V1 the toll detector

[Fatboyray]

If u live in New Jersey and travel the parkway from central to northern. The V1 will detect every Easy Pass Toll. It goes crazy at each toll and knowing how many tolls there are on the parkway it becomes very annoying. I pass 4 State troopers and the V1 never detecteed any of them. As a matter of fact I travel to the lower part of New York and I park next to a State trooper baracks like ten feet away with about twenty trooper cars and my V1 does nothing. They should call the V1 a toll detector instead of a radar detector. I wonder if I can get my money back. It looks like a laser jammer would be better. Would it be better with another radar detector like escort???

[scotttish]

Just because you see a trooper and police car does not mean any radar detector will go off. I am a former traffic officer from CA and CO and I always left my unit off or on standby (powered on but not transmitting) unless I was reading to go after speeding and other traffic violations. Sometimes, an officer may leave their radar unit on if they either forget or if they don't care. Most LEO's turn it off/stanby until they are ready to very quickly target a speeding vehicle. In which case you can have 36 Escorts and 5 V1's and it will be too late for you if you are the target anyway.

[mattcam3]

A radar detector is not a LEO detector. If the officer is not radiating then your V1 (or any detector) will not make a sound. The tolls have something radiating something C/O (i pick it up every time too with my V995). The LEOs you passed may have been just sitting drinking a coffee in their car, or worse, shooting laser.

This is what makes I/O and POP so dangerous, if the LEO is not shooting at other cars in front of you, you may never have a chance to see it before your the target.

If you do find that your V1 is not as good as you would expect against sources that are actually radiating they you could call valentine research and see if they could check your unit out and verify that it is operating correctly.

[Fatboyray]

Its very good..... detecting tolls!

[dslrip32]

If u live in New Jersey and travel the parkway from central to northern. The V1 will detect every Easy Pass Toll. It goes crazy at each toll and knowing how many tolls there are on the parkway it becomes very annoying. I pass 4 State troopers and the V1 never detecteed any of them. As a matter of fact I travel to the lower part of New York and I park next to a State trooper baracks like ten feet away with about twenty trooper cars and my V1 does nothing. They should call the V1 a toll detector instead of a radar detector. I wonder if I can get my money back. It looks like a laser jammer would be better. Would it be better with another radar detector like escort???

The above you mentioned, is most likely because there is radar transmitting such as a speed sign. Almost all of the tollbooths in OK have this and when I approach the booth there is a small sign that shows vehicle speed. It is no different than those "Your Speed Is" signs.

[Blitz63]

Its very good..... detecting tolls!

Well back in the day( I'm talking 1986) NJSP started using I/O and still do!! So if you go by them with no alert ....good ...you didn't get targeted OR got shot by laser! On the turnpike your good for 80 as a rule....just don't swerve in and out of lanes. Any faster get a rabbit !

[swarga]

The V1 will detect every Easy Pass Toll.

That's because the tolling authority uses infrared lasers to determine which type of vehicle is passing through the toll gantry (and therefore how much money to charge them).

It looks like a laser jammer would be better. Would it be better with another radar detector like escort???

Dunno how good other detectors are at filtering out these falses, but it's possible they might be just as bad (or even worse).

[supercowpowers]

I don't think another detector would help you. Both of my Beltronics detectors and my V1 pick up K-band at every interchange on the PA Turnpike. (Fortunately they still use the archaic interchanges where the toll booths are well off to the side of the road and I don't tend to pick them up on the road.)

You have a radar detector, not a cop detector, and you're experiencing the frustration of every detector user - false alerts. The FCC has restricted all "motion-detecting devices" to X-band, K-band, Ka-band and Ku-band (unused by police at this time). Therefore, the radio frequencies your detector monitors are occupied not just by police radar, but also automatic door openers, speed signs, burglar alarms, traffic data collection systems, and so on...

There are currently three approaches to dealing with false alerts.

The "you're on your own" approach.
The first is the simplest. The detector just reports what it determines to be the greatest threat, and you can only be alerted to one radar source at a time. This doesn't provide you much information to assess what a source is, and it also allows you to be caught off guard if there's police radar in the presence of a normal false alert. Many detectors use this as the default setting but can also be configured to display more information.

The "you decide what's real" approach.
The second approach is to give the user as much information as possible so he can assess the situation himself. Many detectors have methods of displaying or audibly alerting to more than once source at a time. The V1 does that and also has the ability to show the direction from which it's detecting a source.

Once you're familiar with your V1 you'll be better at understanding what it tells you. For example, if you get a weak alert that starts at the front and quickly goes to the side, it's probably a false from a source to the side of the road and can be disregarded. The number of sources can also hint at the nature of what you're detecting, as you found out when you noticed that your interchanges have many sources that your V1 probably alerts to nearly all at once. (edit: I'm not sure if you meant that it just alerts at every toll you pass, or if it tells you how many individual lanes there are) Another common example are door openers - they usually have an indoor and an outdoor transmitter, so it's not uncommon to quickly detect sources in multiples of two.

In the scenarios where you're picking up a lot of sources at once, it can be very difficult to determine if there's a LEO hiding amongst them. While you might be confident that you know what's setting off your detector, it pays to be cautious unless you've gone through an area before and are familiar with how it responds. However, many of the falses you encounter are only going to be reported as one or maybe two sources, so you can just listen for the new bogey tone and you'll know when a LEO is being sneaky and trying to hide in the false alert.

The silent approach.
The third method is for the detector to keep a database of locations where there are non-LEO radar sources and use GPS to determine if the it's close to one. If it is, it won't alert to the false, but usually will alert to other sources that are not already known to be non-threatening. The false alert database is generated either by simply driving around and letting the detector determine what are falses, or manually locking out a signal. Detectors that use this method are the Escort 9500i and ix, and the Beltronics GX-65.

You have 30 days to try the V1 and return it if you can't get used to interpreting the information it gives you. If you usually drive the same routes, you may be happier with one of the GPS detectors I mentioned, but that's a personal decision you'll have to make.

I also recommend a detector in addition to a jammer. Laser is a threat in your area, but so is radar and you shouldn't go with incomplete protection.

[STiMULi]

Do some research on Trapster and BCT8/15. That is about as close to a LEO detector as you are gunna get.

NO fooling...

[The Chariot]

My Beltronics GX65 with GPS location/frequency filtering works great for situations like this. Many stop lights around here without redlight cameras send a K-band signal during the yellow lights and it gets very annoying.