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Comment by mikeknoop | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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.

Ari, aside from legal issues, I think it mostly depends on how hard the installation process is going to be. If you manage to design a very small PCB which will use bluetooth, can be fit inside radar and needs only three wires to solder (DGND, VCC and LED's anode), then you can easily get some users, especially in the Valley where ppl love gadgets which they can create or expand themselves :-).

BTW. For those who are afraid of openning up their detectors you can easily desing a special version which will hook up to the LED using photo-resistor. I.e. a kind of device you stick up to detector and put its sensor over detector's LED.

You sound like someone who isn't afraid of soldering. Perhaps you want to test the alpha equipment. ari.krupnik@hackerdojo.com

Ari.

I'm located outside of US, though would be happy to try your piece of hardware in my environment. Email sent.

> Wonder if there is a monetization method beyond hardware there...

Doesn't need to be.

If you want to be a Fortune 500 compan, go public and make your VCs rich, you want to control the entire stack form hardware through to data, "monetize" (i.e. hog) everything and hide your algorithms from your competitors and users. This is what movie studios are trying to do.

If you want to have a living and product that is useful to people, you can make enough money from hardware sales. You don't get to ring the bell on NYSE, but I can live without that.

Ari.

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