9500ix fales w/ ICC brake preview -revisited on Skyline GT370

[Christian655321]

a while ago I went through some issues with this unit falsing laser signals non stop every 1 minute. intelligent cruise control with preview braking on luxury cars was thought to be the culprit however that is not the case in my situation.

some kind of interference from the NAV screen was causing the 9500ix to false laser and I ended up taking the detector back and giving up after numberous attempts to fix it. there is a thread on here about the whole thing just do a search on ICC or preview braking.

anyways some people on our forum suggested moving the custom mounts for the detector (rear view mirror mounts) higher up on the mirror arm. I had already returned my unit and did not get a chance to try this.

so I return to the store last weekend and though i would give it another shot since imo this is one of the best units on the market today.

to my surprise it worked and there are no longer false signals from the laser. Escort wanted me to ship the unit back and have it adjusted to be less sensitive. that is just plain ridiculous. I wanted to share this information in case anyone else out there is experiencing the same issues.

will post up pics in a few.

[Christian655321]

here is the mount, it was just adjusted and moved up the arm some

[Christian655321]

dont have any pictures of the front of the mount but there is a video here


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqpoK3KNJgU"]click me[/ame]

[djrams80]

I have two 9500ixs, neither of which false laser in my car or any rental car I've rented. One of them falsed laser all the time in my girlfriend's car, so I switched them out and the other doesn't false laser at all. Wierd. Sounds like your situation was similar. Sometimes, you just can't explain these type of things.

[904nm]

I had the exact same problem. As I reported in another thread, my 9500ix will trigger a false laser warning nearly every time my cell phone is near it on the dash. To solve that I no longer put my phone on the dash. I did have it go off during a call and was not sure if the phone or something else made it go off but I was in an area that no laser and no other cars were present, so I figured it was the phone.

Yesterday it went totally ape shyt on me with the laser warning going off about every 30 seconds for 20 minutes. I made several lane changes and was on a couple different freeways during that time. There wasn't another car that would have been near me the entire time with laser cruise control to possibly trip up the RD. I was driving facing into the afternoon sun and wondered if that had anything to do with it.

I called Escort this morning and they said it may simply be my car and to use it in another car. Sorry, but I am not going to buy another car and if it was my car, why didn't it do it for the last week and a half? Next option was that it could be normal as driving by automatic door openers can cause the RD to go off. I explained to the CS rep that automatic doors do no use laser. Next I was told that I needed to send it in to have the sensitivity reduced. Negative on that one too. I didn't want someone messing with a brand new unit to reduce sensitivity. I finally said I wanted to buy another unit and send this one back per the trial agreement. I was transfered to sales and a new replacement unit should be here tomorrow.

I love the unit because after using it for about 10 days it is so nice and quiet. I really pay attention when it goes off. Keeping my fingers crossed that the new unit will be fine.

[EscortRadar]

I had the exact same problem. As I reported in another thread, my 9500ix will trigger a false laser warning nearly every time my cell phone is near it on the dash. To solve that I no longer put my phone on the dash. I did have it go off during a call and was not sure if the phone or something else made it go off but I was in an area that no laser and no other cars were present, so I figured it was the phone.

Yesterday it went totally ape shyt on me with the laser warning going off about every 30 seconds for 20 minutes. I made several lane changes and was on a couple different freeways during that time. There wasn't another car that would have been near me the entire time with laser cruise control to possibly trip up the RD. I was driving facing into the afternoon sun and wondered if that had anything to do with it.

I called Escort this morning and they said it may simply be my car and to use it in another car. Sorry, but I am not going to buy another car and if it was my car, why didn't it do it for the last week and a half? Next option was that it could be normal as driving by automatic door openers can cause the RD to go off. I explained to the CS rep that automatic doors do no use laser. Next I was told that I needed to send it in to have the sensitivity reduced. Negative on that one too. I didn't want someone messing with a brand new unit to reduce sensitivity. I finally said I wanted to buy another unit and send this one back per the trial agreement. I was transfered to sales and a new replacement unit should be here tomorrow.

I love the unit because after using it for about 10 days it is so nice and quiet. I really pay attention when it goes off. Keeping my fingers crossed that the new unit will be fine.

The laser circuit on these detectors use a very high gain amplifier which is sensitive to electro-magnetic interference (EMI). If you are into hi-fi stereos a good analogy would be a very high "signal to noise ratio" where there is dead silence in the quiet parts of song even with the volume cranked up all the way, then a slight whisper will deafen you. Backlit LCD screens, used in cellphones and navigation devices, use a high voltage circuit which produce a EMI field very close to them. That could be why you were getting laser falsing when the phone was close to the detector. Other typical sources of strong EMI in a vehicle are the ignition systems and the electro-magnetic clutches in variable valve timing engines.

While additional shielding can sometimes remove the EMI falsing, typically "dialing down" the amplifier's gain slightly will eliminate the laser falsing. Our service reps by default just state that reducing sensitivity will fix laser falsing because most of the time that is the solution. The reduction in true laser sensitivity is very slight when this is done.

Another cause of laser falsing is a noisy power supply either internal or external. As many here at RD.net have found, a good physical connection of the 12V power wires and/or installing an inline choke can reduce laser falsing. The detector's internal power supplies are filtered to reduce power fluctuations to the amplification circuit that would cause a laser alert, but sometimes a faulty capacitor can trigger constant laser falsing. This sounds like what happened with pilotsmith's constant laser falsing issue, a borderline capacitor quickly went out of spec. Faulty capacitors are extremely rare but do happen.

Actual laser diode falsing, where the laser diode thinks it is truly receiving LIDAR, rarely happens and is usually associated with the detector moving from near direct sunlight (sunrise or sunset conditions) to a shadow quickly. Some LEDs from newer traffic lights or in the rear lights of newer vehicles can also set off laser diode falsing. This is normal operation and cannot be corrected other than turning off laser alerts altogether. A real fix to eliminate laser diode falsing would be examining the signal longer but that would result in a delay to a true laser alert...

I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying the features of the 9500ix! I hope the replacement works better for you.

[904nm]

Thanks for that info. If something is going to go bad in an electronic device it is often fairly soon after first using it. I'm hoping that was the case here. At one point I unplugged the power supply from the cigarette lighter and plugged it back in to see if power cycling the unit would clear it up in case it was a software glitch. It still continued to false after that. Nothing else was difference from all the other days I used it. The following day I didn't have any false alarm. So the randomness is a bit perplexing. That was one reason I didn't want to just have it re-calibrated in case the problem is with a component that has an intermittent problem that would be hard to detect or correct. Yesterday I bought the hard wire kit and plan to wire that in by this weekend.

Given that you are an Escort rep, maybe you can answer this question. I'd like to run a line for a high mount and one for a low mount option since I don't know where I ultimately will decide to mount it for good. Can I use a standard phone line T splitter so I can run two phone lines off the power supply? Naturally only one line would be used at a time.

[EscortRadar]

As long as the T-splitter gives you a good solid connection I do not see a problem, we include a 3M T splice with our kits. I use this splice on my 9500ix and have had no problems with it. Be sure that your ground is to a true ground too.