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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."
Creative Commons is not Open Source. Creative Commons is not Open Source. Creative Commons is not Open Source.
At Aldi stores in the United States, you insert a quarter ($0.25). I think they have problems with cart rotation though.
These systems are used to keep people from taking carts past the store parking lot. Generally there is a painted line indicating how far you can go before the 'boot' will activate.
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.
They use them at the edge of the parking lots, like an electric fence, to keep homeless people from stealing the carts. It reduces the amount of shopping carts they need to replace each year and saves the store money.
Hm. Well, in the US, our 10 and 25 coins used to be silver, with the former proportionately smaller than the latter. There used to be silver 5 coins, but they were impractically small. When the nickel replaced them, for some weird reason, the mint decided to make the coin 5g in mass (none of our other coins are metric), and made of less precious metal, and so we wound up with the current odd relative sizes.
What's the story with your coins?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"can the cost of putting a remote control boot, sensors, transmitters etc. really cheaper than losing some carts?" Obviously, yes, that is why stores pay big bucks for these systems. Remember, they don't just lose a few carts, they lose all of them one at a time. They have to hire people to cruz neighborhoods looking for them and bring them back. Those they do find are often worse for the wear. Ones they don't find wind up rusting in creeks and abandoned, broken in alleys and fallow yards. Locking shopping carts help prevent neighborhoods from being littered with these abandoned carts brought home on one-way trips by people who can't be bothered to buy a "granny cart." The addition of locks to my local shopping center's carts has quickly eliminated those carts from being strewn about by people walking home with groceries. The newer systems are much better than earlier iterations that use purely mechanical devices triggered by small "speed bump" like berms which rimmed the parking lot. These new systems are more reliable and have fewer false triggers--well, until now :-)
Note, I support walking to the store but I don't support stealing the cart just because it is convenient to push home--and no, most of those people pushing carts home are not fragile elderly people, at least not in my area, so that isn't the issue. And no, nobody ever takes them back, either. If they did, it wouldn't be as big a deal.
The same is done in most (all?) European countries. You even get keyhangers specialy designed to act like a coin, so you do not need your change.
I went to a store and needed change, instead they gave me two plastic coins I can use. I leave them in my car and use them whenever I go shopping.
One disadvantage: after the introduction of the Euro, it is not very clear what coin to use. It varies between 50cent, 1 and 2 EUR coins. Sometimes all three, other stores just one.
I rarely see carts. Apparently people are more interested in the little money then in the cart itself. I also see not many homeless people, so the demand for carts is a bit lower perhaps then in the states.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not only that but ours are £1 coin sized and places sell you a keyring with a £1 coin sized piece of metal hanging off it for use in supermarket trollies.
B F-7E43-3C7253387FBBB56B
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http://www.tenovus.com/index.cfm?UUID=FA3D05C9-65
http://www.alzscot.org/store/pages/Trolley_keyrin
http://www.schshop.org.uk/keyrings.html
etc.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Many Slashdotters may not recognize this reference. It's from the Canadian comedy series Trailer Park Boys. One of the main characters, Bubbles, steals shopping carts and sells them to competing stores for a living.
If I recall correctly, TPB was aired for one season in the US. Unfortunately it was aired in a censored form (which destroyed much of the humour) and so it tanked down there. Meanwhile in canada TPB was become a very recognizable part of mainstream canadian culture.