Point the camera at the printout. Drive to the job.
F+R NSW is an iPhone app for firefighters. Point it at the station printout as you head for the truck, or at the MDT screen once you are in it, and it reads the job's address, the Map Ref coordinates and the incident number. One tap starts driving directions — to the address, or to the exact coordinates. No typing, no transcription errors, no squinting at a wrapped address line on the way out the door.
12 QUOKKA HOLLOW RD
MENAI
SUTHERLAND (NSW)
2234Navigate to the address
-34.012643, 151.003712Navigate to the coordinates
An illustration with invented details — the street does not exist and the point is a sports field.
- Reads the address — including one that wraps over several lines, put back together in order
- Reads the Map Ref — printed longitude first; the app works out which number is the latitude from the values and always hands your maps app latitude first
- Reads the incident number — so you can see at a glance it is the job you think it is
- The station printout or the MDT screen — recognised automatically, nothing to configure
- Google Maps or Apple Maps, your choice, routed from where you are now
- Type it in or correct it when glare, a creased sheet or a bumpy road beats the camera
- Radio quick reference — priority colour codes, status codes, the CAN report and PAR, one tap from the main screen
- Light, dark, or match the phone — readable in the engine bay at 3 am and on the apron at midday
- Nothing is sent to us — no account, no server; the destination goes to your maps app only when you tap navigate. The last job stays on the phone for a shift, then is forgotten
Built to refuse rather than guess
A wrong destination is worse than no destination. A coordinate pair is only accepted when both numbers are complete, carry a decimal point, and land inside Australia — a digit the camera misread, or half a number outside the frame, is discarded rather than guessed at, and the scanner simply keeps looking until a clean frame arrives. Once a pair has been read, a later frame that disagrees with it has to be seen again before it is believed.
The same care applies to the address. When the address block runs longer than it should — usually because the camera lost the line that ends it — the app still shows you what it read, but says so in amber: check it is complete before you drive off. Green means "this will take you there"; amber means "look at this first". If a read has the address but not the coordinates, or the other way round, Scan again to add picks up the missing half — and ignores any sheet carrying a different incident number, so two jobs are never stitched together.
Radio communications, on one card
The quick reference sets out the radio priority colour codes, the status codes, the CAN report (Conditions, Actions, Needs) and the PAR — Personnel Accountability Report — in the order you reach for them. It opens from the radio button on the main screen and from Settings, and works with no signal because it is part of the app.
Everything happens on the phone
Text recognition runs on the device using Apple's built-in framework; no photo or video is recorded. The app has no server, no account and no sign-in, and makes no network requests of its own; the only thing that leaves it is the destination, handed to your maps app when you tap navigate. The last job is kept on the phone for 12 hours so you can come back to it after navigating, then forgotten on its own — it is never backed up, and there is no history beyond that one job. The privacy policy says all of it in full.
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