Blinder HP-905 Ultra Wireless Laser Jammers

Blinder has an updated jammer out now called the HP-905 Ultra. It’s essentially the same jammer as what’s used in the Escort Redline Ci 360c (Blinder supplies Escort’s jammers) so you get the same performance and the smaller heads which is nice, but the HP-905 Ultras are standalone, wireless, and use your phone running Blinder’s app as the interface.

They’re not officially for sale in the US at this time, but one RDF member ordered a set on eBay recently.  I had a chance to chat with Blinder a bit recently and I asked them a bunch of questions about their new system. Here’s some of the key takeaways from our conversation and my thoughts about this new system.

HP-905 Ultra Design

The laser jammer looks like this. (All photos are from Blinder’s website.)

Again the heads (both transceivers for RX/TX and transmitters for TX only) are the same small ones we have on the Redline Ci 360c. They’re smaller than what Blinder used with the original HP-905’s from years back and they’re also smaller than the ALP, TMG, Escort ShifterMax, Uniden jammers, etc.

The box that all the heads plug into also almost looks the same as what Escort ships with the Redline Ci 360c.

One key difference is where it says Bluetooth module. The idea is instead of plugging into the Redline Ci for controls/alerts/display/settings and so on, it plugs into a BT module instead.

Interestingly, this entire system is designed to be fully wireless. The whole setup is water resistant and sits in your engine bay and then it connects to an app on your phone for all the controls, display, alerts, JTK controls, gun ID’s, settings changes, etc. There is no dedicated control pad, alert LED, or speaker the way most other jammers have. It’s all designed to be controlled by your phone, something I have a lot of thoughts about, and I’ll come back to.

Blinder said the goal of this system is to make it especially easy to install and the wireless part would definitely help with simplifying the install.

This also supports rear jammers too (up to 6 heads total). Now with the Escort ZW5’s (which were also wireless, but tied into a WS mount Escort RD for your controls/display/alerts), you could also do rear jammers if you wanted, but you’d have to run the cables back inside your car through the firewall and to the rear of the car, but going through your firewall for the install kinda defeated the purpose of going wireless. For this reason, these new Blinders are designed to allow you to run the cables along the bottom/outside of your car. The cables and connectors are designed to able to handle the rain and heat from your car so that they could be installed along the exterior which can make the install easier for DIY installs.

Performance-wise, it should be the same as the VX shifters in the Redline Ci, including DragonEye jamming. On that topic, they said there is no DE in Western Europe, but there is some in Eastern Europe. It sounds like 2 regular heads + 1 TX is still the way to go for the DE, but they did say that on smaller cars you could get away with just 2 heads for the DE including 1 regular and 1 TX, similar to what people often do on the rear of 911’s where space is more limited.

HP-905 Ultra App

The wireless part is probably the biggest deal with this system which brings me to the app. Here’s some screenshots of their Blinder Connect app from their website:

The app is still under development and there’s a variety of features that I’d love to see them implement. Luckily it sounds like they’re very much open to ideas and feedback which is great. It’s currently available for download for Android and iOS.

Either way, the system is designed to fully work with your app. When you launch the app, the system fires up and lets you change settings, get your gun ID’s (though it doesn’t look like the screenshot shows that), update your firmware, do both both manual and AutoJTK’s, etc. There’s also an unlimited jamming mode for testing. The AutoJTK timer options are 6/8/10/12 sec. I’d love to see faster options like 4 sec, for example. (Update: This functionality has now been added as of August 2024.)

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a built in way to automatically start the app when you get in the car so I’d be curious to see how reliably automatic reconnection works with the app backgrounded. Some apps do a good job with this, but I wonder if it’d be necessary to have some sort of automatic trigger set up to launch then app when you get in your car, for example.

Additionally if the app disconnects from the jammer, your system will stay up and running for 5 minutes before disabling itself. They wait 10 sec to notify the user of a disconnect in case there’s lots of quick background disconnects/reconnects while driving so they don’t spam the user. If the app is not connected though and the jammer is still functioning, that means that that it could be jamming without letting you know you’re actively getting shot by laser, jamming the cop, and need to slow down. This is a pretty glaring issue IMO which is what makes both BT connection reliability as well as properly alerting the user to disconnects so critical.

Blinder did say that using Bluetooth 5.0, the system is very reliable with connecting to the app and personally I’ve had good experiences with the Escort ZW5’s wireless setup, but when it comes to relying on an app for a CM, I don’t like doing that for anything mission critical. It’s the same thing with RD’s. I’m okay with an app adding bonus features like alert logging, changing settings, etc., but I don’t like relying on an app for the core features. Others may have a different opinion, but it’s definitely something I’d be curious to take a closer look at specifically.

Additional Info

We did brainstorm some ideas for having a dedicated in-cabin alert setup so you’re not so dependent on the phone’s connectivity, maybe adding a dedicated speaker so you don’t have to worry about audio delays when playing audio through your car stereo or getting muted during a phone call, and so on. We also chatted about the possibility of having two separate systems front and rear for people who wanted a rear install without having to run the cable from the front to rear of the car and then having the app connect to both systems wirelessly which would be pretty cool, but currently the app is designed to connect to just one system at a time.

As far as a few other misc points from our conversation, here’s a few other things to share:

• There could be low speed laser disarming made available, but they said that’s not available in the initial version of the app
• There is a self-test at startup that visually shows you how many heads are connected in the app, but there aren’t disconnect notifications. This is something that could be added.
• The heads also do periodic self-tests while driving
• There is no parking sensor functionality
• While the heads are physically the same as the Escort Redline Ci 360c’s shifters, they are not cross-compatible. I brought up the trick of using Laser Interceptor heads with the older Escort Laser ShifterPro’s and how it didn’t work out of the box, but you could make it work by modifying the pinouts of the heads since it was also basically the same jammer, but Blinder said that Escort and Blinder use different software and so we won’t be able to interchange Blinder and Escort systems. (that woulda been nice to be able to plug Blinder’s BT module into my Redline Ci shifters and test out Blinder’s app and UI with my existing setup, but oh well)

Testing & My Thoughts

Blinder offered to send me a full setup to test and review, but given that I’ve got the Redline Ci jammers on my car, I can already test out the performance part just like others have and that part is the same. The app interface is something they’re still working on, as is North American distribution.

The system is already available overseas so it’s technically already available for sale. Personally I prefer testing and reviewing stuff that’s available here in North America and so once Blinder decides if they’re gonna sell it here, what the US/Canada pricing will be, etc., I’d be happy to take a closer look at it then.

Either way, while I’ve got some reservations about going app only for the interface, I like the idea of a fully wireless system to simplify the install, plus I really like the smaller heads which are both less visible and open up more placement possibilities on our cars. What do you think about it?