6 ms·

Swarmsourcing: Radar Detection

54 points by T_S_ 16y ago

dustball 16y ago
I know this hacker. He works out of Hacker Dojo in Mountain View (across street from ycombinator). This guy is for real.
hartror 16y ago
Neat, though you will want to be careful not to fall foul of the law but they're pretty liberal in the US right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_detector#Legality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_detector#Legality
Estragon 16y ago
Might want to add a bit of a delay before announcing that you've just detected radar. Otherwise, police following site site will know who's reporting them...
- nickdunkman 16y ago
  I guess users need to be anonymous then. I'm not sure I like this idea much; it really undermines our only defense against speeding.
  - MJR 16y ago
    It more than undermines it, it encourages speeding in areas that don't show radar. Turn on an inverse of the map and it gives you speeding zones rather than radar zones. The marketing attempt at "... RadarLoc encourages law-abiding behavior." is patently false. It encourages the opposite, speeding outside radar enforced zones.
    - mikeknoop 16y ago
      It's not binary. Both statements are true. It encourages law-abiding behavior within the zone, and non-law-abiding behavior while outside.
  - T_S_ 16y ago
    I am a gringo that lived in Australia for 6 years. In the state where I lived the police had two kinds of cameras. 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.
- xxpor 16y ago
  Have you seen http://www.trapster.com http://www.trapster.com? Same idea, without the automatic reporting though. And if they know who's reporting them, so what? It's completely legal.
  - Estragon 16y ago
    It's also completely legal to tell a cop he's a stupid pig when he pulls you over for speeding. Doesn't mean it's a good idea...
tocomment 16y ago
Here's a really simple idea. 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.
- xxpor 16y ago
  By emitting with enough power to be useful, you get into the range that you need to have a licence.
  - ruslan 16y ago
    I think by "emmitting" Tocomment means "sending update to the server", thus notifying everyone who is connected and is in some certain range from the point.
    - tocomment 16y ago
      No I domean emitting radar. Now a radar gun obvoisly doesn't need a license and that emits detectible radar. 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.
      - iter 16y ago
        Sort of like Ethernet collisions? You notice a collision and start yelling "collision, collision" on the segment?
        tocomment 16y ago
        I think so?
xxpor 16y ago
This idea has been done before, see http://radaractive.com/ 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 http://radardetector.net. Read some of the comments on there about Cobras.
- mikeknoop 16y ago
  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...
  - ruslan 16y ago
    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.
    - iter 16y ago
      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.
phillijw 16y ago
I will just write a program that reports radar everywhere.
mikeknoop 16y ago
I have a thought. There are already services that attempt to do this, with the exception that they do not automate the reporting: http://www.trapster.com/ http://www.trapster.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.
- mjb 16y ago
  > Additionally, you're leaving the challenge of building the actual Radar Detection to well established companies who know what they are doing. 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.
  - 16y ago
tlrobinson 16y ago
There are several radar/laser networks already. * 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.
earle 16y ago
The bigger problem with this strategy is that almost everyone is moving to Laser based detection systems. Detecting at this point simply becomes a notification post-mortem. 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.
- tlrobinson 16y ago
  Laser is exactly why a radar/laser detector network is useful, but yes, it must include laser detection capability. RadarActive (http://radaractive.com/ http://radaractive.com/) integrates with the V1 to do exactly that.
  - huhtenberg 16y ago
    Also, not everyone with a radar detector always drives over a speed limit. And yet they are too getting sniped at.
hartror 16y ago
There is some moral ambiguity here, SHOULD this sort of thing be done? 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).
- rfrey 16y ago
  In the city I grew up in (Edmonton, Canada), the police used to tell the radio stations where the radar traps were. The goal of a radar trap is to get people to slow down. 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.
ck2 16y ago
Please do not get distracted by your iphone while driving. Also, what prevents people from purposely sending fake signals?
iter 16y ago
Thank you for all the great feedback! I am Ari Krupnik, the guy in the KickStarter video. 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.
natch 16y ago
I have met this guy several times and can say a few things about him: he is the real deal; he is very good, technically savvy, has been working hard and is developing strong expertise in connecting hardware devices to mobile devices, beginning with iPhone. He has a very good reputation at the Hacker Dojo. I'm betting you are going to hear a lot more about his stuff in the future.

54 points by T_S_ 16y ago

I know this hacker. He works out of Hacker Dojo in Mountain View (across street from ycombinator). This guy is for real.

hartror 16y ago

Neat, though you will want to be careful not to fall foul of the law but they're pretty liberal in the US right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_detector#Legality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_detector#Legality

Estragon 16y ago

Might want to add a bit of a delay before announcing that you've just detected radar. Otherwise, police following site site will know who's reporting them...

nickdunkman 16y ago
I guess users need to be anonymous then. I'm not sure I like this idea much; it really undermines our only defense against speeding.
- MJR 16y ago
  It more than undermines it, it encourages speeding in areas that don't show radar. Turn on an inverse of the map and it gives you speeding zones rather than radar zones. The marketing attempt at "... RadarLoc encourages law-abiding behavior." is patently false. It encourages the opposite, speeding outside radar enforced zones.
  - mikeknoop 16y ago
    It's not binary. Both statements are true. It encourages law-abiding behavior within the zone, and non-law-abiding behavior while outside.
- T_S_ 16y ago
  I am a gringo that lived in Australia for 6 years. In the state where I lived the police had two kinds of cameras. 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.
xxpor 16y ago
Have you seen http://www.trapster.com http://www.trapster.com? Same idea, without the automatic reporting though. And if they know who's reporting them, so what? It's completely legal.
- Estragon 16y ago
  It's also completely legal to tell a cop he's a stupid pig when he pulls you over for speeding. Doesn't mean it's a good idea...

tocomment 16y ago

Here's a really simple idea. 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.

xxpor 16y ago
By emitting with enough power to be useful, you get into the range that you need to have a licence.
- ruslan 16y ago
  I think by "emmitting" Tocomment means "sending update to the server", thus notifying everyone who is connected and is in some certain range from the point.
  - tocomment 16y ago
    No I domean emitting radar. Now a radar gun obvoisly doesn't need a license and that emits detectible radar. 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.
    - iter 16y ago
      Sort of like Ethernet collisions? You notice a collision and start yelling "collision, collision" on the segment?
      - tocomment 16y ago
        I think so?

xxpor 16y ago

This idea has been done before, see http://radaractive.com/ 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 http://radardetector.net. Read some of the comments on there about Cobras.

mikeknoop 16y ago
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...
- ruslan 16y ago
  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.
  - iter 16y ago
    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.

phillijw 16y ago

I will just write a program that reports radar everywhere.

mikeknoop 16y ago

I have a thought. There are already services that attempt to do this, with the exception that they do not automate the reporting: http://www.trapster.com/ http://www.trapster.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.

mjb 16y ago
> Additionally, you're leaving the challenge of building the actual Radar Detection to well established companies who know what they are doing. 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.
- 16y ago

tlrobinson 16y ago

There are several radar/laser networks already. * 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.

earle 16y ago

The bigger problem with this strategy is that almost everyone is moving to Laser based detection systems. Detecting at this point simply becomes a notification post-mortem. 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.

tlrobinson 16y ago
Laser is exactly why a radar/laser detector network is useful, but yes, it must include laser detection capability. RadarActive (http://radaractive.com/ http://radaractive.com/) integrates with the V1 to do exactly that.
- huhtenberg 16y ago
  Also, not everyone with a radar detector always drives over a speed limit. And yet they are too getting sniped at.

hartror 16y ago

There is some moral ambiguity here, SHOULD this sort of thing be done? 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).

rfrey 16y ago
In the city I grew up in (Edmonton, Canada), the police used to tell the radio stations where the radar traps were. The goal of a radar trap is to get people to slow down. 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.

ck2 16y ago

Please do not get distracted by your iphone while driving. Also, what prevents people from purposely sending fake signals?

iter 16y ago

Thank you for all the great feedback! I am Ari Krupnik, the guy in the KickStarter video. 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.

natch 16y ago

I have met this guy several times and can say a few things about him: he is the real deal; he is very good, technically savvy, has been working hard and is developing strong expertise in connecting hardware devices to mobile devices, beginning with iPhone. He has a very good reputation at the Hacker Dojo. I'm betting you are going to hear a lot more about his stuff in the future.