Built in Radar. Anyone tried?

[jumpmaster]

I have been looknig online at radar/laser scramblers from RockyMountainRadar.com and also at the Valetine 1 hidden radar detector. Both of the items can be hidden in the grille and rear of the car. The Valentine detector has a LED screen that will mount under the dash, or what I want to do, cut a spot and build it into the dash. Has any one ever used one, heard anything good or bad about them, ever been in a turkish prison?

Thanks

[jimhamptons]

I have had the Valentine 1 concealed radar detector in a few of my late model cars. I felt that hiding the detector out of site effected its range and I have been much happier using the K40 hidden radar units.


The K40 basically mounts in the front and rear license plates locations with both radar detectors and laser diffusers and then you have 2 LED lights in the dash to alert you where the signal is. The system also has a mini speaker and power switch which also alllows a city/highway setting.

I have used this company before for my Valentine 1 installs and they install the concealed display unit in the rear view mirror by etching out the glass to show the display. It is pretty cool.

http://www.aidesign.com/

Just click on electronics and then onto radar and laser detections to get an idea of the installed finished product.

[BonzoHansen]

My Valentine is a tremedous unit. Hard to beat its performance. It's concealed display is not really hidden though.

[jumpmaster]

Thanks. I was at a store today, Car Toys, and trhey have some unit there thatcosts $1100!!! I forget the name...I'll have to look it up. Two opinions...I'll check the site you posted and let you know what the other one was I saw.

[jumpmaster]

The unit at car toys was the Passport SR7 with scramble technology. Anyone ever heard of this working well. $1100 is a lot of money. Its $1900 installed! I guess I'll have to Google it for reviews

[ProTouringNyc]

Wow that shop is outa control Awesome work

[rohrt]

I would like to know if the scramble piece works and if so on what bands.

[HzEmall]

The Escort SR7 + is a SR7 with the Shifter attached to it. The shifter allows you to survive a direct hit from a laser gun and it scatters the beam so the cops don't get a bounce back to confirm your speed, his gun will show ERROR on the screen and you have time to slow down to a safe speed.

The Escort uses a rear license plate mount for rear detection and seperate sensors in the front so you don't have to rely on the plate mount. The shifter part of it mounts to the plate since this is the only place that most cars can be "gunned" with the laser.

We install alot of the SR7+ here which is all hideaway with a small panel that can be dash mounted or with some custom work taken apart and integrated.

The K40 one is really good but the Escort has beat out them and the Valentine 1 in every test I have read.

Escort makes a heavy majority of the radar guns that police use..........

[my72vette454]

What happens to the police radar gun if you have the same unit in your car and its pointing at them? Does it mess up the return signal and show error on their display?

[HzEmall]

What happens to the police radar gun if you have the same unit in your car and its pointing at them? Does it mess up the return signal and show error on their display?

Same unit ? Do you mean a radar gun ? If you have the SR7+ it will scatter the laser beam and the cops gun will read error cause he didn't get a bounce back to confirm distance and speed.

[DeepBlue68]

I have a V1 with the concealed display and I absolutely love it. My dad has one as well, and we both tell everyone that asks about it that once you get used to having the locator arrows and bogey counter, you won't ever wanna live without it. I did a custom mount for my concealed display in the fold-out ashtray in my car (not my Camaro...my daily driver) that is pretty nice. If you fold the ashtray in, you'd never know it was in there. And the actual detector is mounted high up against the rearview mirror, so it's not as noticeable. I'll try to take some pics tomorrow and post them.

You asked about the performance of the detector. You can find reviews of the different brands all over the internet. Some people say they're biased (especially Car & Driver), but I can honestly say that it works amazingly well. I do a lot of highway driving between Dallas and Lubbock, TX, and it has saved me countless times. The first time I traveled with it, I picked up a State Trooper over 4 miles before I got to him (granted, that was on the flat ground in west Texas on a clear day). I've never been disappointed.

[zero g]

The big question is have any of you been running 30+ over the limit and know "the man" tried to clock you and couldn't? I gotta say if I was "the man" and saw you running 100+ and couldn't get a clock, I would stop you and write you anyway and let you tell the judge; "Judge he couldn't have clocked me because I have an (illegal in most states) jammer, scrambler diffuser etc....." But thats just me

[Jim Nilsen]

When I was at SEMA I had a chance to talk to the guy at the BEL labratories booth and they have a nice hidden setup too. It is around $1,500 installed but he claimed it is as good or better than the Valentine and that both are very good along with the Escort.

Good radar detection is not cheap and modest radar protection is so it is up to you on what you want.

Jim Nilsen

[joeljet]

i'm pretty sure that bel is made by escort

[HzEmall]

K40 is the only one to have a one year ticket guarantee..........you get nailed....they pay....

[DarkoNova]

The Escort SR7 + is a SR7 with the Shifter attached to it. The shifter allows you to survive a direct hit from a laser gun and it scatters the beam so the cops don't get a bounce back to confirm your speed, his gun will show ERROR on the screen and you have time to slow down to a safe speed.

The Escort uses a rear license plate mount for rear detection and seperate sensors in the front so you don't have to rely on the plate mount. The shifter part of it mounts to the plate since this is the only place that most cars can be "gunned" with the laser.

We install alot of the SR7+ here which is all hideaway with a small panel that can be dash mounted or with some custom work taken apart and integrated.

The K40 one is really good but the Escort has beat out them and the Valentine 1 in every test I have read.

Escort makes a heavy majority of the radar guns that police use..........

Where can I find info on this SR7 and Shifter? I looked on Escort's site and found nothing about either one.

Matt

[chicane67]

Same unit ? Do you mean a radar gun ? If you have the SR7+ it will scatter the laser beam and the cops gun will read error cause he didn't get a bounce back to confirm distance and speed.

Well... the beam is already scattered before detection anyway... so 'scatter' is a pretty loose term when specifically discussing LIDAR. There is also the debate between LAZER and IR diode detectors.

I've seen it debated before and the answer is quite simple, apart from cost, laser diodes are better. Most IR LED's have a very slow response time and low peak power output. Laser diodes are designed for short, high power pulses and can quite easily do the 50nS pulses that we need. Please keep in mind that LED's are still effective at jamming, just as not as effective as laser diodes. Blinder is a good example of an effective product using LED's, but according the the Guys of Lidar, the laser diode jammers are more effective in practice.

Speaking of jammers, back in the day when jammers were just starting out, Lidatek came out with its LE10. It's operation was very simple, if it received pulses from the gun it would pulse a laser diode at 4MHz to jam the gun. At 4MHz a pulse it sent back every 250nS so as long as your at least 75 meters away from the gun a pulse will make it into the jamming window and mess with the gun. This method is effectively just increasing the amount of noise the gun sees so it can't distinguish its own pulse from the noise.

There are a lot disadvantages to using this method, the main one being "punch through". 75 meters isn't enough by todays standard and the design was phased out a long time ago. The constant 4MHz jamming signal will also cause jamming codes in almost every gun, this is due to the gun receives pulses outside the jamming window. If the gun receives a pulse back before its fired its next pulse then its quite obvious to pick up that someone is messing with it. The last disadvantage is the heat generated when you generate a constant signal. The LE10 was only able to run its laser diode for 5 seconds otherwise it would burn out. To get the required power to reach the gun 4 million times per second isn't practical for LED's or laser diodes without risking damage to the diode.

The latest generation of laser jamming utilize micro controllers to intelligently control the jamming diode. Intelligent control is all about timing, the more resolution you have the closer to the gun you can jam. The micro controller records the time between the first few pulses so it knows the pulse rate of the gun. With this information it knows when to expect the next pulse so it can turn on the diode 50-100nS before next pulse is due and jamming occurs.

Advantages are quite obvious with this technique compared to the 'spamming' method. The pulse rate of the jammer is the same as the gun (about 100 PPS) so less heat is generated. Jamming pulses are never sent outside the window which helps avoid jamming codes. The only limitation to this method is the resolution of the micro controller used. Products such as Blinder and the ZR3 use a 10MHz Atmel processor so assuming it can time down to a single instruction it will have a 100nS resolution. What this means is when the jamming window becomes smaller than resolution the jamming pulse will land outside the jamming window and become useless. So for 10MHz your limited to 30 meters (~100ft) which is very close to jam a gun, if you can't slow down in that amount of time there not going to catch you anyway. Increasing the clock frequency to 40MHz should yield a punch through distance of 7.5 meters (25ft) which is the aim for the upcoming jammer project. Beyond 40MHz the law of "diminishing returns" comes into play and things start getting obscenely expensive and impractical.

And just think... we didnt even get into RADAR jamming yet...

Something else to look into is: http://www.laserveil.com/ They have a bunch of good info on detectors and other useful information on RADAR, LIDAR and other little things to help the cause.

[HzEmall]

The SR7+ is the same as the SRX in the US.

[68sixspeed]

There have been a lot of bad reviews that the rocky mountain radar passive jamming doesn't work. www.radarbusters.com

One that kept me from buying is on RMR's site FAQ- why doesn't it work on the roadside signs that show your speed, they claim a different band is used, but it is not, just plain old K band.

It looks like active scrambers are the way to go for radar, but illegal in most cases.

[audioman]

Make sure you get the laser jammer which is not illegal. There are several good units on the market.
K40
Beltronics
Blinder
Passport
For the guys in VA remember to get a unit thats invisible to radar units so you won't get stopped, Radar detectors are illegal in VA and some other states.
If you want to do some research go here www.radartest.com
Other than that most of these will pass.