon as
spiXe is started, the markings of nearby areas will show signs of bumps at various levels.
On the road - This is where you come in
We are in the continuous process of building and perfecting the system database. The process of building the database is endless because road conditions are constantly changing and these changes need to be reflected in
spiXe. To contribute your part to the effort, we kindly ask that you activate the monitoring option during your trip.
Monitoring is activated by pressing the
play_circle_outline monitoring button located at the bottom of the map or in the action menu.
Once activated, monitoring and reporting process is done in the background, and there is no need to have
spiXe visible, of course, you can switch to other applications. You can actually close the app; monitoring will continue as long as your device is in motion.
To stop monitoring, just push the
stop button.
If
spiXe is not visible (running in the background), you need to re-open it in order to turn off monitoring.
While
spiXe is visible and monitoring is turned on, the color of the
spiXe title bar and the monitoring
stop button will change to red, which reminds you that monitoring is active.
spiXe has a mechanism that detects immobility. In the case where
spiXe is not visible and monitoring is active, immobility of 10 minutes or more, will cause
spiXe (and thus monitoring) to terminate itself automatically.
The yellow brick road
8 essential points about sharing information
- Sharing is completely anonymous.
- Sharing includes only information about bumps on the road.
- Sharing is immediate so that drivers who drive a few minutes behind you, will be able to receive this information in real time and while traveling.
- Sharing occurs only above speed of 30 kmh (18 mph).
- If you forget to turn off monitoring, at the end of the trip - no information is sent from the mobile device, and monitoring will stop automatically after 10 minutes.
- Since spiXe is a crowdsourced system, spiXe is not responsible for the accuracy and reliability of the information.
- In places where there is not much traffic, there may be no information at all, or the information will not be accurate.
- The absence of markings or warnings does not necessarily mean that the road conditions are good.