Dash opens platform up for third-party developers {Engadget}

May 15th 2008 11:08AM >> Someone needs to pair the dash with a popular radar detector so all detects within a selected range are displayed...

Alex, that's exactly what Trapster(R) does with Dash. Well, not exactly.

First, to do exactly what you suggest is not technically possible given the capabilities of modern radar/laser detectors. Radar detectors are not designed to detect range, and most can't detect direction (where you could accurately plot fixes on a map).

Second, even if that were technically possible, you wouldn't like the results. Radar/laser detectors notoriously give off lots of falses. Some examples of falses: automatic sliding doors, parking and safety systems in newer vehicles, police leaves radar on in car, but there is no officer, and radar countermeasures in other cars. The amount of processing in the human brain required to sort those falses (by looking at the context - direction, streets, objects, activity) is far beyond the capability of modern supercomputers. Escort (and maybe others) has a GPS radar detector, but that GPS feature is only intended for marking of falses, not determining falses, much less determining positives. The human brain needs to work together with the Escort - the human presses a button to mark the falses. For example, if you get a false beep every day while you drive by the supermarket automatic door (most use X band, which some local police also use), you can quiet that by marking it as a false. Now the Escort will not beep at that spot any more. A very cool and useful feature, but not what we are talking about here.

So Trapster is sort of the opposite of the Escort feature, and accomplishes what you are asking for. It allows humans to take various "positive" inputs (*including* radar detector beeps), process them (using their eyes, their knowledge of the surroundings, their brain) to sort out falses, and mark the positives and share them in real time. So you hear your radar detector go off, use your brain to determine if it's real or false, and if it's real you press "Report Live Police" on the Dash Express (or #1 on your Trapster enabled cell phone or call a toll free number or ...). All other users get alerted in real time. They can then use their brains and the system to sort out whether YOU entered a false. (i.e. it's similar to other social networks).