Instructions for Trapster® Java/J2ME version

Trapster® Java/J2ME Screen Shot
The small blue dot follows your GPS location in real time. The blue circle shows your alert radius. As you approach reported trap locations and one or more of the traps come within that blue circle, Trapster® begins playing audio alerts such as "Live Police" or "Red Light Camera", and animating the associated icons. Of course as with everything Trapster®, you can report new traps and rate the traps that other users have reported.

To download Trapster® to your phone use the following instructions:

1) Type the appropriate download link into your mobile browser or better yet copy it and SMS or email it to your GPS enabled phone (see note about whether your phone will work below**):

    Nokia s60 (e.g. N95, e Series) and other "open" smartphones with GPS:
            trapster.com/tm2/tms.jad
    Nextel and other Java enabled phones that do not accept Verisign certificates (unsigned version):
            trapster.com/tm2/tmu.jad

2) Allow the program to install, and then exit the mobile browser.

3) Go to the Applications or Games or similar folder, and then find the Trapster® police car icon. Click on it.

4) Enter your Trapster® user name (not e-mail address) and password. Your Trapster® username is listed above the blue account links box to the right on this page.

5) You can receive alerts, and report trap locations, only after Trapster® determines your current GPS location. You will see a "Searching for Location..." message on the map if your location has not yet been determined.

6) If there are traps near your current location, they will appear as icons on the map. You can click the icons to get more information about each trap, such as who reported it, when it was last reported, etc.

7) You can report traps at your current GPS location using the shortcut keys (see list below*) or the corresponding menu items. You can also adjust the position of the trap using the trackball and the map.

8) There are four types of alerts: live police, red light camera, speed camera, and usual police hiding place. For each type of alert, a corresponding audio file will play.

9) You can customize your alert radius, audio, and other preferences using the Settings menu on the mobile. You can configure more advanced settings such as Trusted Groups and what kinds of traps you want to be alerted about on your account on the server here.

Notes: Please plug your car charger into your phone while running these apps (GPS consumes battery life)! If your phone does not have internal GPS, you will need to purchase an external Bluetooth GPS accessory. Even if your phone does have GPS, you may want to consider the external Bluetooth accessory.
Click on the picture to get more information, price, etc.
We find that the external accessories get a better signal, even sometimes indoors, are much faster to acquire a GPS fix, and have much longer battery life.

* Shortcut keys:

# (q) zoom in
* (a) zoom out
1 (w) Report live police trap (police on location right now with laser/radar or visual observation)
4 (e) Report red light camera
3 (r) Report speed camera
4 (s) Report usual police hiding place (typical speed trap location, but police officer not currently there)
6 (f) Find Me, re-center map on GPS position
9 (c) Acknowledge current alerts (alerts will stop playing until a new trap is encountered)

** What J2ME phones Trapster® will work on:

Trapster® will work on any phone that has full J2ME support, GPS hardware, and unrestricted GPS capabilities. If you bought an unlocked Nokia N95 or similar device, it will almost certainly work. If you bought your phone through a carrier such as ATT or Sprint or Verizon - Most US carriers restrict access to GPS on all but the PDA type handsets, except for a few select, paid, applications. The fact that Google Maps or TeleNav works on your phone does not help. Those are among the few approved apps. Most carriers in Europe do not place any such restrictions on their handsets. Unfortunately at this time the Sprint Instinct does not have full J2ME support (specifically MIDP 2.0) and cannot run many popular applications, including Trapster®.

Trapster® is still in a beta testing phase. This means you may experience bugs or deficiencies in the software from time to time. Issues? Please feel free to contact us.