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This idea has been done before, see http://radaractive.com/

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.




I have the V1 and RadarActive transceiver and iPhone app. The hardware works well, but I kind of wish the software was open source, or they at least provided a linkable library or plugin system of some kind (might be limited by iOS) since I keep thinking of neat things I could do with it. For example it would be nice to integrate it with the "Augmented Driving" app.

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?)


There are limitations on what I can open-source on the microcontroller side. My NDA with Apple explicitly prohibits disclosing communications protocols connection details. There are no restrictions on open-sourcing the iOS side of the software, including drivers for the device. My intention is to GPL the iOS code and let people build whatever they want with it.

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.


> This idea has been done before, see http://radaractive.com

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.


That's my biggest concern as well. I own a Passport Escort 8500, a really high-quality radar detector, and even with that, I've been caught off guard. I've used other cheaper units and they're useless from a practical standpoint. They constantly chatter about radar that doesn't exist, or they detect so late that you're already busted. Absolutely pointless.


I think the idea with this is that even if the radar detector doesn't go off soon enough to save your ass, the next guy now knows the cop is there.

Of course, this also means false positives are a larger problem.


Any info as to why the V1 is the best out there? I have a Passport 9500ix and my friend owns a V1. I'm constantly noticing that his goes off for many, many more false positives than my 9500ix does. Not trying to start a war or anything, btw. Just curious.


Your ix has a GPS that automatically locks out falses after driving past them a few times. The V1 doesn't. It is also commonly accepted the V1 is more sensitive, but has more falses. This is why people will buy a 9500ix for in town, and a V1 for the highway.


Don't go there... V1 vs. Passport is like emacs vs. vi for radar detector enthusiasts.


Looks like radaractive is doing what I suggested in my comment. It would be awesome to build it out to support more models.

Wonder if there is a monetization method beyond hardware there...


I'm pretty much fascinated with the idea. Every radar-detector has one or several LED indicators. What you need is just to hook up to these LEDs and you will support virtually any radar-detector available on the market. The cost of componets hardly exceeds $10. For extra $10 you can easily add bluetooth chip to get rid of wires coming to your iPhone and thus expending range of supported mobile devices. All this can be done by any EE student as a homework. Basic software can be written in J2ME to cover almost any cheap-phone. And this is what that guy is most likely doing.


The detector in my video is a Cobra XRS9345. I am doing what mikeknoop and ruslan are suggesting: hacking into the LEDs and reading the device's idea of what it detects. The actual signaling is non-obvious and I intend to publish the code that interprets them once it's stable. One idea that I'm kicking around is building a kit that you can solder to your detector's LEDs.

I wonder how much market there is for a kit that requires the user to open up his detector.

Ari.


Ari, aside from legal issues, I think it mostly depends on how hard the installation process is going to be. If you manage to design a very small PCB which will use bluetooth, can be fit inside radar and needs only three wires to solder (DGND, VCC and LED's anode), then you can easily get some users, especially in the Valley where ppl love gadgets which they can create or expand themselves :-).

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.


You sound like someone who isn't afraid of soldering. Perhaps you want to test the alpha equipment. ari.krupnik@hackerdojo.com

Ari.


I'm located outside of US, though would be happy to try your piece of hardware in my environment. Email sent.


> Wonder if there is a monetization method beyond hardware there...

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.




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