Coyote - what's the point?

[Al D-Much]

I understand what it does and it seems to work well. Until you want to use CarPlay, then the Lexus Online services are knocked off and can't be used again until you unplug CarPlay.

Useful app, but unusable!

[Herbie]

3 hours ago, Al D-Much said:

I understand what it does and it seems to work well. Until you want to use CarPlay, then the Lexus Online services are knocked off and can't be used again until you unplug CarPlay.

Useful app, but unusable!

I've never heard of it and I don't know what it does, but it seems to me that you need to evaluate which one is better for you and go with that one.

My 2018 RX doesn't have Lexus Online Services so I have no idea what that does either but knowing the scope of CarPlay and Android Auto, I'd guess that they can do more, and do it better, than the Lexus offering.

[Al D-Much]

2 hours ago, Herbie said:

I've never heard of it and I don't know what it does, but it seems to me that you need to evaluate which one is better for you and go with that one.

My 2018 RX doesn't have Lexus Online Services so I have no idea what that does either but knowing the scope of CarPlay and Android Auto, I'd guess that they can do more, and do it better, than the Lexus offering.

Coyote is a speed camera app, which is "built-in" but unlike the NAV maps it also shows mobile speed camera units as it's live rather than a database.
However, it's either Coyote or NAV, or CarPlay.

I guess I'm going back to Waze, live, maps, speed camera alerts, always up to date.

[Herbie]

49 minutes ago, Al D-Much said:

I guess I'm going back to Waze, live, maps, speed camera alerts, always up to date.

I was going to suggest Waze but it looks like you've already been using it, so what made you move away from it in the first place?

[NiCoRe]

If you like Coyote, I think it is avalaible as an App for Iphone (but it does require a monthly fee at least in France)

[Rabbers]

Coyote is a French-owned subscription speed-camera alert system compatible with the Lexus CY17 navigation system.  A free three-year subscription was offered via the MyLexus e-store app in 2019 on new RC, ES, UX, LS and maybe other models in Italy, France, Spain and also, I believe, Benelux.  Renewal was to have been €99 yearly, though I believe the charge actually went down.

I didn’t renew on expiry of my own free subscription last November, not because I didn’t find the system useful but because I find Lexus’ own system largely adequate for my own needs.

For those unfamiliar with the Coyote system it alerts users of fixed speed cameras and is constantly updated both by the company’s own channels and the community of users who update the data base for the presence of new cameras on one or both sides of the road simply by highlighting the Coyote logo on the car display.  You can also alert fellow users about any mobile cameras you might spot but I neither received or issued any such alert in the entire three years of the subscription. The system also provides real-time warnings of accidents, queues, stationary vehicles, roadworks etc., within a 30km radius.

Most of the Coyote’s proprietary features were supposedly going to be incorporated into apple CarPlay but, as far as I know, no deal was ever reached.

 

 

[Herbie]

2 hours ago, Rabbers said:

Coyote is a French-owned subscription speed-camera alert system compatible with the Lexus CY17 navigation system.  A free three-year subscription was offered via the MyLexus e-store app in 2019 on new RC, ES, UX, LS and maybe other models in Italy, France, Spain and also, I believe, Benelux.  Renewal was to have been €99 yearly, though I believe the charge actually went down.

I didn’t renew on expiry of my own free subscription last November, not because I didn’t find the system useful but because I find Lexus’ own system largely adequate for my own needs.

For those unfamiliar with the Coyote system it alerts users of fixed speed cameras and is constantly updated both by the company’s own channels and the community of users who update the data base for the presence of new cameras on one or both sides of the road simply by highlighting the Coyote logo on the car display.  You can also alert fellow users about any mobile cameras you might spot but I neither received or issued any such alert in the entire three years of the subscription. The system also provides real-time warnings of accidents, queues, stationary vehicles, roadworks etc., within a 30km radius.

Most of the Coyote’s proprietary features were supposedly going to be incorporated into Apple CarPlay but, as far as I know, no deal was ever reached.

I find that Waze does all that anyway doesn't it?

When I used to use a stand-alone TomTom many years ago I subscribed to the camera database supplied by https://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

I haven't looked recently but I think it used to be £20/year and if you reported a camera location that wasn't already on their database you got a free 12 month subscription. It works the same way as you've described Coyote in that it shows fixed, mobile, average speed and temporary cameras on both sides of the road and is constantly updated.

I've neither used it nor needed it since I discovered Waze but it strikes me that it would be a very good alternative to Coyote for those who want it.

[Las Palmas]

Never heard of Waze, so looked it up.

A social app connecting you to other users of the app and it contain ads and does not seem to be possible to use without ads. No pay-out to get rid of these? Why connect with other users in order to find the way you want to go?

Not for me to understand.

[WhiteHart]

5 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

 

Never heard of Waze, so looked it up

 

I have tested it when someone else was driving so could look for the cameras traffic and the other things that users update the app with. I found it to be very useful. Only on the phone and not with CarPlay. 

[DavidCM]

24 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

Never heard of Waze, so looked it up.

 

John..here Waze is free to use.The only adverts I have noticed are for petrol stations (clearly marked as adverts) and only on the petrol price page.This is a very useful feature and regularly updated.When I first installed it,thea screen showed the location of all the other Waze users on the map.This made the screen very "busy",but this feature can be disabled.All round a very good app.Worth you looking at in more detail...I seem to remember that it is a Google app..I don't see the sense as Google maps exist.

[Harrier Man]

2 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

Never heard of Waze, so looked it up.

A social app connecting you to other users of the app and it contain ads and does not seem to be possible to use without ads. No pay-out to get rid of these? Why connect with other users in order to find the way you want to go?

Not for me to understand.

I don't recognise this description of Waze at all John. As David says, ads are not an issue. When it was introduced, there was nothing to touch it because the information displayed on the maps was very up-to-date, fed by other Waze users who would mark accidents, traffic jams, speed cameras, pot holes, etc as they passed them (not the driver but their passenger for safety reasons). This information was fed to the Waze servers which, after certain thresholds were reached, would pass the information back to other Waze users. Near real-time information of hazards ahead. This was heavy on phone Battery use and data plans (which were not as generous as they are now) and the information was only as good as other users connected to the app in the area at the time. Nonetheless, together with some of the most current mapping, Waze was brilliant and a market leading vehicle navigation app.

Google bought Waze a few years ago, poached the best software engineers and took some of the ideas and technology, which it has incorporated into the current version of google maps. Hence, the difference between the two is not as great as it once was but many are still loyal to Waze and it is still being updated. In rural areas or where there are few other Waze users, its value diminishes markedly so, personally, I have switched to google maps but I still rate Waze highly and recommend others to try and compare it with whatever their car provides.

[Las Palmas]

26 minutes ago, Harrier Man said:

I don't recognise this description of Waze at all John. As David says, ads are not an issue. When it was introduced, there was nothing to touch it because the information displayed on the maps was very up-to-date, fed by other Waze users who would mark accidents, traffic jams, speed cameras, pot holes, etc as they passed them (not the driver but their passenger for safety reasons). This information was fed to the Waze servers which, after certain thresholds were reached, would pass the information back to other Waze users. Near real-time information of hazards ahead. This was heavy on phone battery use and data plans (which were not as generous as they are now) and the information was only as good as other users connected to the app in the area at the time. Nonetheless, together with some of the most current mapping, Waze was brilliant and a market leading vehicle navigation app.

Google bought Waze a few years ago, poached the best software engineers and took some of the ideas and technology, which it has incorporated into the current version of google maps. Hence, the difference between the two is not as great as it once was but many are still loyal to Waze and it is still being updated. In rural areas or where there are few other Waze users, its value diminishes markedly so, personally, I have switched to google maps but I still rate Waze highly and recommend others to try and compare it with whatever their car provides.

From Google Playstore:

A social app connecting you with other users - containing ads.

 

That is where I got the description from.

 

On top of that, if the navigation is from Google Maps, then the app will share all info collected with Google so why not just use Google Maps? Not that I need navigation to get around here, the island is tiny, and I know maybe most of it. Did not need maps in car either in good old days before GPS, just read where I was going and then going there. Sometimes you find the most beautiful surprises when taking different than most used roads.

[Herbie]

5 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

A social app connecting you to other users of the app and it contain ads and does not seem to be possible to use without ads. No pay-out to get rid of these?

The ads are very unobtrusive and I find they only come up when the car is stationary and not actively moving/navigating. As soon as the car moves again the ads hide themselves.

Quote

Why connect with other users in order to find the way you want to go?

You certainly don't need to connect with others if you don't want to. It's a facility that you can use if you have more than one car travelling to the same destination. For instance, a while ago we had three different branches of the family going to a wedding down south and we used this facility to all meet up at a common point and then travel together, sort of 'convoy-style,' to the final destination. It's a trivial thing of limited use but it's not like you have to connect to total strangers.

[NiCoRe]

A key feature of Waze, often forgotten by "casual" users is road and POI editing through community driven features. And this no mess as the update process is nicely monitored .

As a junior editor, you can only suggest modifications (in a limited number) and it has to be on roads you really drove on with Waze GPS active. They are reviewed by an area community manager who approves or block the edition. Approved editions give you points that improve your editor status and more editing abilities...

For example, in my rural Normandy, we had a few problems that were solved through Waze editing :

• They decided out of the blue to give street names to the roads in our tiny village (less than 300 population) and numbers to the houses. With Waze edition system, it took less than 48 hours to see the updates in the app. Delivery trucks and friends  can find their way (it took almost 2 years to have the update in apple Plans and a shorter but still long time in Google Maps). 
• The street that pass by my house is narrow and restricted to light vehicles traffic (except delivery). With the editing tools, I marked the road that way. Consequence, unless you choose an address on the street itself, it will not be used by the software to draw the path to your destination. 
• We were also able to mark as a POI our lovely little church and the parking spaces around...usefull indeed.

Last but not least, the driving time evaluation is pretty accurate as it is based on real time traffic data and your driving habits (when you drive regularly on the same roads) 

[Al D-Much]

16 hours ago, Herbie said:

I was going to suggest Waze but it looks like you've already been using it, so what made you move away from it in the first place?

I was just exploring the built-in apps available, and yet again disappointed by their cr@ppiness 

[Al D-Much]

15 hours ago, NiCoRe said:

If you like Coyote, I think it is avalaible as an App for iPhone (but it does require a monthly fee at least in France)

I did look on the App Store, but it is all in French, no english version that I could find

[NiCoRe]

6 minutes ago, Al D-Much said:

I did look on the App Store, but it is all in French, no english version that I could find

Neither did I, maybe you can try their support / chat on their website www.moncoyote.com

[Al D-Much]

On 6/3/2023 at 7:40 AM, NiCoRe said:

Neither did I, maybe you can try their support / chat on their website www.moncoyote.com

Not sure if you're being serious or making a joke.
Their website is all in French too, so not helpful whatsoever.

[Las Palmas]

17 minutes ago, Al D-Much said:

Not sure if you're being serious or making a joke.
Their website is all in French too, so not helpful whatsoever.

Do you say that French people speak only French?

That would explain why I when a young hippie was on a train tour through France toward Spain and went into Gare du Nord asking for way to the other train station that had trains going south. On top of where the sweet little girl was sitting there were flags from several countries and in my naivety, I thought that she was speaking these. I asked - asked again in another of the abovementioned languages and when I had tried 5 of them, she spoke to me very fast in French.

[Rabbers]

35 minutes ago, Al D-Much said:

Not sure if you're being serious or making a joke.
Their website is all in French too, so not helpful whatsoever.

If you scroll down to the last section of the website you’ll find a Country >[Select Language] button.  Seeing that all main European countries > [Languages] are listed except for U.K. > [English] one would  assume that Coyote no longer operates in the U.K., at least not under that name.

[NiCoRe]

17 minutes ago, Rabbers said:

If you scroll down to the last section of the website you’ll find a Country >[Select Language] button.  Seeing that all main European countries > [Languages] are listed except for U.K. > [English] one would  assume that Coyote no longer operates in the U.K., at least not under that name.

Thanks @Rabbers !

This was so obvious I did not pointed it out. My bad 😇 (the other workauround could be uisng google translate...)

And for the record, there are (many) French people that do speak English (and are able to write in English too 🙃)...as many they do appreciate one tries to speak their native langage when visiting France (which is not that difficult with modern day digital tools). 

[steve2006]

RGood point Nicolas, I’m presently in Rhodes, Greece and can speak enough Greek to hold a conversation. The look on the locals’ faces when they see an obvious tourist and then hear their own language is priceless. They always ask where I am from completely surprised that a lazy Englishman had made the effort to learn their language.

Asking for a table in a busy restaurant in Greek almost always guarantees a nice table, more food and much better service after they have overcome the initial shock 😀

[Rabbers]

1 hour ago, NiCoRe said:

Thanks @Rabbers !

This was so obvious I did not pointed it out. My bad 😇 (the other workauround could be uisng google translate...)

And for the record, there are (many) French people that do speak English (and are able to write in English too 🙃)...as many they do appreciate one tries to speak their native langage when visiting France (which is not that difficult with modern day digital tools). 

My aim - admittedly a boring one - was to make obvious what to some might have appeared to be a joke.

Certainly, it was not my aim to raise the subject of the relative prowesses of Frenchmen and Englishmen in expressing themselves in each other’s languages.  But, since the subject was raised, I will offer my observation, as a third party, that the degree of fluency, both spoken and written, of the average French anglophone is higher than that of a British francophone.

Why this should be is difficult to say, but, historically, it probably has a lot to do with insularity on the one side and greater commercial and perhaps cultural incentives on the other.  Something that has always struck me as odd is the frequency with which British comedians get laughs from their fellow countrymen’s distorted attempts to speak foreign languages, thus selling the country undeservedly short.  Linguistic self-satire of this nature is rare in the majority of other countries.

[NemesisUK]

At the height of the British empire english was the most widely spoken language and the official language of its colonies. There was little impetus to learn another language. Even now the official language of aviation is English.

Only in the EU and the Eurovision song contest is there an attempt to repeat everything in french.  😁

[DavidCM]

8 minutes ago, NemesisUK said:

At the height of the British empire english was the most widely spoken language and the official language of its colonies. There was little impetus to learn another language. 

Of course the alternative was(and probably still is), to repeat in English,slowly and at much increased volume,when addressing "Johnny foreigner"