Lockouts

Configured in Settings → Radar detector integration → Lockouts. The Radar detector model preference under Settings → Radar detector integration should be set to a value other than No radar detector ingtegration for this preference to appear.

What Is "Lockouts"?

Let me put here a slightly edited article from vortexradar.com to give a good idea about lockouts.

Suppose you're constantly driving past the same stationary false alerts from automatic door openers in shopping centers and drugstores or speed signs on the side of the road. Wouldn't it be nice if a radar detector could learn those are false alerts and not alert you to them every single time you drove by? Wouldn’t it be cool if your detector could recognize the difference between the false alerts it has previously learned and new radar signals coming from police officers and alert you to police officers while staying quiet when it sees a false alert? Well, that feature is called GPS lockouts, and it's an incredibly useful feature to help cut back on incessant false alerts.

This feature is primarily useful in urban areas where you have shopping centers, grocery stores, drugstores, and speed signs. However, you’ll sometimes be able to pick up shopping centers that sit right next to the highway, so it can be useful on the highway as well.

If you drive primarily in rural areas where you don’t encounter these sources of stationary false alerts and/or you’re constantly driving to new places where your detector hasn’t yet had a chance to learn these false alerts yet, you won’t need this feature. However, if you regularly drive in the same areas, particularly where these false alerts are located, this feature will be very helpful.

Automatic lockouts: Some detectors have the ability to automatically recognize false alerts and begin locking them out for you after you’ve passed them a few times. This feature is especially helpful for people who are just starting out, so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself or making a mistake and inadvertently locking out something that shouldn’t be locked out. If you like, you can also manually lock signals out too instead of or in addition to letting the auto-lockouts do the work for you.

Manual lockouts: Some detectors offer this GPS lockout capability as well, but they don’t have the ability to automatically learn and lock those signals out after seeing them a few times (usually due to patent restrictions). Instead, when you encounter a stationary false alert that you want to lockout, you teach the detector (usually by double pressing, triple pressing, or long-pressing the mute button, or pressing a button on your phone), and the detector will then learn this false alert and filter it out for you in the future when you come by again.

Lockouts In Highway Radar

Highway Radar has its own lockouts implementation. It supports both automatic and manual lockouts. Highway Radar locks out signals by frequency (match frequency ref ± 0.005 MHz) and strength (match strength up to ref + 30%).

(A) Learning And Forgetting

Highway Radar relies on alerts "hits" and "misses" to learn new or forget existing lockouts.

  • A hit is receiving a signal where it is expected to be received.
  • A miss is not receiving a signal that it is expected to be received with a strength of at least 40%; misses are recorded when you pass the location with an expected radar signal and drive 500 meters away from it.
  • Each stored lockout has counters for consecutive hits and misses.
    • Whenever a hit is recorded, the number of hits is increased by one, and the number of misses is set to zero (this means we're only counting consecutive hits).
    • Whenever a miss is recorded, the number of misses is increased by one, and the number of hits is set to zero (this means we're only counting consecutive misses).
    • For a hit/miss to be accounted for, it should happen after at least several hours after the previous evert of the same type (configured by Min interval between hits/misses recording preference).

Once you drive past a radar source, an auto-lockout candidate is created.

  • The auto-lockout candidate follows the same rules described above for collecting hits or misses.
  • Auto-lockout candidates don't affect the signal presentation and can't be used in custom rules.
  • Alerts matched with auto-lockout candidates are marked with "ALOC-X" in the alerts list, where "X" is the number of consecutive hits recorded.
  • Once the auto-lockout candidate reaches hits count defined by the Number of hits for auto-lockout preference, it is automatically converted into an automatic lockout.
  • Once the auto-lockout candidate reaches two misses, it is automatically deleted.

Auto-lockouts are automatically muted and displayed as inactive alerts (custom processing rules may override that behavior). Whenever an auto-lockout reaches a certain number of misses (controlled by Consecutive misses to delete auto-lockout), it is automatically deleted from the lockouts database.

You may also create manual lockouts. To do so, tap and hold on any ongoing radar alert, then choose the "Add lockout" option. Manual lockouts are automatically removed after a certain number of misses, configured via Consecutive misses to delete manual lockout preference.

You can manually remove the lockout by tapping and holding on the alert for any ongoing and already locked-out alert, then selecting "Remove lockout."

Lockouts Shape

Most radar lockouts implementations use lockouts of circular shape; they lock out all signals of a given frequency within a certain radius from a reference point. On the other hand, Highway Radar lockouts can have a very complex shape – and are usually limited to the street where the signal was encountered. Highway Radar also remembers signal strength at each location within the lockout shape. It doesn't apply a lockout if a received signal is significantly stronger than the one seen previously at the same location.

The more you drive in the area, the more lockout shape and signal strengths data may evolve. Lockouts can also merge over time – for example, if you encounter the same false alert when driving on parallel streets, Highway Radar will store two different lockouts – one for each street. However, once you drive from one street to another while constantly receiving that false radar signal all the time, Highway Radar will merge the lockouts.

Integration With Detector's Built-in Lockouts

It is essential to understand that Highway Radar lockouts are entirely independent of lockouts built into the detector. This isn't an issue for V1, as it doesn't support any lockouts internally; however, it may cause some confusion with the DS1 detector. DS1 has its own manual and automatic lockouts implementations, which may (and often will) disagree with Highway Radar lockouts. Highway Radar can neither read nor modify any information stored in the DS1 lockouts database – it can only see whether the DS1 itself locks out each signal or not.

Highway Radar has different strategies for resolving conflicts – it may either respect only one lockout system or lock the signal out if any of those tells to lock the signal out. The way how the lockouts provided by the detector should be treated is configured via Lockouts provided by detector preference (not available on V1). Two options are possible:

  • Ignore detector lockouts – Highway Radar won't read and interpret lockouts information provided by the detector. This behavior may lead to Highway Radar alerting at an alert marked as locked out on the detector.
  • Respect detector lockouts – Highway Radar will mark its alert as locked out if the detector tells it is locked out. Note that this won't mark this location as locked out in the Highway Radar internal database.

When Respect detector lockouts preference is selected, Highway Radar slightly changes the way it displays lockout information. It will show both what the internal (application) lockouts system is thinking about the signal and what the detector is thinking about it. Application's vertict always goes first. Here are couple of examples:

  • ALO cand. (3) / Device LO – application considers this signal as an auto-lockout candidate with three hits, and the detector thinks it was manually locked out.
  • Auto-lockout / Device ALO – both application and detector automatically locked out this signal.
  • Auto-lockout – this signal was manually locked out in the application, detector didn't lock this signal out.
  • Device ALO – detector locked out this signal automatically, the application didn't lock it out.

IMPORTANT NOTE: As of firmware v1.07, Radenso DS1 has a bug preventing Highway Radar from reading the current signal lockout state, which renders Lockouts provided by detector preference inoperative and always behaving as "Ignore detector lockouts."

Database Management

Highway Radar has its internal database of lockouts. That database is individual for each user. You can view its basic information under the Database statistics section in lockouts settings.

There are also three operations available under the Database management section:

  • Export lockouts database – exports the database to a file so that it can be backed up or transferred onto another device.
  • Import lockouts database – loads lockouts from the file obtained after the "Export lockouts database" step.
  • Clear lockouts database – removes all lockouts from the device database.