Upon discovering that Lidatek was located up in Marysville, WA which is about 30 minutes North of where I live, me and Jawknee made arrangements to head up there together to check things out. Jawknee and Hamann7 both tried without luck to get ahold of someone at Lidatek over the past week. Turns out the previous owner had just died recently prompting a change of ownership. This brought on a number of changes including the phone number, voice mail system and such. They had just gotten everything straightened out and so it should be easier to get ahold of a representative at Lidatek now. The contact information for sales is as follows:
Jared Phillips
(360) 658-9202
j.phillips@lidatek.com
Contact me via email if you'd like his number to arrange the group buy. He's asked me to remove his personal cell phone number.
As far as the group buy goes, Andy was aware of how the logistics of arranging an order for such a huge group of buyers all over the country. He promised to look into this matter to try and figure out an ideal way of going about this. Ideally, this would be all sent to one person who in turn would take care of sending it to everybody else. Of course this would not be a good solution, Andy admitted. I suggested that maybe if everyone could contact them individually and say that they're with the bmwm5.com group buy and just pay their own way including the shipping costs. Hamann7, do me a favor and follow up on this group buy with Jared when you can. I'll help out if you need me to.
The way it should go is that we will be able to get a 20-25% discount off the retail price which is $350 for one transponder and $100 for each additional unit. I asked how many units would be ideal and Andy said, two. Both should go in the front.
Locations where Andy suggested that they go:
One of the things covered was some of the various ways the LE-20 unit can be mounted. One such way was to mount it directly on a flat surface or use a bracket.
Two types of brackets
What the Lidetek unit looks like
New LE-20 Lidatek unit on top of the old Echo laser jammer box
Close up look at the Lidatek unit
I checked out the facility to see how the Lidatek units are made. One of the topics also covered is why is it better to use a laser firing unit instead of LED's as used by Blinder units. The laser unit has a much greater range on the frequency scale as opposed to the LED units. I don't remember the exact numbers but the margin for error is much less with a true laser unit. This Lidatek unit was classified as a Class 3B unit.
Receiver units
Laser firing units
Circuit boards ready for final assembly
Wiring for the LE-20 units
Lidatek LE-20 units ready for final packaging
We both spoke with Andy and Jeremy, two very helpful employees at Lidatek. Andy was very knowledgable about how Laser jamming technology works and even went as far as comparing their products to some of the other jammers available out there. They even had a number of them at the shop for testing purposes, including the Blinder. Some of them were even taken apart just to see whats inside.
Passport Laser Jammer
Shifter Laser Jammer
Inside the Passport receiver/laser unit
Blinder Laser Jammer (Blinder unit on top and another Blinder unit with a Lidatek unit taped to it on the bottom)
One of the things covered was how a laser unit works. Apparently the unit has a minimum range of 100 ft and has to be aimed precisely at the speeding object in question. Ideally the perfect place to aim the laser is the license plate because of its reflective nature. The license plate has a special type of reflective material that allows the laser signal to be reflected right back at the receiver unit in a straight line. If you were to put a mirror cover on top of the license plate the laser would reflect off in a different direction. This is why license plates in Washington is changed on a 7 year cycle as the reflective properties would wear out. I asked about if we were to put a tinted cover on top of the plate, what would happen. Andy pointed out that it would be as if there was nothing there. I'm not sure I understand what he meant by that. This is why Andy suggested putting the Lidatek units near the license plate area even if you don't have one in place because that is where police officers are most likely to aim their laser guns at. One other thing Andy pointed out was that this system can be defeated simply by aiming the laser gun elsewhere on the car. I also asked about how much of a coverage one transponder would be able to give. The answer was that it depends on the range in which the laser gun is pointed at the car. The greater the range the more the coverage area would be. The closer the car is the less coverage the transponder would be able to give. The margin of error is very little especially at the 100 ft minimum range required by the laser gun.
A typical laser gun looks like this
One interesting thing that I asked about was whether the laser jammers are different for those over in Europe. They are in fact slightly different and Lidatek has a slightly modified unit to compensate for the changes. Also, they had a nifty laser gun that is only sold in Europe at the moment that can actually tell the police officers if its being jammed.
Euro laser gun
What it looks like in front
Laser gun in action
Jammed!
The European Lidatek units compensates for this by using a different system to fool the laser gun into NOT giving the "jammed" message as you'd get with other units such as the Blinder. Andy and Jeremy both demonstrated this for us by using a Blinder unit. I found this to be very interesting! The Lidatek Euro-version did not bring up the "Jammed" indicator.
Finally, I asked what happens when the laser gun is used on the Lidatek transponders. What kind of message would the police get. Andy showed me this sheet:
Sorry it's not very clear but basically the laser gun will give off two possible error messages. One is E11 which is "incomplete measurement" caused by "target sometimes obscurred or at the limit of the range" or E12 which is "unstable measurement" caused by "irregular target contour or equipment wobbled."
What you don't want them to see is E14 which means its being JAMMED, caused by "target has laser jamming transmitter or laser distance sensor."
I await the final results of this group buy.
Linear Mode
