Cart Locking System Released as Open Source 323
An anonymous reader writes "You may have noticed that over the past few years it has become increasingly common to find supermarket and large retail store shopping carts equipped with 'boots' designed to lock up if you try to take the cart outside of the store. Now, someone has discovered through some clever analysis the signal used to both lock and unlock carts, and has designed a portable system that locks up all carts within 20 feet of the emitter! They have released the schematics, software, and detailed instructions for assembling the systems on Instructables, an online magazine dedicated to releasing howto's for everything from rat taxidermy to Shopping Cart EMPs under a Creative Commons License."
I smell...... (Score:3, Funny)
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http://www.instructables.com/id/SDIS7ALF3ER7V5W/ [instructables.com]
This sure sounds ... (Score:5, Funny)
(Couldn't resist...) (Score:4, Funny)
Either way, you're going to get fucked.
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Are you seriously claiming that you'll get jail time for fucking with shopping carts ?
I'm not big on security by obscurity, but... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd much prefer if supermarket pranksters stuck to less annoying pranks, like hiding a speakerphone and ketchup bags in a baby-less baby-holder, having it play "crying" sounds, and then publicly "beating" the "baby" until it "bleeds".
Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Funny or sick? You decide. (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me somewhat of this [bash.org] quote from bash.org-
She said she had never seen such a horrified look in her life.
Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, how dare they lock up our shopping cart culture with their technological barriers!
Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the crap are you talking about?
Having shopping carts lock when you try to take them outside the designated area is a perfectly FINE thing for a store to want to do... how many times have you seen shopping trolleys dumped in the most odd places? There's nothing wrong with them trying to stop people stealing their property, they cost a lot of money and should only be used in that area anyway.
My god some people just like to jump up and down whenever anyone is doing something to protect themselves, no matter how just it may be.
Bah to you sir, bah indeed.
Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not shopping cart DRM. This is the equivalent of putting a strap on your car stereo and bolting it to the frame. Not only that, but a shopping cart is REAL TANGIBLE PROPERTY.
Anyone who thinks that stores don't have a right to protect their own property has lost all touch with reality.
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They probably won't. But why do shopping carts disappear in the first place? Mostly kids having fun, I guess. And kids don't have enough money to waste on that. Other times they disappear because someone thought that taking the cart home was easier than carrying their groceries all the way. So they'll bring back the cart next time they go shopping, rather than dumping it. It may n
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http://www.tenovus.com/index.cfm?UUID=FA3D05C9-65B F-7E43-3C7253387FBBB56B [tenovus.com]
http://www.alzscot.org/store/pages/Trolley_keyring 219113800.htm [alzscot.org]
http://www.schshop.org.uk/keyrings.html [schshop.org.uk]
etc.
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Suddenly the decline of the British Empire makes so much more sense.
Redefining the shopping experience... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Redefining the shopping experience... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Redefining the shopping experience... (Score:4, Funny)
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the unlock feature (Score:3, Funny)
a solution that works somewhat here..... (Score:2, Insightful)
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The same approximate denomination of coin has been used for about 20 years, and so I don't expect inflation to be a huge issue for a lot longer than ten years, unless Europe catches up with the US in terms of inflation.
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Now the only few stores that do this use $2 coins and everyone returns them.
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Where our $2 coin is smaller than our $1 coin.
Kinda like how, in the US, your 10c coin is smaller than your 5c coin.
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What's the story with your coins?
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But let's be serious now. Yes, it's common in some places here that people "drive" their groceries home in the cart, but they usually bring it back, sooner or later. The homeless people that could "profit" from the carts usually won't spend that Euro for something they can fairly easily get for free.
Maybe it works because people here already brought their carts back before they were "leased". D
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Re:a solution that works somewhat here..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Used to work for the corporate side of a large food & drug retailer in the US; those shopping carts, wobbly wheels and all, cost on average about $120 each - and that's before the wheel lock systems were put in place (no doubt that has driven the cost up).
The ironic thing here is that some of the supermarkets have parking spaces outside the lot, but the carts don't roll outside the lots, so sometimes people can't get their shopping back to their cars. On the flip side, I watched one lady try to steal one of these carts - she got about 3/4 of a block away with it, and it was quite a struggle for her. Clearly she hadn't read the signs that said the cart wouldn't work outside the parking lot. It also was clear that what was in the cart wasn't her shopping.
Loss prevention is big business. This is what happens when people steal from local stores - the stores end up having to put measures in place that inconvenience everyone.
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Australian youth must be really well behaved. 'Enterprising' youth here would rather have some fun and dump it in the canal than return it for a mere 20 eurocent. Of course the lack of canals in Australia might have something to do with it as well.
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Cue the "Back in my day, you could buy
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I think you mean "They get run over in the parking lot, die, and you go to jail".
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If the chain is long enough, you can do this around a lamppost.
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do this in the middle of the aisle on a busy day for instant lulz
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That would never work here in the States...no one carries one euro coins...
I felt a great disturbance in the force (Score:5, Funny)
Creative Commons is not Open Source. (Score:5, Informative)
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So no, it doesn't matter what OSI thinks, because they hold no trademark on "Open Source"
Re:Creative Commons is not Open Source. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wacky Race (Score:5, Funny)
Messing with the security barrier alarms (Score:4, Funny)
1. If you're in the UK and you've bought region 1 DVDs, look inside the case and you'll most likely find one of those long thin security tags.
2. Peel off one of those security tags and stick it the underside of a shopping trolley.
3. Sit back and wait for some unsuspecting shopper to trigger the alarm, when going in nobody will really bat an eyelid, but if they walk out with a trolley load of shopping and it goes off, things will get interesting.
4. Tag as many shopping trolleys as you can for maximum fun.
5. ????
6. Profit!
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Re:Messing with the security barrier alarms (Score:5, Funny)
So I carefully unsewed part of my friend's back pack strap, inserted a strip, and sewed it back together. I also threw some strips in random pockets, just so he'd think it might be over once he found them.
You could always tell when he was leaving the library. The alarm would go off and he'd yell "FUCK! EVERY FUCKING TIME!"
I also put one in a friend's shoe. He became quite neurotic.
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3. Sit back and wait for some unsuspecting shopper to trigger the alarm, when going in nobody will really bat an eyelid, but if they walk out with a trolley load of shopping and it goes off, things will get interesting.
It is much more fun to stick them on the bottom of your shoe. Make a quick run into the stor to pick up a single small item such as candy. When they find the tag, you have plausable deniability. You mus
sigh. (Score:3, Interesting)
2. this was not actually designed by a competent engineer. a competent engineer would have put the transmit coil in an lc circuit tuned to the right frequency and thus made it way more powerful while consuming way less electricity. this is essentially an electric heater that radiates a small magnetic field.
Boots on shopping carts? Where are those used? (Score:2, Funny)
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I don't understand how I keep seeing K-mart trolleys miles and miles from the nearest K-mart, but it explains the need for the 'boot' system.
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Locking was done differently in Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead each trolley stacked up in the waiting area had a small mechanical lock that attached a pin to the trolley in front by a chain. In order to release the next trolley in line you had to insert a $1 coin, which was retained in the lock. When you finished using your trolley, you locked it back up again and your coin was returned. No high faluting electronics, a built in incentive to return the trolley, and no mysterious lockups.
Of course trolley wheels have been designed since day one to lock up without any fancy electronics inside them
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And what will you do with it?
The system is not so much designed to prevent cart theft as it is as an incentive for people to put carts back in their place (not all countries have minimum wages as low as the US so they can't afford to pay people to do that)
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As for a supermarket... that would be so incredibly inconvinient that I would never shop there. I rarely have $1 bills on me, let alone a $1 coin. If I could quickly swipe my credit card, that would be a little better.
But it also means you have to walk the cart back to a station to get your deposit back. Not exactly convinience.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Do I smell... (Score:3, Funny)
Instructables? (Score:2)
A Better Target (Score:5, Funny)
Charming (Score:5, Insightful)
is this really a solution? (Score:2)
Re:is this really a solution?: YES, it is. (Score:5, Informative)
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Must be Slashdotted... (Score:2)
Why is this needed? (Score:2)
I guess something like this would be needed in area's where homeless take carts on regular basis but then arent we just treating side effects rather than addressing the actual problem?
Something I don't get (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems a bit more prank proof that way.
More useful? (Score:2)
Just a thought. I HATE these things.
Shopping carts are parts of the culture!.. (Score:5, Funny)
The carts are part of the culture.
The system is grossly skewed towards the interest of the cart-owners, who abuse their control over the implements.
We have the right to take the carts away for our convenience (fair use) — and it is not "stealing", because we always plan to bring them back some day. It is stupid and unethical for the supermarkets to fight their customers over this, especially the single mothers (who have never gone shopping) among them.
SMAA (SuperMarket Association of America) and similar oppressive institutions world-wide will, no doubt, try to suppress this new invention, so all freedom-fighters must start mirroring the just released information on their computers.
ASDA in the UK (Walmart) (Score:3)
It's amazing how many older people I've seen caught out by this because they need assistance to get their shopping to their car or to the bus. A few times I've seen ASDA attendants dragging the locked trolley for them instead of waiting 5 minutes to get somewbody out to unlock it.
In theory it works, in practice people just carry the trolley over fences to stop it being locked up while people with disabilities or frail people end up being given a hard time.
It's like DRM but for shopping trolleys
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Trust me, I was tempted at first.
No degree needed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No degree needed. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Um, did you RTFA? Look at the signal, it's obviously an encoded byte. You would prefer to create a system where you have to rebuild the entire system if they change the code? She even explicitly mention that different stores have different codes, and that she included a simple switch to choose which signal to broadcast... seems like smart engineering to make your interface as easily modified as the system it's interfacing with.
Did you look at the hardware or read the descriptions of the design? It's prett
Re:Oh Great (Score:5, Funny)
Non-Commercial? (Score:2)
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read it.
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OSI's Open Source Definition [opensource.org] specifically forbids such not-for-commercial-use clauses.
Don't speak too loudly (Score:2)
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I was thinking even more descreet. A car CD player is a little strange to be carrying about with a battery. A better deal would be an I-pod with an amplified speaker amplifier with a tuned coil. The tuned coil will cut the power requirement greatly. The mp3 player is deniable as a hack device. The amp is for speakers, Duh, and the loop
But, but, but... (Score:2)
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Now that's a recipe for shit sandwiches.