Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't really give two shits about who owns what trademark. The OSI coined the term, therefore their definition is the correct one. If you want to use it in some weird esoteric way, go elsewhere.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yeah, read the article. EE? Maybe in the slashdot / linux world, where people are so afraid of actual electronics that they purposely redesign in software things better accomplished in hardware (see most of the open source IR-Blaster type projects for a really depressing example of this - no need to be afraid of filters and demodulators, guys!).
I was building stuff of that sort of complexity 30 years ago, when I was 10. In fact, after reading the how it works, I bet I could have built it back then without resorting to a black-box microcontroller - a couple of oscillators, dividers, and hex/decade counters would do the trick.
And no, she's not that good looking...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Unfortunately, your cart would be locked too, would it not. Rather kills the point, I think...