Learning about Theia from Radenso's DSP Engineer

[CobawLT2010]

Keep in mind that something this exciting hasn't happened in this industry since....? Honest question, what do people think qualifies?
This is a slow moving industry and people are finally really really excited about something. Personally I think this overall situation is very beneficial for the community. At the end of the day, this will be a luxury product and the people who preorder before 3rd party testing are taking a calculated risk. I don't think this detector will be perfect, but I'm confident RDF's members will expose its flaws.

While I don’t disagree with you... anyone just expecting this unit to work flawlessly out of the gate maybe sorely mistaken. This is a whole new approach to how detectors alert. Whitelisting guns depends on the detectors software to have seen that gun before. Who knows if some LEO has a old MPH Z35 with a replacement power supply or battery pack that somehow affects its warm up or even a repaired gun that might have something different with its oscillator?

I think it’s great having a company thinking outside the box... but we still should trust but verify.

 

[Dallara]

Keep in mind that something this exciting hasn't happened in this industry since....? Honest question, what do people think qualifies?
This is a slow moving industry and people are finally really really excited about something. Personally I think this overall situation is very beneficial for the community. At the end of the day, this will be a luxury product and the people who preorder before 3rd party testing are taking a calculated risk. I don't think this detector will be perfect, but I'm confident RDF's members will expose its flaws.

Personally I believe this is going a true paradigm shift in police radar detection, akin to when the very first Escort was introduced. That first Escort changed *EVERYTHING*! Suddenly the Fuzzbusters and Super Snoopers were big, clunky, ineffective paperweights. And honestly, there hasn't been really anything "new" since. Sure, Mike Valentine later added a rear horn and gave us arrows, and then Escort gave us GPS, but the underlying theme is still the same as that old, original analog Escort.

I may be new here, but one thing I find pretty amusing... Seems a lot of the folks who are questioning every detail of this new Radenso Theia (despite having never seen it or used it) are the same folks who have bought/owned/used seemingly every radar detector produced in the past five or ten years. Which leads me to believe they'll buy this one, too. Probably will be some of the very first in line.

I think Jon, Micheal, Randy, and all the Radenso team are truly onto something. They took a good, long, objective look at a moribund industry and decided it was time to do something dramatically different. Radar detectors have been mired in pretty much ancient (technologically) "group think" for a long, long time. Probably because the mass market just kept buying into the same old hype. Radenso seems to genuinely want to "build a better mousetrap", and one to just catch mice, and only mice... Not some mice, some gophers, the occasional kitten, and every other harmless, unnecessary rodent out there. Kudos to them.



~

 

[Riptide]

While I don’t disagree with you... anyone just expecting this unit to work flawlessly out of the gate maybe sorely mistaken. This is a whole new approach to how detectors alert. Whitelisting guns depends on the detectors software to have seen that gun before. Who knows if some LEO has a old MPH Z35 with a replacement power supply or battery pack that somehow affects its warm up or even a repaired gun that might have something different with its oscillator?

I think it’s great having a company thinking outside the box... but we still should trust but verify.

Agreed. It would be silly to think that there won't be growing pains when making a paradigm shift this large.
I've actually been wondering if it would make sense to have a "two stage" ML setup where stage 1 is just CW police radar gun vs everything else, and then stage 2 is more specific down to the individual gun signatures. Now I'm going to bring up band/frequency for a second, I hope no one freaks... but what if you could specify for Ka band that the threat has to only pass through stage 1 before we get alerted, but if the threat is K band then it would need to be identified as a true threat by stage 2.
The number of Ka band falses I currently encounter are next to none.

 

[G37X Jockey]

While I don’t disagree with you... anyone just expecting this unit to work flawlessly out of the gate maybe sorely mistaken. This is a whole new approach to how detectors alert. Whitelisting guns depends on the detectors software to have seen that gun before. Who knows if some LEO has a old MPH Z35 with a replacement power supply or battery pack that somehow affects its warm up or even a repaired gun that might have something different with its oscillator?

I think it’s great having a company thinking outside the box... but we still should trust but verify.

Jon has stated that Theia users can choose whitelist or blacklist. Blacklist would be the more cautious approach since Theia would presumably alert to anything not in that database, not just known radar guns. Even if that results in the occasional false, it will be vastly better than partially filtered, GPS lockouts, low speed muting mess that RD users currently put up with.
Will Theia have growing pains? Yep. Every computer I ever used has had some flaw. But will Theia have the potential to blow every other RD out of the water? I'm cautiously betting a big yes. Can't wait to see testing in 2020.

 

[CobawLT2010]

I may be new here, but one thing I find pretty amusing... Seems a lot of the folks who are questioning every detail of this new Radenso Theia (despite having never seen it or used it) are the same folks who have bought/owned/used seemingly every radar detector produced in the past five or ten years. Which leads me to believe they'll buy this one, too. Probably will be some of the very first in line.

I have 11 detectors... damn right... but it depends on price for me... otherwise then I have to save up...

 

[Exadata]

Theia is still in development..

I know you guys have your plates full and just need to focus on and iron down the fundamentals of this new tech with the first version/release of Theia. I would imagine that loading custom audio files for warnings would be low hanging fruit and an easy fun feature for the future!

 

[G37X Jockey]

I know you guys have your plates full and just need to focus on and iron down the fundamentals of this new tech with the first version/release of Theia. I would imagine that loading custom audio files for warnings would be low hanging fruit and an easy fun feature for the future!

As long as alerts are user configured, and I know they will be, I'll be happy. I really look forward to never having to hear, "K band ahead" ever again if I don't want to.

 

[Nine_C1]

Personally I believe this is going a true paradigm shift in police radar detection, akin to when the very first Escort was introduced. That first Escort changed *EVERYTHING*! Suddenly the Fuzzbusters and Super Snoopers were big, clunky, ineffective paperweights. And honestly, there hasn't been really anything "new" since. Sure, Mike Valentine later added a rear horn and gave us arrows, and then Escort gave us GPS, but the underlying theme is still the same as that old, original analog Escort.

I may be new here, but one thing I find pretty amusing... Seems a lot of the folks who are questioning every detail of this new Radenso Theia (despite having never seen it or used it) are the same folks who have bought/owned/used seemingly every radar detector produced in the past five or ten years. Which leads me to believe they'll buy this one, too. Probably will be some of the very first in line.

I think Jon, Micheal, Randy, and all the Radenso team are truly onto something. They took a good, long, objective look at a moribund industry and decided it was time to do something dramatically different. Radar detectors have been mired in pretty much ancient (technologically) "group think" for a long, long time. Probably because the mass market just kept buying into the same old hype. Radenso seems to genuinely want to "build a better mousetrap", and one to just catch mice, and only mice... Not some mice, some gophers, the occasional kitten, and every other harmless, unnecessary rodent out there. Kudos to them.



~

Buzz words have been used and abused before in this industry to proclaim something drastically new and different where what you got was a slightly modified version of something designed well over 10 years ago. So I see new buzz words......AI and Phase View...….but I also see two traditional horns sticking out of the thing and think......same brick and mortar, just different decorations touched up by marketing.

But then they say this is not a Super Heterodyne design and my bottom jaw falls off and bounces on the floor!

EVERY single radar detector since the original Escort has been a Superhet and they are going back to a Homodyne receiver! Are they NUTS!?!?!?

Then you begin to see. The robust processing power, FPGA and Linux operating system inside this thing make a single stage conversion detector (nah.....call it a signal analyzer) not only possible, but preferable for what they are doing here.

I don't know any better than anyone else how this is going to perform in the field, but I can tell you it is going to be TRULY DIFFERENT than anything else on the market after microwaves enter those horns.

 

[GTO_04]

So this was great and now I understand what is meant by quadrature phase view. Certainly a key ingredient in the signal analysis phase.

What I'm really looking forward to is a rundown of the RF motor itself and how it works in this application. Enough has been said already that we know this is not a Superheterodyne design (multi-stage conversion) receiver but rather a Homodyne (single conversion) detector. Superhets have been the standard in every detector since the original CM Escort.

So your local oscillator(s) have much more ground to cover having to sweep the entire bandwidth rather than just 1/2 or 1/3......or are you still using harmonics from the LO to mix in the single stage? Using a separate LNA for K/Ka and X band...….was that more necessary to prevent feedback into the mixer or for signal gain......or both. How do you split the feed off the horn to each LNA or are there multiple microstrip connections? From what little I know the Homodyne's required PLL tuners but not in the case where quadtrature detection and DSP/SDR techniques are applied so I assume it's not necessary here?

If you can't get into the nitty gritty just a good overall concept of how a Homodyne is handling all this bandwidth whilst not suffering from issues normally associated with a Homodyne receiver.

One good thing is the homodyne receiver, and the LNAs, will most likely render the Spectre useless! If Stealth Microsystems is still around they will have to redesign it. I read somewhere that the owner was going to call it quits. Maybe this will hasten that day!

GTO_04

 

[Jon at Radenso]

One good thing is the homodyne receiver, and the LNAs, will most likely render the Spectre useless! If Stealth Microsystems is still around they will have to redesign it. I read somewhere that the owner was going to call it quits. Maybe this will hasten that day!

GTO_04

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless, even beyond the LNAs and tuning frequencies of the LO. Can't say too much until we've patented it.

 

[GTO_04]

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless, even beyond the LNAs and tuning frequencies of the LO. Can't say too much until we've patented it.

Understood and MUCH appreciated!

GTO_04

 

[Nine_C1]

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless, even beyond the LNAs and tuning frequencies of the LO. Can't say too much until we've patented it.

Nail whatever it is down air tight. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.......don't want to see ANYTHING here slipping into the hands of the opposition (Radar Manufacturers)! That could be the worst nightmare.

 

[Jon at Radenso]

Nail whatever it is down air tight. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.......don't want to see ANYTHING here slipping into the hands of the opposition (Radar Manufacturers)! That could be the worst nightmare.

Actually I don't think there is a single possible way to beat this. I am kind of surprised it hasn't been done before, to be honest.

Just don't want anti-innovation companies like Escort ripping me off.

 

[InsipidMonkey]

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless, even beyond the LNAs and tuning frequencies of the LO. Can't say too much until we've patented it.

Hate to tell you, but you're too late:

Stopping Uniden R7 RF Leakage with Aluminum foil

Buried in the long testing thread I mentioned I did a brief test with the Spectre Elite and I was detecting the R7 at around 100ft in both the rear and front of the target vehicle with the R7 on the windshield with Spectre Elite at full sensitivity. We plan to test some other Spectre Models and...

www.rdforum.org

 

[doubledge]

The aluminum foil works best as a hat.

 

[aim4squirrels]

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless, even beyond the LNAs and tuning frequencies of the LO. Can't say too much until we've patented it.

Found this demo video in the patent office archives:

 

[dougr]

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless

Can the patent office act swiftly enough for this to potentially be on Theia? Or is this for future products?

 

[Jon at Radenso]

Can the patent office act swiftly enough for this to potentially be on Theia? Or is this for future products?

Sure, I just get patents pending before I unveil them - there is no need to wait several years to get the patent issued.

 

[RedRocket]

I don't want to speak out of turn (we haven't tested it yet), but there is a possibility we figured out how to do something that would permanently render radar detector-detectors useless, even beyond the LNAs and tuning frequencies of the LO. Can't say too much until we've patented it.

Due to the "PhaseView" mentioned at SEMA, it appeared you might go w/ a QSD (Quadrature Sampling Detector) type SDR, now w/ your latest hint you seem to intimate it could be a Direct Sampling type (A/D samples at RF) after first passing through digital bandpass filters.
After being totally stealth for 2 yrs, this teasing stage must be fun for you & all.