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Radar Roy's Radar Detector and Laser Jammer Shootout 2015, The RALETC Results
As I do not have access to RDForum.org, as they have banned me and blocked my home and work IP addresses, reproduction and/or discussion of this post and thread on RDForum.org is strictly prohibited.
Introduction:
A few months ago, Radar Roy approached RALETC about attending his first annual Radar and Laser Shootout. We were informed that he was going to invite all of the radar detector and laser jammer Manufacturers to attend. Although we have spoken to/or had email correspondence with Representatives from the laser jammer Manufacturers, not one other laser jammer representative attended any of our community testing meets or head to head shootouts, with the exception of Tom from AntiLaser. With Roy's pull in the industry from once being one of the largest online and overall radar detector and laser jammer Retailers, we knew many Manufacturers would attend. Having experience in organizing and running many laser jammer testing Member meets as well as many head to head laser jammer testing comparisons, we wanted to see how Roy would run the event. As time progressed, Roy asked us to run the laser testing portion of the Shootout.
The laser jammer portion of the Shootout was very complex. In addition to testing publicly available products and firmwares, we also tested prototypes of new hardware, unreleased beta firmwares and a new application being tested for an existing piece of equipment.
We have split up the reporting and discussion of the testing results as follows:
1. Publicly available equipment and firmware
2. Stinger VIP
3. New Hardware in Development and Beta Firmware
A total of three laser jammer Manufacturers attended the Shootout. We were fortunate to have Escort Radar represented by Ron Gividen, Larry Clark, and Sean Reid who arrived with their Laser Shifter Pro as well as a beta firmware update for the Laser Shifter Pro. Blinder was represented by Leon Grunner the U.S. Distributor, and Stinger was represented by Tom de Wilde, Patrick one of their engineers as well as Cliff Crane who is their U.S. distributor.
When RALETC conducts head to head testing we always mount each Sensor being tested in the exact position on the same vehicle to minimize any deviation of results due to Sensor head placement and differences in the laser reflectivity of different vehicles. However, for this test we had to make some concessions to both Stinger and Escort Radar to allow them to test on their own provided vehicles. It is our feeling that Escort Radar and Stinger came primarily to the event for beta testing of their firmwares.
We began the laser jamming portion of the test, testing the publicly available Blinder HP-905 firmware that was made available hours prior to the Shootout. The Blinder HP-905 was mounted on our white Nissan Altima, by RALETC members under the supervision and approval of Leon, the Escort Radar Laser Shifter Pro beta firmware mounted by Escort Radar on a black Chrysler Minivan which was provided by Escort Radar themselves. The Stinger VIP mounted by Stinger on their black Mercedes C300. In addition to these three vehicles, we also tested one community member and also taking baseline measurements on Veil Guy's rented metallic grey Porsche Boxster. At the beginning of the test we felt that there was a bit of mistrust of enthusiast testing by the Representatives of Escort and Stinger. By the end of testing the only feeling was that of mutual admiration and appreciation between RALETC, all Representatives of the Manufacturers, the Manufacturers themselves, Radar Roy and the rest of the Shootout attendees. I do feel there was some deviation of the results of the beta testing due primarily to the different vehicles used and installation which will be discussed later in this article.
The Test Course:
A relatively straight 2000 feet 2-Lane road. The shooter was positioned on the shoulder of opposite side of the road than the test vehicle was traveling. The shooter was approximately 12 feet from the testing lane. There were no line-of-sight obstructions between the Shooter and the vehicle. Any punch through from a distance under 100 feet was considered a Jam-To-Gun and recorded as such. If you get a speeding ticket by a handheld LIDAR and were shot less than 100 feet from the LEO, you deserve the ticket!!!
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The LIDAR Guns:
LTI LRB provided by RALETC
LTI Truspeed provided by RALETC
LTI TruspeedS provided by RALETC
LTI TruspeedSx provided by AntiLaser
LTI TruspeedSxB provided by RALETC
Kustom Prolaser 4 provided by RALETC
Kustom Prolite+ provided by RALETC
Stalker LR provided by RALETC
Stalker XLR provided by Blinder
The car used for the testing of all the publicly available firmwares for the Escort Radar Laser Shifter Pro, AntiLaser Priority and Blinder HP-905 was the Nissan Altima. Each laser jammer utilized two sensor heads and they were mounted in the same exact position on the Altima. Each were aligned for "true-zero" azimuth (Horiz.) plane and also "bubble leveled" for vertical plane. They were checked for trueness and where leveled. We are not including the data or discussion for the Stinger VIP here as the tested firmwares were not publicly available at the time of testing.
Results:
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Discussion:
As has become the norm and expected since the release of AL Priority, it performed flawlessly in this test.
The Escort Laser Shifter Pro tested very well. I am not too concerned about the punch throughs by the LTI TSSx and TSSxB. We are looking into what contributed to those issues and will report back on the Forum about them when we have more information.
In regards to the Blinder HP-905, we are a little concerned about the punch throughs achieved by the LTI LIDARs on the Driver's side headlight. I believe this issue is being addressed by Blinder, and will see correction of this in the future.
Overall we saw good performance with very few punch throughs on all three of the laser jammers tested. In real world situations, I would expect all of the jammers to provide Jam-To-Kill performance.
Stinger VIP:
Here is the front of the car Stinger mounted their laser jammers to. Please pick out the jammer heads.
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Against the guns tested the Stinger VIP tested extremely well especially considering that the Stinger came to the test without being programed to jam most of the guns we tested it against. We were told with the exception of the Stalker XLR and the DragonEye Technology LIDARs, the Stinger VIP used its generic jamming algorithm. We didn't have the opportunity to test the Stinger VIP against our entire inventory of LIDARs because the engineer and representatives of Stinger also needed the car for radar testing as well, and used this event to further tweak the Stinger VIP firmware to improve its coverage of LIDAR threats as well as to improve its overall performance.
Did you find the jammer heads? Are you sure? How many did you find? We will help you out, there are five (5), yes 5 components on the outside of the car. You can ignore that wire that goes behind the license plate holder. That is the radar antenna head wire and the radar antenna is mounted behind the license plate holder. Give up yet? Not yet? Still looking? Let us help you out. Here is a closeup of the passenger's side. There are two components in this picture
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I know you see one of them, but do you see the second component?
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Did you miss this one from the first picture?
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We couldn't believe it ourselves! There are two receive heads circled in red and three transmit Fibers circled in green. WOW! They are so small, just 3MM in diameter, that they put one in a windshield washer mount. Talk about stealth install!
So do you need three transmit fibers? Probably not, in most applications two will probably do. So why are there three? One reason was because of the course that Stinger had tested on prior to the meet. Did the third head contribute to better performance in our test? Possibly. We will test the the Stinger VIP laser jammer comparing three fibers to just two fibers. Prior and during the testing we didn't look that closely at the car and had initially thought that the receive heads were both receive and transmit with a transmit fiber inside of it. It wasn't until we had finished testing and we're leaving the course, they asked to meet elsewhere to show us their "little" secret.
Is the Stinger VIP laser jammer ready for market? No, not quite yet as they need to program the jammer to counter more LIDARs. But based on the performance we saw, and the ability of the Stinger engineer Patrick to address neutralizing guns it wasn't previously tested against or programmed to defend against gives us great confidence in their ability to develop firmware on top of having confidence in their hardware.
Just as RALETC has assisted LI, AntiLaser and Blinder we will assist Stinger and have already shared recordings of our LIDARs, as well, we lent them one of our own personal LIDARs at the Shootout to go off site and test with.
New Hardware in Development and Beta Firmware:
Escort Radar's Laser Shifter Pro Beta Firmware Test:
RALETC did test a beta software for the Laser Shifter Pro. Although we can't release the data as per our agreement with Escort Radar, we can tell you that the beta firmware does provide very good protection against some LIDARs that the current version does not. However, it did not provide protection against all of the newer LIDARs we tested it against.
Blinder's New Prototypes:
Yes, my friends, that 's plural and there is an S at the end of prototype. We saw two prototypes, one that looked very close to production ready that we did not test. We do wish we had the opportunity to test that prototype because we believe it would have reduced or probably eliminated the punch throughs we reported above. The other prototype that we tested is the new revolutionary laser jammer that Radar Roy mentioned in his webinar. In conversations with Torben from Blinder, he had told me a month ago he didn't think that he would have this ready for the Shootout. We also do not agree with Roy's statement that it will be ready to ship in three months. We do think that it will take longer than that, but Torben is committed to providing updates quickly to remain competitive with the other laser jammer manufacturers. We questioned whether we should even test the HP-905 as we felt honestly that Blinder was dead and had been for more than a year. We were surprised when we showed up on Thursday and Blinder also had a beta firmware for the HP-905 to test and then to have another improved beta firmware available the very next day. After successfully testing the second beta firmware, Blinder made it available to the public with in hours of the completion of our testing. Way to go Blinder! The second prototype which we should be testing again soon, hopefully will provide additional protection compared to Blinder's current products. What we really like is that each of the new prototypes appear to be compatible with components from the HP-905. RALETC has offered to assist Blinder in further testing, recommendations and recordings of our personal LIDARs. Evidently, Blinder is quite alive and working on new products.
Summary and Commentary:
Overall we were impressed by the performance of all of the jammers in this test. Today is a good day to be a laser jammer enthusiast and the future from what we have been shown by AntiLaser, Blinder, Escort and Stinger. Although AntiLaser preformed the best in this test, AL does have some up and coming competition. All of the jammer companies including AntiLaser are upping their game.
In addition to the two days of testing, Mirage, WonHunglo and I spent the two days prior to the event in AZ preparing for the event, and providing beta testing for both Blinder and AntiLaser. However, the best part of this event for me wasn't the testing, it was the personal interactions we had with all those involved and getting to know them all on another level. I know that Roy has taken a lot of well deserved heat from the enthusiast community regarding some videos of testing that he has produced in the past. The Roy I have spoken with and the Roy that we met is much different from the Roy of the past. Although he is first an owner of a business, he now wants true testing results without any bias. We highly encourage members of the community to leave the past in the past and to look at the now. The second best part for us is the results and soon to be released updates based on the testing. I believe this event has pushed some Manufacturers to move forward with current prototypes that previously have been not a priority by the Manufacturers to put into production. By bringing the Manufactures and enthusiasts together, it has helped to pave the way to having our requests and needs fulfilled. It also gave us an opportunity to talk directly with the Manufacturers and show them that we are more than a bunch of backyard testers. It showed them how serious and rigorous our testing is and how our testing can benefit them. This event has advanced the laser jammer Manufacturers and the community forward not by days or weeks but by months or possibly a year.
On a personal note, over the past two years Cliff Crane and I had an adversarial relationship. This event gave us the opportunity to resolve our issues and move forward. For this one highlight of my experience at the Shootout, it made this trip well worth it to me.
As far RALETC and our interactions with all of the laser jammer Manufacturers: We look forward to working with each one of you. Everything that we collaborate on, has and will remain strictly confidential. Descriptions and/or images of new hardware, beta firmware, and any preproduction and beta testing as well as all communications between RALETC and each individual manufacturer will remain strictly confidential, unless the Manufacturer gives us permission to publicly release any information. As a group of enthusiast our goal is to have all of the Manufacturers develop the best products possible to keep the community as safe as possible.
