Swarmsourcing: Radar Detection
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
Radar detectors are very finicky, and my understanding is that it is difficult to build a reliable one.
Now, my experience is with a specific model (and I think a very very popular one, the Passport 9500), it has an RJ45 connection which plugs into the unit and then the other end plugs into your car cigarette lighter for power. The end which plugs into your car cigarette lighter has a dongle and LED which flashes when radar has been detected (along with a mute button). There is two-way state information transmitted over the line in addition to power.
It would be awesome to build a "man in the middle" device to intercept and interpret the signals from popular device models, then send it's own signal to the iPhone/Android/WP7 phone to share the information.
This has the large benefit of being extremely cheaper to manufacture. Additionally, you're leaving the challenge of building the actual Radar Detection to well established companies who know what they are doing.
Additionally the service could look for patterns in the data. False positives are a huge problem with detectors. When every car is reporting radar 24/7 at this one location, you know it's most likely a false positive. Newer Passport models have this logic built in with GPS.
This is probably going to become more and more important in future. Both RF and processing electronics are becoming cheaper and more capable - and this will lead to 'smarter' radar technology being affordable in speed-gun type devices. Old-school dump pulse-doppler systems are trivially easy to detect, but there are many radar technologies out there that will present a much bigger challenge. It wouldn't surprise if we soon see PCL (passive coherent location) based speed traps soon. Passive radars like these can use radiators of opportunity (cell towers, TV, FM radio) and don't need to emit any energy of their own. They aren't undetectable, but are much harder to detect.
The point is that radar detection is going to become much harder in future, and while the equipment will probably still get cheaper, the technical sophistication required for detection will increase.
In general, there isn't really such a thing as a passive receiver. The typical radar receiver design will downmix the incoming signal to some lower frequency (IF) using its 'local oscillator'. Some of the energy from this oscillator will leak out of the receiver and be detectable. This is only one of several possibilities for detecting receivers.
So no, not undetectable, but much harder than detecting an active transmitter.
I imagine for dedicated listeners, there might be others.
My idea is to make and sell devices, and make the software free--as in freedom and as in beer. The business model is that stuff that costs money to make (hardware) costs money to buy. Stuff that users collect (data) I distribute for free. I want to make sure that data that individual users collect is available to users--for any use that they want for it. There are several closed systems on the market. These companies get people to collect data for them--and then lock it up. They create an artificial scarcity of data and try to make money from that scarcity.
I say--let the data flow.
Ari.
It attaches to the Valentine 1 RD, which is already known as one of the best out there. I hope this guy doesn't underestimate the engineering that goes into a quality radar detector these days. Belscort, Valentine, and Whistler spend millions of dollars and have decades of experience in the engineering. The ability to detect quick trigger, but also having the necessary DSP to filter out false signals being so important, I don't know if this will be a viable product anytime soon.
Edit: It appears he's using a Cobra radar detector. They are a complete joke. This is a non starter if that's what he's going with.
If you have an interest in radar detectors in general, I suggest you check out http://radardetector.net. Read some of the comments on there about Cobras.
Wonder if there is a monetization method beyond hardware there...
I wonder how much market there is for a kit that requires the user to open up his detector.
Ari.
BTW. For those who are afraid of openning up their detectors you can easily desing a special version which will hook up to the LED using photo-resistor. I.e. a kind of device you stick up to detector and put its sensor over detector's LED.
Ari.
Doesn't need to be.
If you want to be a Fortune 500 compan, go public and make your VCs rich, you want to control the entire stack form hardware through to data, "monetize" (i.e. hog) everything and hide your algorithms from your competitors and users. This is what movie studios are trying to do.
If you want to have a living and product that is useful to people, you can make enough money from hardware sales. You don't get to ring the bell on NYSE, but I can live without that.
Ari.
Of course, this also means false positives are a larger problem.
A public API for the speed trap database would be useful too. I'm not sure what their business model is, right now they just sell the hardware interface.
What I'd really love to see is existing proven radar detector manufacturers incorporate Bluetooth into their detectors, allowing apps to interface with them. Valentine will never do it, but Escort might.
FYI SignalActive (the company behind RadarActive) is based in the SF bay area (San Mateo I think?)
My idea is further to have an open RESTful API to the data that anyone can use. I want to make the data genuinely useful to other people. I want to have a GPL-style license for data as well.
SignalActive are in San Mateo. I've been to their office, they are real friendly people.
Cobra has a bluetooth detector: https://cobra.com/detail/cobra-iradar-radar-laser-safety-cam... . It's closed source. You cannot get to the data.
Looking through their site - that's $90 for the iphone-detector adapter alone. Plus the cost of the radar detector itself, plus (it seems) a service subscription fee in the future. Perhaps I am missing something, but with the setup like this I don't see them building large enough user base to bootstrap the service. It's a good idea, but the adapter cost needs to go down significantly (to under $20) and it should be usable with existing trap detection networks, e.g. Trapster.
* Trapster is the most popular one with manual reporting.
* RadarActive hooks up to an actual detector (Valentine One, considered by many to be the best) to automatically report radar/laser detections.
* Some of the high end Passport detectors and possibly others have GPS and trap databases, but not in real time AFAIK. You have to hook it up to a computer to update the database, so it's only useful for fixed traps like red light / speed cameras.
I hope the networks don't get too fragmented, because the real power lies in the network effects. You need a critical mass of users/detectors reporting for it to be useful.
Can one in good conscience build and maintain a service that at it's core is about circumventing laws designed to save lives?
I am not condemning this and there are a lot of arguments you can make justifying it. But in all I would not choose to be involved it its production, just as I wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer but I don't condemn my friends that do. (I can't say I don't get a little jealous when they talk about the drones they work on).
That was in a gentler time; nowadays I recognize that radar traps are often used for revenue generation, so forces might be more reticent about revealing location. But 20 years ago even the police themselves would have had no issue with this, and might even have endorsed it.
Additionally as mentioned in previous comments, a solid radar based detector (X, K, Ka, and Lidar) is very difficult to make a good one. Valentine1 being one of the best available on the market.
For the laser problem, definitely look at laser interceptor USA. These guys showed up to Radar Roy's competition with a winnebago they couldnt get a reading on.
The marketing attempt at "... RadarLoc encourages law-abiding behavior." is patently false. It encourages the opposite, speeding outside radar enforced zones.
Large fixed cameras were well marked a couple of kilometers ahead. You are only at risk for a short time, But you would be amazed how the Aussies drove right smack on the speed limit as soon as they saw the signs. Speeding under the camera netted you big points, double on holidays.
The other kind were unmanned mobile units in white vans. Typically placed in urban areas in plain sight (at the bottom of a hill--bastards!). A fine, but no points however.
Another Aussie state actually had a law that the cops could not hide while operating a radar gun.
I found the Aussies to be extremely aggressive drivers, but only at slow speeds and in parking lots. The only time I saw Mad Max, he was driving with 'P' plates or at Summer Nats.
Bottom line: visible enforcement is strong prevention. Most U.S. departments are really after the revenue.
Make radar detectors emit radar when a trap is confirmed.
Use case: Radar detector alerts you to what it thinks is a trap. If it is a trap, you hit a button and it will emit radar for 5 or 10 seconds to warns approaching motorists? The bonus is all existing radar detectors can pick up the signal.
To make my idea legal how about building a combination radar detector/radar gun. Officially the purspose of the radar gun is to get a second estimate on your speed when you may be in proximaty of a trap.
Also, what prevents people from purposely sending fake signals?