Waze travel time update

xt16johnny · March 11, 2019, 8:41am

Hey

I also have the same problem. The travel times went mental lately. A drive that normally takes 7-8 mins is now 35mins, and a drive that’s about 2 hours now takes 18mins.

As mentioned above by petro, it’s not the HA components fault.

I tested the WazeRouteCalculator and confirmed the times are way out.
It could be an inaccurate address causing your issue so include the address (and country name) that appears as a suggestion if you use the Waze app (though in my testing I can’t make it match the app times and in some cases, I can’t even get close).

petro · March 11, 2019, 11:51am

WazeRouteCalculator changed the ‘address converter’ method between version 0.6 and 0.9. I can look into the issues. So can the developer of the WazeRouteCalculator. BUT WE NEED THE ADDRESS. @Klagio I’ve said it 3 times. Not sure how else I can get the point across.

Klagio · March 11, 2019, 6:54pm

the below were working the other day, are not now. Basically none is working now

via del cenacolo 53, Rome, Italy
Via di Grottarossa, 1035, 00189 Roma RM, Italia
Via dei Monti Tiburtini, 385/389, 00157 Roma RM
Piazzale della Stazione Tiburtina, 00162 Roma RM, Italia
Roma Termini, 00185 Roma RM
Aeroporto di Fiumicino T1/T2/T3, Via dell’ Aeroporto di Fiumicino, Fiumicino, Metropolitan City of Rome
Aeroporto “G.B. Pastine” di Roma Ciampino, Via Appia Nuova, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome

petro · March 11, 2019, 6:56pm

Probably be best to PM me and delete this post if you want privacy.

Klagio · March 11, 2019, 6:58pm

they are all public places

petro · March 13, 2019, 2:39am

@Klagio, @xt16johnny

I’ve spent some time looking into the address issue and I’ve found the culprit. But the news is not good.
So what happens is we send the address to waze. They then send a list of GPS locations with a few attributes back. Waze has 3 servers, United States/North America, Isreal, and Rest of World. So when everyone sets their region as US, NA, IL, EU, or AU, it corresponds to these servers. There are 2 types of servers for each region, one that translates addresses into gps locations, and one that gets a route between gps locations. So on to the problem. The server for the EU is not returning the correct gps location for some parts of the EU. If you were to switch to the US region, it would work for translating the address to GPS. But it’s not that easy. If you do that, the calculations between routes will return the wonderful ‘empty response’ bug. It’s a catch-22.

Just see for yourself:

Address: via del cenacolo rome italy

EU server responses (4th choice is close, but not correct location)
https://www.waze.com/row-SearchServer/mozi?q=via+del+cenacolo+rome+italy&lang=eng&origin=livemap&lat=47.498&lon=19.04

4th choice

{  
   "bounds":null,
   "businessName":null,
   "city":"Roma",
   "location":{  
      "lat":42.000160217285156,
      "lon":12.385350227355957
   },
   "name":"Via del Cenacolo, Roma, Lazio",
   "number":null,
   "provider":"waze",
   "segmentId":-1,
   "state":"Lazio",
   "street":"Via del Cenacolo",
   "streetId":0
}

US server responses (first choice is correct location)
https://www.waze.com/SearchServer/mozi?q=via+del+cenacolo+rome+italy&lang=eng&origin=livemap&lat=47.498&lon=19.04

1st and correct choice

{  
   "bounds":{  
      "bottom":42.0027630302915,
      "left":12.3821763,
      "right":12.3855891,
      "top":42.0000650697085
   },
   "businessName":null,
   "city":"Roma",
   "location":{  
      "lat":42.001529693603516,
      "lon":12.384178161621094
   },
   "name":"Via del Cenacolo, 00123 Roma RM",
   "number":null,
   "provider":"waze",
   "segmentId":-1,
   "state":"Lazio",
   "street":"Via del Cenacolo",
   "streetId":0
}

IL server responses (no response)
https://www.waze.com/il-SearchServer/mozi?q=via+del+cenacolo+rome+italy&lang=eng&origin=livemap&lat=47.498&lon=19.04

Klagio · March 13, 2019, 7:07am

Thanks for your time in resolving this issue.

What about inserting the GPS coordinates instead of the address, would that work (I can try later today) ?

In my case is a one time operation, no big deal.

EDIT, YES, it works, just go to maps.google.com enter the address you need, point it on the map, copy/paste the GPS coordinates in your waze_travel_time in origin/destination, and voila’ … problem solved

Holdestmade · March 13, 2019, 9:58am

Replacing all with GPS coords worked for me too, thanks for the find

In UK, using Region EU

Is slow to populate all my sensors though (about 10mins)

Klagio · March 13, 2019, 10:04am

I also left region, although probably we could take it out, since GPS coordinates are unique.

Also for me it takes 10 minutes after reboot to populate sensors, but was like that before too

Klagio · March 13, 2019, 10:05am

Soon that will change

klogg · March 13, 2019, 10:10am

I don’t use any addresses ever, I’m only using zones and device_trackers which I would have thought reduced to latitude and longitudes, but I still have hundreds of these errors.

Holdestmade · March 13, 2019, 10:14am

Will still be part of Europe just not the European Union !

xt16johnny · March 13, 2019, 11:34am

Thank you very much for your time on this!
I have inserted co-ordinates and it seems to be giving perfect outputs now.

Thanks again

petro · March 13, 2019, 11:43am

Yes, that would work 100%. The problem lies in the translation from address to GPS. Just make sure you input it like this:

lat,lon

I’ve yet to find a solution to the startup issue. Next on my list.

The errors are unrelated to this current conversation. The errors will go away when this PR is finalized inside the next build. It just so happens that if you use the wrong server, you’ll get these errors. The reason you get them so much is because the current version (and all old versions) cycle all 3 servers instead of using the one in your region. This pr changes the loop to only use your region server instead of talking to all 3. I’m waiting on the original developer to merge the changes.

github.com/kovacsbalu/WazeRouteCalculator

Fix Empty response error.

kovacsbalu:master ← Petro31:patch-1

opened 12:53PM - 10 Mar 19 UTC

Petro31

+18 -13

So alot of users with home assistant have been reporting errors coming from Waze…RouteCalculator. These errors are essentially emtpy response or Internal Error which come directly from waze. I've tracked the error down to one simple fact. If you make a route request to the wrong server first, the subsequent requests get ignored or also fail. This must be new to the API because it wasn't always like this. So the fix is the use location based routing server requests. Similar to how the COORD_SERVERS work. I tested this in a build of home assistant with 11 separate routes. 3 in US using PRIVATE, TAXI, and MOTORCYCLE, 3 in EU using PRIVATE, TAXI, and MOTORCYCLE, 3 in IL using PRIVATE, TAXI, and MOTORCYCLE, and 2 others in IL and EU (random ones just for testing home assistant settings). In this test calculate_all_routes getting performed twice a minute for a maximum of 1320 requests per hour. Prior to PR, roughly 776 errors per hour. After PR, roughly ~~124~~ errors per hour. 124 errors was my mistake, searching for an IL route inside the EU. After fixing that on my end the errors went down to roughly **0** inside an hour with requests being made every 30 seconds. The current ~~124~~ errors seem to plague Taxi routes in EU and Motorcycle routes in IL. I'm not 100% sure what is causing that problem. However, the private routes had about 4 errors for the hour among the 4 routes.

Klagio · March 13, 2019, 11:45am

if anyone in the EU wonder, the decimal has to have a .
correct is:

41.12345, 12.12345

petro · March 13, 2019, 11:46am

Yes, that’s because the waze api requires it that way.

maurizio53 · March 16, 2019, 7:39pm

I have another type of problem… the sensors till some days ago reported the travel time using the shortest route, but now they use a very strange route as you see in this screenshot:

Commonly there is a highway between the two cities called A24 and generally it takes 30 minutes to reach the destination. Actually it uses a very strange route and the result is a very very long trip as you see in the pic.

Is it related to what?

EDIT: I get always these errors about the sensors:

2019-03-16 20:44:33 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.entity] Update of sensor.avezzano_l_aquila is taking over 10 seconds
2019-03-16 20:45:01 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.entity] Update of sensor.l_aquila_avezzano is taking over 10 seconds

lolouk44 · March 16, 2019, 7:54pm

What are your start point and destinations? Are they addresses or coordinates?
A per above there was a change in the way Waze identifies coordinates from an address.

I had the same issue and now use coordinates which gives me the expected data…

maurizio53 · March 16, 2019, 7:56pm

This is the code of that sensor:

- platform: waze_travel_time
  name: "Avezzano-L'Aquila"
  origin: Avezzano, Italy
  destination: L'Aquila, Italy
  region: 'EU'

They are simple cities

lolouk44 · March 16, 2019, 7:58pm

ok, change them to coordinates. It’s an issue with Waze servers.
See above post with more details