I’m pretty keen to get a traffic monitor made with Spark core (and I’ve seen the same done with Bing maps) where it checks a specified route from Home --> Work and then tells me how long the journey will take based on current traffic conditions (sometimes horrendous here).
Any ideas on the ease of working with Google Maps API? I see there are some free options and some paid ones too.
And getting this into the Photon I imagine will be with a couple of web calls (webhooks) with API related requests; sound right?
Anyone been down this road and have any suggestions here?
I used the Google Maps API with Tasker on Android in a similar fashion. The goal was to find out if the suggested alternative due to traffic varied from the usual route, or at least get a traffic-based time-to-home, and then launch the navigation if taking the alternative route. Unfortunately any traffic based directions or journey times are a paid-for service: see Google Maps API for Work at
However, using the standard Google Maps API is pretty straightforward - I now use it to turn off navigation once I’m on the home stretch to conserve battery: it identifies a road name using snapToRoads and placeid and closes navigation if it matches the road into my village.
Thanks all… I think I’m going to stick to Bing Maps given that they don’t have the requirement of using the actual map when you request the traffic / travel time information.