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Cart Locking System Released as Open Source
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."
a fair amount of mischief about.....or maybe it's just cowboyneal.
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
... like a lot more fun than an iPhone. Plus it doesn't require a 2 year AT&T commitment ;-)
Is it really a good idea to show all pranksters in the world how to lock up a bunch of innocent people's carts in a store?
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".
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
will be of great interest to a certain inhabitant of the Sunnyvale trailer park.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
As if millions of homeless suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. ;-)
It works well until inflation kicks in. 10 years from now, kids and the homeless will be returning those carts by the dozen because everyone else couldn't be bothered walking back for a euro.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This 4th of July when both me & my neighbor get our lazy asses to the grocery store to get cookout supplies at the last minute, I will laugh evily when he flies over the handlebars & lands in his basket when we're both 10 feet away from the last case of beer.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Fun with supermarkets and security strips:
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!
Reminds me somewhat of this quote from bash.org- cag URL tara: When I was in high school, the school board decided that the biology students had to pay for the fetal pigs that were being dissected. After the course was done, my friend Amy demanded that she be allowed to take the pig, since she had paid for it. There was some WTF from the school, but she got her pig. That weekend, she and her brother dressed the pig up in some baby clothes and a blanket, drove down the street and lit a smoke bomb in the car. They were passing a couple walking down the street when Amy leaned out of the car and yelled "Save my baby" and tossed the pig at the couple. They were doing about 50 mph so she missed the couple. The baby/pig hit the sidewalk, skidded along the concrete, shedding parts and limbs before it impacted a mailbox.
She said she had never seen such a horrified look in her life. I mean, yeah, it's funny, and I hate to say that I laughed at it a lot (and still keep doing so whenever I read it), but at the same time I'm thinking that they should have been locked up for doing something that would have been quite the opposite of funny- if not downright traumatic- for the pedestrians.
I've never seen one of these in use on the west coast of the US. Sounds kind of strange - why shouldn't you be able to take a shopping cart outside? Do you just have to eat all your groceries at the store, or only buy as much as you can carry at one time?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
...a new gadget for sale at ThinkGeek in the forseeable future? :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All the carts in my local are already locked up, and they have no 'boot'. I was suprised to hear that a store in the world actually has functioning shopping carts, or at least ones without two wonky wheels out of four.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
I think a better target would be the vibrating coasters that signal "your table is ready". If you could somehow set up all of those to go off at the same time on a Friday night you might...have them all going off at the same time on a Friday night! Drive-by mayhem!
But what if you have a pacemaker, and you're really, really short?
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
Karnal
Best.Troll.Thread.Ever.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
"And all the bread and toilet paper is MINE! ALL MINE!!!"
Now that's a recipe for shit sandwiches.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
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.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
we have shopping carts that are all chained together...you insert a one euro coin to remove it and then take the cart back to the cart corral to retrieve your coin....it seems to work fairly well here.
That would never work here in the States...no one carries one euro coins...
Sounds like a MiniCooper to me. Maybe not the power steering though.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Basic human contact and interaction with your neighborhood is now a thing of the past folks. It's 2007 now, why the hell should I still have to know who that idiot living next door is?
Maybe true: no 2 year committment to ATT, but perhaps a 1 year committment in the local state penitentiary :-). Well, this is probably better than to be with ATT, so GO FOR IT!
Either way, you're going to get fucked.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."