Stinger VIP – New Laser Hardware Very Promising
RALETC recently tested the latest laser firmware and hardware on the Stinger VIP system at Radar Roy’s Radar and Laser Jammer Shootout in Arizona. This unit was installed on a charcoal Mercedes C300 with what appeared to be 2 jammer heads. See how many you can find in the images below. The Stinger VIP system was tested by RALETC back in January of this year and the laser side of the test was not very impressive. This was on currently released firmware and it was for the most part ineffective at jamming most of the laser guns used in the USA.
How quickly things change!
It’s only April and Stinger is already releasing new laser hardware and significantly improved jamming firmware. The Stinger VIP was the biggest surprise at Radar Roy’s Shootout as it not only slaughtered the competition on the radar course, but with the new laser hardware the performance was significantly improved and now includes DragonEye Gun support. The Stinger VIP is now the second laser jammer to become a member of the elite group of jammers capable of taking down the infamous DragonEye guns. Previously this membership ONLY included the AntiLaser Priority system. Stinger does still have some work to do in order to compete with the performance of the ALP, but thus far they have really only focused on the ECCM guns and seem to have them under control.
How did they do?
All in all, the Stinger VIP system tackled some of the toughest guns in the US market today and did so with ease. The Stinger engineering team has been focused on the ECCM style guns with VPRR (variable pulse rate random) and will begin working on some of the older yet still available guns in the coming months. Here is how they did during our testing:
What’s next for Stinger?
Well now the focus becomes supporting all the constant pulse rate guns many of which they have never encountered. Stinger has been working on a new LAB (laser analyzer box), now in production , capable of managing 4 RX and 4 TX heads in one box. Thus eliminating the need for extension boxes. This new LAB is also implementing new connections with discrete connectors for both RX and TX heads. This is a welcome improvement because setup of the original system could easily have been misconfigured with the similar USB style connectors. Thus far the new hardware is on track for release sometime by the end of May 2015.
Conclusion
The Stinger VIP system will soon be a very competitive product with complete support for both US radar and laser. Oh wait what about the sensors. How many did you find? You can ignore the wire going behind the license plate frame that is for the radar patch array, but did you find them all? There are 3 transmits and 2 receives!