Radar tones too intrusive
Completed
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As I have said repeatedly on other similar threads (which Hammerhead keep closing as "complete") the issue is NOT with the volume, it is the number of beeps emitted when a radar event is triggered. If desired, the perceived volume can be altered by changing the audio frequency of the alert tone but for me, loud is fine, it's just that the alerts are seemingly continuous in heavy traffic which is further exacerbated by the alert when the event is cleared - no need at all for this in my opinion but an option to turn it on and off would be fine. Hammerhead could easily change this as proved by the developer who has created the radar app.
The bike radar technology is one that many many riders find invaluable from a road safety perspective and with good reason, it's a great innovation. I suspect Hammerhead are compromising the use of it by forcing riders to disable the alerts because they do not wish to install apps that come with a warning that it might damage their very expensive bike computer. It's a very very poor implementation and has been raised by this community many many times yet Hammerhead refuse to address it. Not good.
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Absolutely agree. Some (including me) think it is too loud, some don't. Some dislike the tones, some probably find them ok. In the end, this appears to be one of the (if not the) most discussed and criticized feature / issue. The unwillingness of Hammerhead to fix this has made me return my Karoo and go with Wahoo. This is very sad, because the Karoo has so great features and the API/Extensions. However, the tones drove me absolutely nuts on a single ride and since I really love the Radar feature, my take is that Karoo is a absolute no-go for me.
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I simply turn the "sound" for the radar alert off each time I start a ride, which means I have to look on the karoo constantly, to check if there is any traffic coming or not. Which is something I really don't like to do it, but it's still better then listening to those makes-me-crazy sounds.
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A funny thing happened to me: I was also critical of the too loud alerts on the new Karoo, and wrote in some posts, that I would sell my Karoo if these loud sounds weren't fixed.
As this didn't happened as I would have liked and I was too lazy to sell it, I started to ride with the radar alerts sound most of the time turned off.
And it was beautifully quiet and brilliantly relaxing and in no way less safe than before with all the peeps and whistles.
For comparison, I then did some rides with my beeping Bolt 3 and a beeping Bryton S510 (which I tested out of curiosity). I didn't feel safer with the beeping, on the contrary, I was more annoyed and distracted because a part of me reacts to every beep, even when there is no reason to react to it.
While I behaved the same way on my bike with radar as I did before the radar (I always check myself to see if anything is behind me when I want to change lanes or turn or do anything else unusual), I got so used to the constant beeping that I mistook the beeping for some sort of sense of safety and therefore focused way too much on those beeps and what might be coming from behind, even when I was in a situation where it made no difference anyway (like riding properly on the side of the road).
So in the end, I have Hammerhead to thank for the loud alerts sound, because they taught me to get away from a kind of radar fixation and to use the radar as it was actually intended in my eyes: as a kind of rear-view mirror for my additional assistance with a noticable flashing rear light that makes oncoming car-drivers more attentive.
Don't get me wrong, I think these radars (when they work properly) are one of the most important bike technologies ever invented and I would never start another ride without my Varia or Gardia. But when I ride with the radar alerts sound turned off, I become more aware of my own cycling and the environment around me. It's a greater pleasure for me and certainly for the people around me.
I find the beeps very useful when I'm riding in strong winds or going downhill, and the louder beeps are much more helpful than annoying. In such situations, I turn on the alerts sound.
But for me, the additional flashing of the rear radar light is much more important and since I've been using radar, many more cars overtake me at a sufficient distance.
Do I need to look at my device more now than I did before when the alerts sound were activated? I don't think so, as I generally check my bike computer regularly (whether it's the route, speed, heart rate, cadence or something else). And when I drive my car, I regularly check all three mirrors, so regularly looking at the display of my bike computer is not much different.
There was a very good video by (I think) GCN on YouTube about this issue, the loss of awareness with these radars and that it takes your concentration from the road ahead to the road behind you, and I remember watching that video made me think more than twice about buying a radar, but after a few months of doubting, I bought the Varia. I've never regretted it, but I just haven't used it properly until now.
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That's all well and good for those that don't wan't/need the tones but for those that do they are too intrusive. Not because of the volume - I will repeat that the volume of the tones is completely fine in my opinion. It's the duration of the alert that's the problem. It consists of several beeps for each vehicle and then some more for all clear. In traffic this basically means it is beeping continuously. We just need the options to change this behaviour, not a volume control. I have installed the kxRadar but I'm pretty sure it interferes with the light settings as it often gets stuck on "solid" rather than what I have set it to which is "fast flash" and also the alert tones are delayed so the graphic is on screen way before the alert sounds. It does allow the all clear to be disabled and an option to only alert for the first vehicle in a stream. Just these two options would do as they would stop the virtually continuous beeping in traffic. It feels like we are beta testing a £500 device here and more recognition of this from Hammerhead would be welcome. It seems like they are just ignoring these threads and marking as complete to make the stats look good.
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I still belive that both volume and length shall be adjustable to satisfy all users. I try to test the kxRadar Extension on my Karoo2.
I would also suggest two additional features:1. A Radar Mute/Unmute button on the homescreen to enable/disable the sound.
2: A configurable timeout of N seconds. After a beep, keep silent for N seconds
The first would make is possible to disable the sound complete when I don't need it. e.g. when riding a bikepath next to a road. Doing this via the setting is just to slow and take to much focus away from riding.
The timeout would be very useful to reduce the number of beeps. After a beep I'll keep an eye ont the computer for a while so it can stay silent for a shot time, perhaps 10s or so. -
1. A Radar Mute/Unmute button on the homescreen to enable/disable the sound.
Terrible idea. No use when wearing gloves for example.
2: A configurable timeout of N seconds. After a beep, keep silent for N seconds
It just needs the tones to be of a suitable length. If the user was able to configure a delay it would end up never being quite right and need changing frequently depending on how much traffic there was which is obviously infinitely variable.
Currently I have my kxRadar set to "Frequency: 5000" and "Duration: 500" for Threat and both set to 0 for "All clear" so it's disabled. This works perfectly. It's loud enough and is not too intrusive. Setting the frequency to 3000 gives a perceptibly quieter tone and Hammerhead could perhaps have two or three settings - Low/Med/High.
The biggest problem with kxRadar is that the alert is delayed compared to the built in alert so that the vehicle is much closer by the time you get to hear the alert. The built in alert sounds as soon as the vehicle is detected. The implementation of the tones by Hammerhead compromises the safety IMO as people are needing to turn the tones off in order to make the device less irritating.
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Did you maybe also consider adding this great extention to the Karoo 2 and 3?
https://support.hammerhead.io/hc/en-us/community/posts/32482506884251-Radar-sound-extension
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I can tell you that while we wait for the team to work on this, the extension does work well. It lowers the radar tone to a very acceptable level with the default and allows the user to play a little bit with the sound. I didn't try modifying as the default is just fine.
However every other tone the HH emits is still ridiculous loud
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Dear Anders, Thank you for your inquiry.
I wanted to let you know that this feature is available for the Karoo. However, this limitation is due to the hardware differences between the Karoo and Karoo 2, making it unfeasible to develop this feature for the Karoo 2. I hope this clarifies things for you. -
Well all I can say is I am so glad there is a extension. The new radar tones, if you call them new are no different in sound level than anything previous. Yes the "quiet" is shorter duration but the overall loudness I do not believe has changed at all. It is still freakishly loud. I'm willing to wager there is zero volumn change. Again, yes I have the extension whcih DOES change the tone to something much less intrusive. What I fail to understand is how HH cannot grasp the understanding of this issue. Loudness can be measured just as duration can. How can an extension change the loudness of the tone but you cannot?
I'm done. I'm moving on from this topic. It will NEVER be fixed. The extension solves my issue until something goes wrong with that.
fwiw I just downloaded a sound app for my Iphone. The short and quiet sound is generally about 88db. the short and loud is around 88db. The loud is around 94db
The extension sound at the default 200 freq? 70-71 db
intensity
71 db = 1.26e-5 W/m2
88db = 6.31e-4 W/m2
the HH "quiet" sound is MUCH more intense by a large factor than the extension default
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I tested the new sounds today and also used the Karoo 2 as a comparison.
For me, the problem is solved with this update. The three different tones work as desired and hoped for.
I drove through my mostly quiet Sunday town with the “shorter and quieter” setting and it was no longer an embarrassing annoyance to my ears.
Funnily enough, the “shorter and louder” setting seems a bit quieter to me than the “quieter” settings, but I'll have to double check. But they have worked very well for me, I find it a very good combination of loud enough without being annoying
The “longer and louder” setting is very similar to the original sound, so very useful in windy or otherwise noisy conditions.
When I used the Karoo 2 for a comparison, I realised that the new tones are still louder than the Karoo 2's beeps, but as far as I remember, the Karoo 2 was criticised by some for its quiet tones. Today I had a windy situation where I didn't hear the Karoo 2's beep.
The only thing I couldn't figure out was whether it makes a difference whether you use the old or the new audio alerts.
It took some time (I personally think too long), but finally the Karoo is usable for my ears again with an unmuted Varia. Thanks for that!
However, I will (as written in my comment above) continue to use the radar beeps only in certain situations, as I realised again today that my attention was too distracted by the beeps.
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So the radar tones options are a welcome update - thanks Hammerhead. However, still some room for improvement in my opinion. They all have two alerts, one for normal speed (yellow alert) and one for fast approaches (red alert). The fast approach on the "shorter and quieter" option is a lot quieter than the normal approach so while the tones are shorter there is a discrepancy in perceived volume. The issue is the frequency response of the speaker in the unit. Clearly the fast approach tone on the shorter and quieter setting is a slightly different frequency so sounds quieter then the normal approach speed tone. I understand the hardware limitation of not having a volume control and I have no issue with the volume of the tones anyway - loud is good. It would be helpful though if each of the settings had used the same kHz audio frequency for both their respective alerts.
In addition they should not be called "shorter and quieter", "short and loud" "longer and louder" as they are all pretty much the same perceived volume. They should be just called "short tones", "medium tones" and "long tones" or similar.
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Thank you Hammerhead!
What an improvement!
I‘m totally happy with the new Tones!
My Karoo 3 has had an autoupdate and I doesn‘t realize it first, but when I hear the first Radar Tone today I‘m really impressed how this could happen after I stopped believing that it would happen sometimes ….
Thank you! -
I will remain a critic. How can such a trivial thing be fixed basically since the device's debut. These new tones are also made like in elementary school during a programming lesson for beginners. You can really do real customization not only of this one event, which is the radar alarm. Why can't you choose your own sound or at least create it like in the Tilehunting extension, why can't you adjust the volume? Unfortunately, it's Hammerhead Karoo so it works as it does, and we, the users, have to be happy that they finally made a different radar alarm sound! Wow! Big achievement! Tank you Hammerhead!
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