AutoLearn issue & lies.

[CJR238]

First I am very happy with my ix, its a truly impressive peace of technology. I was particularly excited that Escort stated in there manual that AutoLearn will unlock a particular signal if its no longer present at a location that was previously locked out.


When I first got my 9500ix I had a A&P false locked out from when my ix was a 9500I. The store got taken down so the lock out was gone after a month or so they built a Walgreen's there.
Now this is where it got interesting, every day for days i passed and got no alert or spinning icon (auto doors weren't set up yet). A few days later the doors were back on and my 9500ix was still locking that location with no alert. This brought up my main concern about AutoLearn because this is the only useful feature of AutoLearn IMO.

The ix should of unlocked that location according to the manual.

NOTE: When AutoLearn is on,
PASSPORT will also UnLearn signals to
protect you from locking out real
threats. If a particular signal is no
longer present at a location that was
previously locked out, PASSPORT will
unlock that signal

KnightHawk was kind enough to let me borrow his "mini bushnell radar gun" (which runs for me at ~24.106 K band), to do some controlled testing using AutoLearn only and this is what I found:

I live in a pretty rural area and about 1/4mi from my house i decided to test the AutoLearn feature to see if it really had the ability to unlock a AutoLocked signal.
Day 1. On my way to work I turned on the "mini bushnell" and got a K band 24.106 alert and proceeded to drive then turned it off. The signal completely faded in about 8 seconds. (Escort RD's hold the signal when its gone for about 5-8 seconds) On my way home I turned it on again in the same spot and got 24.106 again.

Day 2. Again on my way into work I turned on the "mini bushnell" and got a K band 24.106 alert and proceeded to drive then turned it off. As the signal started to fade the 9500ix announced "signal stored" (3rd time is a charm). On my way home I flicked it on again and got the spinning icon.
I had to go out a few more times so I confirmed the spinning icon one more time and the last pass didn't turn it on.

Day 3-6. I didn't turn on the "mini bushnell", so I passed the AutoLearned area at least 8-10 times. Today I turned it on on my way in and got the spinning icon...???#$%&*!

We all know I tend to look at things positively, and are pretty forgiving about how a company uses vague words to describe a feature in a positive light. But I am a little upset that Escort blatantly, clearley and obvousley lied about AutoLearn unlocking falses that are not there anymore. Sure when the signal isint there its not locking out anything, but thats not waht they said this time...

The # 1 thing the 9500 series needs to do is have the ability to unlock an alert that is no longer there. On my rout to work there sometimes is a LEO running K band while driving. If i left auto lock on and that LEO got locked out there would be no way of unlocking that lock out unless i pass him again and unlock the signal or completely delete all my lockouts.[replacer_img]

So my recommendation is to only use AutoLearn for your first month of having the RD than turn it off and manually lock out falses from there forward according to your areas risk. I will try testing this in a few other spots but for now other than for testing I will not be using AutoLearn.

On a more positive note:
I have a shopping center off from the road with quite a few K falses that I manually locked the c#ap out of. So i turned on the "mini bushnell" and got "Multiple Frequencies Detected", i thought cool but figured it was just because the frequency was in a different 30MHz block.
The next day i drove back to that area and got "Multiple Frequencies Detected" and no spinning icon... For some reason the ix unlocked that area initially, do to the different signal from the other day?

[Cips]

Interesting. Did you contact Escort and see what they have to say about the unit not unlocking? I'd love to hear what they say.

[Ripper238]

thanks for the info!

[swarga]

Hoo boy... RadarFraud is gonna be all over this.

In Escort's defense, it's possible that they intended for it to work as described in the manual, but that there is a bug in the firmware that's preventing it from working correctly. It certainly wouldn't be the first time...

[9500ier]

Thanks for the info and please let us know what escort has to say about this.

[CJR238]

Hoo boy... RadarFraud is gonna be all over this.

In Escort's defense, it's possible that they intended for it to work as described in the manual, but that there is a bug in the firmware that's preventing it from working correctly. It certainly wouldn't be the first time...

Its possible, but no one at Escort seemed to know how many passes it took before it was unlocked (not that that's saying much).
I will give them a call when im feeling better to see there response about it not working, got a bit of a chest cold.

[jmccam]

Hoo boy... RadarFraud is gonna be all over this.

In Escort's defense, it's possible that they intended for it to work as described in the manual, but that there is a bug in the firmware that's preventing it from working correctly. It certainly wouldn't be the first time...

Its possible, but no one at Escort seemed to know how many passes it took before it was unlocked (not that that's saying much).
I will give them a call when im feeling better to see there response about it not working, got a bit of a chest cold.

This was one of the main reasons I bought the IX over the I. Please let us know what they say. That scares the crud out of me and the potential lockout of a real threat, should it become present. LEO's are not stupid and they will use any advantage they can.

[Obsidian]

Bizarre. I have not done any extensive testing, but mine definitely unlocks when signals are not there anymore, at least the one I know about. I posted an example in another of your threads. It seems that when it unlocks a signal, it only takes one pass to lock it again. Dunno, keep up the good testing work though.

Hoo boy... RadarFraud is gonna be all over this.

RadarFraud never owned either a 9500ix or 9500ci, so he never had a radar detector with AutoLearn ... but yeah, why would that stop him. LOL.

[CJR238]

YAY! Escorts closed till Monday.

Well what TrueLock does with all models is when a false is present it locks the signal but when its not present its not locking the signal. all 9500's do this and always did.
This is fine, but it still has the signal in memory and will lock it the first time it sees it again. My problem is they claimed specifically that if signal is no longer present at a location that was previously locked out, PASSPORT will unlock that signal, and its not doing it. (In a real life scenario and a controlled scenario it didn't work)
Its possible that there may be something wrong with my unit but i highly doubt it.

This was one of the main reasons I bought the IX over the I. Please let us know what they say. That scares the crud out of me and the potential lockout of a real threat, should it become present. LEO's are not stupid and they will use any advantage they can.

Don't worry too much, TrueLock still works very well. Just don't use AutoLearn till we get to the bottom of this.
The only time i see it as a problem is for moving radar that you may encounter on a limited and consistent bases for 3 times.

I will note that it seems Escort improved the 30MHz blocks around 24.150 and added a multiple threat safety for locked out locations.

[WJBertrand]

I'm sitting here thinking that maybe the autolearn does not unlock manually set locations? You mentioned that you had this location locked out before you upgraded the unit to ix spec., that would have to have been done manually for the "i". In my experience, the previously set locked out locations were still in the memory of my ix after I upgraded my 9500i.

I think autolearn probably only unlearns the ones that it automatically set itself?