Walt,
Points taken; circling back...Trust me, your comments about
your experiences will be reviewed...
Good QA feedback.
With respect to the your GPS comments, I believe there will be shortly coming to our shores, a novel solution which not only provides the GPS-like capabilities of the 9500i (for the V1 and others), but also provides a very up-to-date, user updateable, and accurate GPS-internal "map" of automated enforcement camera (ie; red-light camera, photo lidar speed camera, photo radar speed camera, etc.) systems:
That solution appears to already be provided by Cheetah. We are fortunate to have Al and Stu from
Cheetah UK already participating on this nascent forum and these kinds of discussions would be well-suited to their company's particular expertise and capabilities. Realize that the U.K has about a 10 year lead on us with this enforcement technology [and its citizens aren't protected by the U.S. Constitution].
Al has already has made some related posts:
Radar Detector Interfaces for the GPSmirror
It appears that both the
Cheetah GPSmirror and the
Passport 9500i both utilize the
SiRFstar III chipset GPS receiver which supports WAAS/EGNOS.
Obviously that question about
WAAS will go over most people's heads...WAAS is a "GPS-thing" not a RADAR thing. This is obviously new territory for Escort. I suspect if you had posed that question to either
Garmin or Cheetah (who've been in this space for quite some time), you would have gotten an answer, not a question.
According to published reports, position accuracy provided by WAAS is < 3 meters. If I am not mistaken, I believe the newer cell phones can also be "triangulated" to that resolution (or better) as well. (Keep an eye out for that incoming AGM-114 Hellfire
)
Another resource perhaps worth referencing:
SiRFstar III - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If I recall, when I first reviewed/previewed the
Beltronics STi Driver it had some "features" that had subsequently excised out in about a year's time, give or take a month or two. The Passport 9500i, in my opinion, is a bold radar detector and the complexities of the design may be a order of magnitude greater than any conventional radar detector they have ever produced prior. It may be fair to say that they are proceeding on the same development/refinement track that other large organizations do when they release big new initiatives. Apple's recent iPhone comes to mind, as do a myriad of other high-tech/complex products like MS Windows (pick your favorite version). Generally they're not perfect out of the gate.
While I am not discounting your negative experience in any way shape or form, knowing the folks at Escort, they're probably well aware of these "issues" with the 9500i and are working at pace to perfect/refine its performance. I also suspect that part of this issue may be the underlying desire to control their
own development schedule.
I will do my part to bring your experiences to light and hopefully something positive will come of it...
All the best, sir.
Veil Guy
