Lou,

The Z8 actually has neon (not LED) lighting. AFAIK, there have never been any reported problems with LED tail lamp or CHMSL interference with a V1. LED lamp photon output is very slow rise-time (~100 microseconds) compared to a laser-gun pulse (a few nanoseconds) and is easily filtered out in V1's processing circuitry. And, more importantly, the spectral content of visible LED lamps has zero near-infrared spectral content. No near-IR, ... no interference! For these reasons, LED lamps are my favorite new technology for stop, turn and CHMSL lighting.

The neon interference comes from the fact that neon plasma has light emmission spectral output in the near-infrared region as well as in visible wavelengths. Red color filters for neon tubes readily pass the near-infrared output as well as the red visible light. Yellow colored neon lamps have a phosphor coating that blocks the near-IR output from them.

And, the typical ignition source for neon is some sort of high-voltage pulsating power supply. The rise-time of the photon output is very fast (~10 nanoseconds), which easily mimics a laser-gun pulse.

Here's a quote from Automotive Industries on the future of neon in automotive lighting (from Jan., 2000 article).

"Neon, featured on the upcoming BMW Z8, competes with LED as another alternative for rear signal lighting, as well as front-of-vehicle applications. Recently, there has been interest among designers in neon CHMSLs, too. Like HID, neon uses gas and does not involve a filament. Lighting makers say it is unaffected by harsh temperatures, shock, or vibration.

Neon comes in tubes that are bendable and allow for design flexibility, and has a faster rise-time than traditional rear lights. It lends itself to applications in which a long, smooth strip is desired.

"Neon lights 200 milliseconds faster than incandescents, giving a following driver 24 feet of extra stopping distance at 65 mph," claims Tom Schottes, global market manager for automotive lighting at Osram Sylvania.

However, today's neon usage is minimal due to extremely high cost. Another downfall of neon is that like HID, it needs an electric ballast.

Federal-Mogul has designed a miniature neon capsule that glows like neon, but uses a different means of energizing gas in the capsule.

"We have been working on neon technology for many years," Jiao says. "There is no committed technology because system cost is not acceptable in a larger scale." He adds that neon is not going to be as widely, or as quickly accepted as LEDs."

So, LED use is growing and that is a good thing. Neon use seems to be waning, but it is already on the road in annoying numbers. We don't have a fix today, but it may be possible in the next few years.

 

great info mike!

 

I wonder if a neon light on the front of a car might "confuse" a laser gun?

 

Probably not.

Laser guns use very narrow bandwidth infrared optical filters to reject "daylight noise" from the sun. They also reject a large portion of potential noise from vehicle headlights.

Unfortunatly, neon does not have much spectral energy on exactly the 904 nanometer wavelength used by the laser gun optics. I assume that neon jamming of the laser gun would be largely ineffective because virtually none of its infrared output would travel the past the optical filter.

We can't use that same optical filtering to reject neon CHMSLs(even if we could afford it, which is doubtful) because it only works correctly for an extremely narrow field of view -- less than a few degrees. A laser detector needs a field of view many times greater than the laser gun, so the optically-narrow diffraction grating filters aren't of much use to our side of the war.

Oh well ...

 

what setting do you guys use on your v1?
the A mode, the L mode, or the one in between?
what is the difference in the city really - it still goes off when i drive by the automatic doors?

 

Mike,

Thank you for your explanation and I hope that they don't start using NEON lights in more cars. Lets hope they go with the LED's instead One question though, does the 645Ci have neon lights, if I recall correctly when he was following me, this set off Shank's V1 laser detector as well??

Lou

 

might you have an evil twin or a clone who would do it? serious question, I have a V1 hooked up to a power convertor, it wouldnt pick up one of those radar signs intermittently, I used the V1 from another car and plugged it in and it also didnt pick up the sign at times, I then used the regular power cord with the second V1 and it worked fine, so my question is this, is it possible for the unit to malfunction in a way so that the power is on the lights are on but it doesn't pick up radar and is it possible the malfunction is ion the power converter as my experiment suggests, I'm trying to decide if I should try another convertor or just send the whole unit in for repair and if I send unit in for upgrade do you replace all the innards, if so I wont worry so much, this unit of mine is up to date except for POP upgrade