RTL515 is triggered by walkers

Yes, and I believe this was always the case. My bike is parked in my garage, even the Edge in a sleep mode and  the radar LED blinks up if I walk around

Yes - I have that with mine - all it takes is for the pedestrian to have something metal with them (keys, metal phone case, etc)

Today I walked out of a building toward the bike and it triggered the alert on & off three times by the time

I reached the bike. That is seriously annoying, and IMO, represents shabby technology.

This damn thing was going bonkers from nearby pedestrians this afternoon.

And I use it with Ridewithgps which has a longer alert than the varia app,

so this was extremely annoying. I have just two days remaining to return it.

My varia, connected to an Edge 1030, works fine when I'm moving. No walkers moving towards me fast enough to trigger it (as long as I'm moving forward).

It does trigger when other cyclists are moving towards me.

It does not get triggered by anything I'm moving faster than.

Sounds like the unit is behaving as expected. It is obviously designed to detect something moving at greater speed and give an alert. If the alert is going off when you have the bike parked why not just turn off the device? Walkers will not be moving faster than you are riding so I am not sure why this would be a problem.

How is it shabby technology? It detects moving objects and that is what it claims to do. How can it distinguish between what the object is? These are not cheap but I think we have to remember what is possible technologically - it's not auto-pilot self driving object recognition tech just yet.

Wouldn't be feasible to turn it off at every crosswalk, intersection, or stoplight,

"It detects moving objects and that is what it claims to do."

The "claim" is just vehicles, not walkers, joggers, low flying birds :)

"Varia RTL515 rearview radar provides visual and audible alerts for vehicles approaching from behind up to 153 yards (140 meters) away"

I use more on mainly rural roads where getting alerts from approaching cars is really useful. As I am moving it never picks up false positives from people. I can see how in a location where your are stopped it will pick up people but that is still expected behaviour. Quite a few reviews (eg. DC Rainmaker) have said in cities it isn't great as it will be going off often as cars may be around you all the time. It's real purpose, as I see it, is on roads where you are moving and often can't hear approaching vehicles due to wind noise. In a city I would expect cars to be around me and not need a beep to tell me this. Even if moving the beep would drive you crazy as cars approached. There is scope for better control and maybe a mute button on the head unit than can easily be toggled on or off would be helpful. Maybe a 'city' button to keep the light on but cut the sound. Maybe it's there buried in the menus of the head unit?

Do most of you use a gps with this device?  I do not, so the options are either the Varia app or RidewithGPS..

Both allow the audio alerts to be disabled, but neither allow the alert sounds to be changed.

On RidewithGPS, each radar alert is five sounds, and the all-clear is two(?).

You can imagine how annoying this is when triggered by "anything & everything".

The alert is loud btw.. Much louder than Vaira app.  And it also cuts my music during the alerts.

Anyways, the device is very nice at detecting vehicles so I've decided to keep it, but will return to using

the Strava / Varia app combo until (if) R/GPS someday allows selecting a less intrusive tone.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback.