9500ix radar detector: Escort arms its high-end road warrior to the hilt

Escort's Passport 9500ix sits near the top of the radar detector industry's totem pole, at $500. But to the extent that detectors are an object of desire, the 9500ix is certainly "the good stuff," judging by its feature set and by professional reviews of the product. Inside, the design contains a measured approach to logic implementation, but its RF circuits are a veritable work of art, if you're into that kind of thing.

Radar detectors have evolved steadily in the cat-and-mouse, measure/countermeasure relationship between traffic law enforcement and drivers. Along with the obvious application of sparing speeders from paying for their misbehavior, detectors arguably help with awareness for those who lose track while making good time.

Perhaps because of that "bright side" argument, detectors are still legal almost everywhere in the United States (sorry, Virginia and D.C.), but there are limits. Laser jamming is illegal in a number of states that allow passive radar detection (it seems strange that it's allowed anywhere), and radar jamming is uniformly outlawed in the United States. Worldwide, laws on detector use vary widely.

Today's detection environment has grown decidedly complex. Traditional roadside and mobile human law enforcement comes armed with multi-band microwave radar, lasers/lidar (light detection and ranging) and instant-on systems. Some public roadways sport those same technologies in autonomous detection setups for speeding and red-light cameras. License plate recognition enables autoticketing.

With so many RoboCops on the road, Escort and its competitors promote the notion that a little electronic assistance is in order to level the playing field.

Even before a screwdriver was taken to its case for the teardown, the 9500ix made an impression based on its presentation. Escort probably spent as much for box-out as on some of the unit's key components, but appearances matter when your customers are shelling out big money. A suction-cup mount, high-quality coiled 12-V "smart" power cord and extensive documentation all join the detector in a leatherette-clad clamshell case.

The 9500ix provides coverage of all in-use radar bands (X-band 10.525 GHz ± 25 MHz, K-band 24.150 GHz ± 100 MHz, Ka-band 34.700 GHz ± 1,300 MHz, Ku-band 13.425 GHz ± 25 MHz) and monitors for lidar laser at 904 nm. Addition of GPS brings location-aware features such as known-threat position warnings and markings, false-alarm suppression and adaptive learning. A dot-matrix LED display provides text feedback of detection events, joined by speech capability and a host of other bells and whistles.

The run-dark mode keeps detection events stealthy against nighttime officers looking for a telltale flash of light in a target vehicle.

To use all the features, you'll have to read the manual on this unit, despite its innocent-looking topside user buttons.

An internal frame in the two-piece plastic case supports the electronics for the 9500ix. Transparent lenses front and back cover the display and detector elements, respectively. A single cast-metal feedhorn is used to gather radar signals for all bands, and two IR laser detectors sit alongside and underneath the feedhorn for catching lidar bursts ahead of or behind the vehicle.

The RF pickup and signal processing for high-frequency radar reside mostly on a secondary assembly mounted to the main pc board. This front-end "RF engine" is labeled as coming from Beltronics, a company Escort acquired in 1999. The assembly may serve a variety of Escort/Beltronics detectors.

The separately mounted low-loss laminate board contains elegant microstrip filters and mixing circuitry for the superheterodyne receiver. In combination with some likely downconversion on the RF board, radar detection comes from a National LMX2434 PLL oscillator that provides the appropriate mixing frequencies to obtain relevant IF signals.

The Rohm BH4127 IF detector outputs, in turn, get processed to discern and announce microwave-based threats.

Lidar detection is likely a far simpler task, with processing limited to acting on a response from the unit's IR detectors, which may feature either analog or even digital outputs to flag events at the 904-nm wavelength of interest.

While only a receiver in function, the 9500ix requires an FCC certification. No radar jamming is implemented, but the oscillators used in downconversion of received signals seemingly bleed out enough energy that the 9500ix is classified as a transmitter, thus needing appropriate approval. FCC documents list certification test frequencies of 10.575, 13.45, 24.25 and 36 GHz, all presumably corresponding to the oscillator signals that the 9500ix uses for mixing.

Escort makes mention of "DSP technology" in the 9500ix design, but a detailed look reveals that only 8-bit MCUs-with and without embedded flash-are adequate to the task. No dedicated DSPs are to be found, but a trio of MCUs Atmel (ATMega64, ATTiny2313, ATMega644P) probably perform work related to detector signal processing, among other duties.

Additionally, a Freescale 8-bit MCU with flash (MC908AP64) is seen, as is a Silicon Labs C8051F326 8-bit MCU. The latter is dedicated to the USB interface used to download updates for speed- and red-light-camera locations.

A New Japan Radio NJM2113 serves as the audio amplifier, driving the headphone jack (and speaker?), with tone and speech outputs perhaps coming from the Analog Devices AD8802 multichannel D/A converter.

The Atmel-rich design includes standalone flash memories from that company, as well as voltage regulators from National, which along with STMicroelectronics also supplies a dual op amp.

A second pc board assembly hosts the 18.5 x 18.5-mm ceramic GPS patch antenna and a separately mounted GPS receiver module made by Navman. The Navman Jupiter 30XLP module integrates CSR/SiRF's SiRFStar III package, 512 kbytes of SST flash memory and all supporting components needed to form the "shrink wrap" GPS receiver used by the 9500ix's location-aware features.

In an era when most electronic products are assembled in China, Escort bucks the trend by manufacturing the 9500ix at its dedicated facility in Mississauga, Ont. Precise, specialized assembly and test requirements, combined with the high price point, likely make local, captive manufacturing a viable prospect despite the potentially higher cost structure.

Amazingly, we got the 9500ix back together after two troubled shield removals (and delicate can replacements) stemming from the teardown process. The device has been used only a bit since its resurrection, so it's too early to speak on its effectiveness, but a little field testing should be fun.

An almost tragic design flaw was noted: The "on" indicator LED in the smart plug that powers the device is blindingly bright at night, remaining on even when the unit is running in dark mode. But a piece of black tape or some reengineering of the LED drive should fix that right up.

Without specialty ASICs, but with beautiful RF engineering, the Escort 9500ix seems to own the top spot in radar/laser detectors for now. You can spend a lot less, but reviews of the unit suggest you would get a lot less as well.

Even the finest kit won't save the lone traveler surprised by instant-on systems; by the time you get an alert, it's often just too late. For more crowded driving environs however, the 9500ix may be just the (unissued) ticket. p

David Carey is vice president of technical intelligence at UBM TechInsights (www.ubmtechinsights.com), an EE Times sister company that produces product teardown reports and related industry research on wireless, mobile and personal electronics.