Which Radar Detector for Motorbikes?

[TonyB]

Yup - from 405 to 505nm for blue laser I believe.

SOOOooooo, if you painted your bike, leathers, helmet, lights bla bla bla in a colour that absorbs all light in this range, could they pick you up?
Hmmm, doesn't matt black absorb everything.....

Is the Cobra ESD9870 any good? There's an NZ co on the net selling these for well under 3 hundy

[Pixie]

Or if you're feeling brave, open the unit up and solder the ear piece cable directly onto the speaker.

Be careful if you decide to cut one of the headphones off. Avoid shorting the + and the - of the headphone cable together when connected to the V1. Worse case scenario you may find that you can blow the final stage audio amp circuit (or whatever the internal final audio stage is). Just cut the hadphone cable back to different lengths (the = and - cable) and tape them up

The V1 has a pulsed output that can be interfaced to drive a piezo beeper.
Internally they have a beeper instead of a speaker,the circuit is pulsed dc,it won't drive a moving coil speaker.

[Pixie]

Thanks Tony.

Geek hat on.

Not all lasers are red, some are green and some are blue, the blue ones having a shorter wavelength than the red ones. By definition a laser is actually any beam of light where the wavelength is constant (coherent - a focused beam of photons) and directional. Unlike normal light which scatters. In fact the term laser is actually an acronum for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Some so called lasers, such as laser pointers, are in fact nothing more than high powered directional LED's - so not 'true' lasers.

The laser guns used by the police, at least in Europe and the US, operate in the low UV portion of the radio spectrum I believe. But I'm not sure about NZ. But I may be wrong. Anybody else know the answer to this ?

The radio spectrum goes:

Radio (as in audio transmissions) >>Microwave>>Infrared>>Visible>>Ultra Violet>>X-Ray>>Gamma.

Wavelengths from UV to IR (nm):
262, 266, 349, 351, 355, 375, 405, 415, 430, 440, 473, 490, 523, 527, 532, 638, 658, 671, 685, 785, 946, 1047, 1053, 1064, 1313, 1319, 1340

And all of these are radio waves they travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles a second). So you've not much of a chance of avoiding a laser hit from a police laser gun, and even a ticket, unless you've got a laser jammer or your detector picks up a laser actually aimed at someone else.

Any red lasers have a wavelength of 630nanometres (nM - billionths of a meter), while blue lasers have a wave length of around 505 nM. I can't remember what the wavelength of a green laser is.

Geek hat off
Now let's talk porn.

Coherence is more acturately put as; The waves all being in phase.
I'm lucky enough to have to work on 5 watt output UV lasers -can't see the light beam,but it still burns holes in cardboard -makes you carefull where you put your hands!!

[Biff]

Coherence is more acturately put as; The waves all being in phase.

Same thing.

Out of phase photons = scattered light. In phase/coherent beam of photons = focused/directional light.

The V1 has a pulsed output that can be interfaced to drive a piezo beeper.
Internally they have a beeper instead of a speaker,the circuit is pulsed dc,it won't drive a moving coil speaker.

Thanks

[Jantar]

Thanks for all the feedback. It looks like I'll get an Escort X50 which was originally going to be my first choice from everything I'd read.