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Hardware Hackers Create a Cheaper Bedazzler
ptorrone writes "Hardware hacker extraordinaires Ladyada (Adafruit Industries) and Phil Torrone (of MAKE magazine) have just published an open source 'Homeland Security' project, a non-lethal LED-Based Incapacitator: THE BEDAZZLER. After attending a conference where the $1 million 'sea-sick flashlight' (THE DAZZLER) was demoed by Homeland Security, the duo decided to created an under-$250 version, and just released the source code, schematics and PCB files. The team also released a 5 minute video describing the 'official version' as well as how they created the 'open source hardware' version."
brilliant !
Next project: under-$250 LHC.
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
... this it for the First Contact with women :)
$250, huh? This:
https://www.mybedazzler.com/
certainly nauseates me for a lot less!
Isn't this why patents exist? So that other people can't build a product you've invented for much cheaper and sell it. Research has value, and should be rewarded.
At the end of the video, the creator uses it on a test subject and it doesn't work - which she even admits.
"Ok, so it turns out it doesn't work so well. But it's great for raves."
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Stop saying stuff like Pigs. It's dumb.
And I thought lasers in movie theaters were annoying!
When you look up how to make something you can always make it cheaper and easier than if you had to figure it out on your own. A large part of the cost was paying the people that make and test the device without knowing how it should be made.
Sounds like Lady Gaga's nerdy sister.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Watching the video, at the end of their demonstration, she says, "Well, turns out it doesn't work that well, but it is great for raves." I'm not accusing them of shenanigans, because they're not misrepresenting that it actually works. However, I am accusing the submitter of exaggerating the effectiveness of this thing by calling it a "cheaper Bedazzler."
It's not like they have recreated for $250 what the DHS did for a million. I don't doubt that what they've created is irritating to look at, but the thing is five times the size of what the DHS had created for them, and would be totally ineffective in an actual situation in which it would be needed.
But she's right, it probably would be kind of fun at a party, and it does look like a neat project to play around with.
that ladyada is one funny looking dude.
THL phish sticks
Tell the pigs to stop being dicks and letting the power go to their heads and we'll have reason to show respect.
Until then, they're dirty, dirty, corrupted pigs.
The "Sea Sick Flashlight"? That's the best they could come up with?
What's wrong with its proper name, the Chunder-Gat? I'd settle for Chunderbuss if Rankin/Bass objected.
What would you call police who abuse their power? Nice men who beat me to death?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Now I understand what the GP was saying; he meant cops. I thought he was talking about swine. Someone should mod you up.
Wait... maybe the GP was a woman talking about men? Some people have a hard time using language effectively, I guess. Either way, you're right.
Free Martian Whores!
When I hear BEDAZZLER, in my head I hear a Infotainment show host voice. He continues by telling me how easy it is to attach colourful rhinestones to my own clothes and fabrics at home, for only $19.99 plus postage and packing.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
IT REALLY WORKS!!! I actually felt nausea when I realized that they spent a million of our tax dollars designing a fucking party favor!
A perfect example of how much better private entrepreneurs can be, than whoever, who is government-paid... Yes, I know, that DHS bought their design from a private company, but they are spending other people's money and so care more for how attractive each bidder's saleswoman was, than about the cost of the device...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I noticed on the adafruit site that the original Dazzler used a low Hz pulse like 9Hz - 15Hz or somewhere around there. It reminded me of back in high school in our electronics class when we hooked up a speaker to a frequency generator. One of us had read somewhere that a loud pulse at 9Hz - 11Hz or so would produce sickness in people so we set the freq at 11Hz and cranked it up. After a few seconds people started complaining about headaches and not feeling well so we turned it off.
Now if you consider the stories about military equipment that is connected to either the back or the tongue and is able to put sound or vision into your head by using the correct frequencies...
That'd mean the low frequency sound effects and the strobe effects are really setting off the same thing by getting the same basic frequency into the brain via different channels. The brain doesn't care how a signal gets in there, so you can see hear or feel certain sensations through electrical impulses anywhere on you.
I wonder if there's a frequency for gullibility, aggression, fear, etc...
Dang where'd I'd put my tinfoil hat?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
What would you call police who abuse their power? Nice men who beat me to death?
I'd call them "dirty cops". Sadly there are far too many, but not all cops are.
Free Martian Whores!
I thought a Bedazzler was one of those things sold on TV that lets girls add rhinestones to clothing, so when I read the summary I was really curious what the Dept of Homeland Security was doing with them.
I think the idea was, "It doesn't work, but it's still pretty neat."
Keep in mind that she never said, "This is as effective as the DAZZLER." That was the nominal goal, and at the end, she clearly states that they didn't get there. But I really don't think they expected to replicate a million-dollar device.
Sometimes, the cool stuff that comes out of making something like this isn't whether or not in the end it actually works or is as effective as you want it to be, but what you learn along the way and what you do end up with. (In this case, a device that is cool at raves.)
The submitted did submit it under a somewhat misleading title, though, in implying that the thing actually works.
Funny, round here they just like swill and rolling in mud. They're actually kinda cute.
Even if their cheaper version worked like the original, it was still the development cost that was a million bucks, not the production cost.
Since they used the schematics that were generated out of the development, all they reproduced was the production, not the development.
Car analogy: its more like taking the owners manual of an old VW beetle and building one from that, as opposed to inventing the internal combustion engine and then building a car to use it.
Wait just a cotton-picking minute, here, buster! Are you implying, ideas can have value like some kind of property (spit)? That anybody doing research should be paid on top of the altruistic joy they ought to be having from a discovery?
No! Everybody on Slashdot knows, that scientists (just like artists) aren't the selfish greedy bastards, and it is only the Big Corporations (TM), who insist on collecting money under the pretense of having to pay these creators of Intellectual Property...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
for themilitary-industrial complex.
Keep spending. You're about 3/4 the way to China.
Yours In Baku,
Kilgore Trout
Will it be:
a. The company that makes the Dazzler
b. The company that makes the BeDazzler (that rhinestone pressing gadget)
Yeah, you're absolutely right. The retired cops can be pretty nice people, can't they?
Fuck every living police officer on the face of the fucking earth, they're all undeserving pigs who have been given more power than is their due and they take more and more for themselves each day.
I've watched that video and I remember they mentioned referencing the original patent for their project. Aren't they pretty much violating a patent by doing this? The idea seems pretty novel and original to me but I'm not a neuroscientist nor a lawyer. Anyone want to clarify?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
... bright light... bright light...
Natural selection.
OBPC (One bedazzler per child)! discount if you buy a telescope to see it with...
The perfect weapon for the pigs
you're totally right! it's gonna be way harder to get them to slaughter now.
expect the cost of bacon to soar!
There are some dirty cops. The problem is not really how many dirty cops there are. The problem is the cops that aren't really dirty but will back up the dirty cops. If the "Honest Cops" would get real honest and bust the dirty bastards then things would be much better. Till that happens ALL FUCKING COPS SUCK ASS! If you aren't turning in bad cops you are one. PERIOD!
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
They should be charged "accessory to bad policing", just like someone can be charged "accessory to murder".
I'm the cream of the crop, I rise to the top
I never eat a pig cause a pig is a cop
Or better yet a terminator
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger
To a cop there are three kinds of people: Cops, cops' families, and suspects.
Free Martian Whores!
I get a huge kick out of the fact that the name is a likely play on the X-Men hero "Dazzler", who used light to disorient people.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
Wow, go to extremes much?
"But this one goes to 11!"
I think these devices would be great to use against riot police by protesters.
I wonder how long before they will be illegal?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You're just mad because they won't let you be a criminal like you want to be.
Back in the late 60's I worked on a program at General Electric, Utica, NY called LAMPS. The technology consisted of very bright strobe lights flashing in the 8 Hz - 10 Hz region. These lights were flown in aircraft and used in the Vietnam war to disorient the enemy. The strobe frequency is unique in that it disrupts brain wave activity that caused the enemy target to loose control of bodily functions (not just vomiting).
We did our testing at night and the lights could be seen from a nearby highway. This resulted in multiple auto accidents.
If you've ever been exposed to arc flash from welding or witnessing a large short circuit. you'll know that isn't the most fun thing - you get bad spots and trails in your vision, a bad headache, and eventually nausea - been there, done that. The same symptoms that the real dazzler advertises, and the same things experienced by the news reporter lady.
If the "bedazzler" doesn't have the same "eye-burning" power as an arc flash or the real dazzler, it's probably just not bright enough. And I suspect that's the case - they've got the green LEDs spread out over a much larger device than the real dazzler, which lessens the 'burn your eyes' effect. Plus, they've basically made a stupidly powerful continuous-light flashlight with sections that blink, and the blinking probably isn't even visible from the glare the device generates. The original 2M-candlepower bulb in their flashlight would probably be more effective at subduing a person.
I'm thinking a better design would involve increasing the density of the LEDs, using only green ones (best lumens/watt) and operating them at a high pulse discharge current (akin to a flash) instead of at continuous current like they're doing.
'Could we stop sucking up to women just because they're a bit techy?"
No, but thanks for asking!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Until they encounter the guy that fights like me who closes his eyes and flails randomly.
Is available here: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7180426.pdf
I'd call them "dirty cops". Sadly there are far too many, but not all cops are.
"Dirty" cops are a subset of the problem. They are the corrupt ones who misuse their position as law enforcement for their own gains or play along when officials above them do the same. It is a problem. I agree that not all cops are dirty.
There are also cops who are not corrupt but still fail to "protect and serve". Some are un-necessarily brutal. This ranges from beating up suspects who offer no resistance (until it became clear they would be beaten up), perhaps for a minor technical infraction. In some cases, people who have done nothing wrong at all (however minor) end up on the wrong side of a beat down.
Others don't cross that line but have obviously forgotten that their job is to "protect and serve" not to be treated with the sort of deference that used to be reserved for Chinese emperors. They are the ones who seem to take personal offense if they can't find something you did wrong so they can write you a ticket. They "thought they saw a beer" and when proven wrong, keep looking for something else. They ooze the attitude that you serve them and they will GET you one way or another. If there's actually nothing at all, even a technicality, they can write you up on, they will "let you off with a verbal warning" rather than just apologize for the inconvenience. Yes, I know it's awkward to accuse someone and then find that your wrong. That's WHY an apology is in order. Your best hope is that the other person will accept it graciously. It would be a lot less awkward for them if they hadn't subvocally appended "you dirty little sack of shit" to everything they said to you before being proven wrong.
Next on the list we have those who somehow enable the above categories. They treat what would otherwise be considered a brutal assault worth not less than a year in prison as "some kind of mis-understanding" (yeah, the mother of two didn't understand that she might get yanked out of the car by her hair and kicked in the ribs if she pulled over like the law says she must for a minor traffic stop) and do nothing significant about it. They missed the part of kindergarten where we learned about saying you're sorry. They might reluctantly admit that some officer's actions were out of line but you can actually tell from the attitude they project that in their minds they're sure the victim was guilty of something and somehow managed to put one over on the bleeding hearts.
While only one category above is "dirty cops", all are unambiguously "pigs". They are the ones that make cops unwelcome in a neighborhood. They are NOT by any means 100% of the police force, but the odds that any particular cop approaching you is one of those are high enough to tempt even the most law abiding citizen attempt to avoid the encounter. They make parents think twice before advising their children to go to a cop if there's a problem. Some of them are decent enough when they're NOT on duty (to the point that friends and family would be shocked to see their on duty behaviour).
The remainder are "police officers". They are what 100% of the police force needs to be made up of. They are, of course, imperfect human beings like the rest of us but they acknowledge that and try to get it right anyway (just like most of us). Because they can acknowledge that they are imperfect human beings, they are able to understand that the rest of us are as well and act accordingly. They can even understand the concept of "no harm, no foul" in spite of laws written in black and white (by imperfect human beings).
The big problem they face is that it doesn't take many "pigs" amongst the "police officers" to make it in an honest citizen's best interest to assume the worst. It takes even fewer to be a problem for honest citizens legally doing things that are politically inconvenient (like protesting). When the problems are higher up the chain of command there may be little or nothing a proper "police officer" can do about it.
It is because of all of that that cops as a whole come to be regarded as "the pigs".
No, actually he is mad because they wouldn't let him be a police officer....
That's an interesting question for all the /. armchair lawyers. Is something a patent violation if it doesn't actually work the way the patent says?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
So instead of chasing taillights, we're chasing nausea and vomit inducing blinky lights? Nice.
Program Intellivision!
...ALL FUCKING COPS SUCK ASS! I
And yet, when you get in trouble, your first call will be to 911 and the first responder will most likely be a police officer who will try and help you or your family in any way he can.
Who modded this as "insightful"?
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Reading the title and a quick scan of the summary lead me to believe that someone had developed BEDAZZLER stones with LEDs in them. You could make some cool stuff with LED Bedazzler stones: patterns that flashed, little animated scenes, etc. Alas! All they did was make a weapon.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Oh we have a spectrum analyzer here, thats what we used to debug the DIY cellphone jammer project http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble
What you suggest would be a really, really, REALLY bad idea. It would not end well. At all. You're talking about average people with glorified flashlights trying to take on organized, well-trained, and well-equipped specialists who have the legal right to use force. It would result in violence against the protesters (well, more than the usual amount anyway) and while I am not a lawyer, I believe they'd be charged with assaulting police officers as well, which is a serious charge. No, the proper way to deal with abusive police is for the citizens to put legal political pressure on the local and state politicians who control the police.
Next time you want to bitch about someone, try doing with a real user id, with a real resume of accomplishments.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
I think most of us would call a relative, friend or neighbor in most cases that you actually could call 911. Some times people even call a relative/friend and make them call 911, that way you don't waste "your" time when you could do something important.
Now I want to get this thing pointed at me and see what it's like! I'll make my own this weekend!
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
From her site for the rf bubble thing
"Much of the RF gain-stage design and layout was done in collaboration with Adam J. O'Donnell and the Cult of the Dead Cow"
Real hardware hacker extraordinaires don't need help like that. "Collaboration" is a weasel word if I ever heard one.
Like I said, arts and crafts with a good web site design, probably done by someone else too. Great self promotion, little substance.
I tried putting my resume in here, but there's not enough space in the margin.
Wow you are really paranoid! Adam helped me pick out the best amplifier and looked over the RF gain stage layout to make sure it was nice and clean, since he did this for a living. Sure I could have done everything without any extra eyes but then the jammer might not have been as effective and that would be so sad :~(
If you check back, next week, I'll have project on how to build your own 4 layer boards with popsicle sticks and glitter!
That and a bottle of liquid ass would be a great combination to bring to a party!
What is the rise and fall time (on/off)of a typical LED?
I am now at the edge of being fired atter I rewrote a library of 57 000 SLOCS within 1000 SLOCS.
These guys should be really crasy to risk wastedumping so much other people's work.
But now Everlast doesn't eat pig cause it's not halal.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
"Hardware hacker extraordinaires" -- Shouldn't that be a title bestowed upon you by someone other than yourself, ptorrone? A little humility goes a long way.
So they looked at the patent and created a version of the invention. Big deal. This is a sort of abuse of the term "open source", isn't it? It's burdened by the patent. Anyone marketing these things would be sueable - and for treble damages because they infringed on the patent willfully.
But it's not cheap plastic. It's genuine authentic 100% imported faux space-age thermopolymers!
If a person is sufficiently motivated, especially if they're well-trained or on drugs, even *lethal* force can be inadequate to stop them.
It doesn't play out like in the movies.
There is always a weapon - and always a shot - that will get the job done.
The SWAT team goes home for supper. You make your exit in a body bag.
For that price I could just get a Blackhawk Gladius which has a field proven strobe mode that will disorient and cause balance loss. http://www.blackhawk.com/product/Night-Ops-Gladius-Maximis-Illumination-Tool,994,40.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obi3n3OVwHw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MezgQicq5bw
To a cop there are three kinds of people: Cops, cops' families, and suspects.
To Infernal Affairs, there is one kind of person: suspects. This includes themselves!
hey "Anonymous" - you're right, i don't know how you figured it out, but you are clearly on to something big.
limor didn't do *any* of the web site or "real coding".
if you're really interested, here's the mastermind behind most of what you see at adafruit and ladyada...
http://bit.ly/sscsd
please keep this to yourself, thanks.
We had those way back in 1977! Two circuit boards, lots of TTL chips.
of course, the BEDAZZLER will be functional in a desert sand storm in the persian gulf. In 120deg weather, on a hummer vibrating heavily,and be reliable for 125days 24/7 while there's dust everywhere, and gunfire all around.
Sure $1mil maybe a bit too expensive for a device such as dazzle, but comparing a $1mil device to a $250 device is truly apple to oranges.
Cool hack of what I think is a pretty useless DHS gadget. What is to prevent someone from holding up a mirror and bedazzling the bedazzler?
And yet, when you get in trouble, your first call will be to 911 and the first responder will most likely be a police officer who will try and help you or your family in any way he can.
I'll order a pizza instead. The pizza guy will show up sooner, might actually help, and is less likely to hassle me instead. Cops are good for providing paperwork required by insurance companies, and little else.
Pardom me if I have nothing but contempt for cops, but I have seriously been in a situation where I (as a pizza guy) had just been robbed, was still bleeding, and the cop hassled me for consuming his valuable time with my problems, called me stupid for delivering pizza to that neighborhood, and then gave me a ticket for some some expired sticker. Oh, and made sure to get free pizza from the restaurant.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
a frickin million dollars for something that can make you a little dizzy or nauseas???? Wow, great crowd control.
can't we just start voting NO on ALL these morons that allow this stuff?
People make me pro-nuclear.
"but it's great for raves..." why even post?
To a cop there are three kinds of people: Cops, cops' families, and suspects.
You are exaggerating.
I read an interview with a cop, and he said that cops mainly categorize people into two categories: citizen, and dirtbag. The goal is to protect the citizens from the dirtbags.
If you meet a cop on the street, he or she is likely to categorize you as a "citizen" (rather than a "suspect" and immediately start looking for ways to lock you up). There must be cops out there who will consider long hair and a rock-n-roll T-shirt as sufficient evidence that you are a dirtbag, but they are a distinct minority in the places I have visited.
I'm not sure I could be a good police officer. They have to deal with so much. So far I have gone my whole life without having to look at a messy dead body, or having to interact closely with people screaming insults at me, or having to take an abused child away from abusive parent(s).
I'm sure there are jerks out there who became cops because they want to be able to legally push people around, but I'm also sure they are outnumbered by people who just want to do a good job.
>No, the proper way to deal with abusive police is for the citizens to put legal
>political pressure on the local and state politicians who control the police.
Good luck with that.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I think there's another effect in play. Do you know any of your town's police officers? Do you have beat cops? Or do they only seem to be present when something has gone wrong? For all my life it's been only the second. Seeing a policeman means something bad happened. This causes nervousness, and that feeling seems to apply to most people. Police = bad things happening.
The problem, of course, is that the police are there to fix problems. Seeing them should cause a feeling of relief: the police have come to help you. Instead the ingrained feeling of nervousness is far more important. The police are uniforms that appear when something goes wrong, not any kind of regular presence. You don't know them, they have power over you, and thus their effectiveness at calming the populace after an incident is decreased.
Not a sentence!
I tried putting my resume in here, but there's not enough space in the margin.
I bet you did, you l33t h4x0r j00. was it a picture of you playing with legos on the living room floor? or did you make a moisture detector with your 101 circuits to detect that mess you left in your pants? or maybe it was a picture of your enormous schlong, 'cause your such a big dick. is that the joke?
come on.
impress us, mr. anonymous troll. let's see your resume, so fucking huge it's visible from space. show us your two-ton engineering balls. ...or is it just that you're hiding there in the shadows because ladyada's got a track record a mile long and decade deep and you got frustrated trying to get your arduino powered cocksucker to work?
Would like to thank LadyAda and her cohorts for this very useful device.
the first of almost anything costs a lot more to make than the second. The million dollar price tag includes research into what colors, wavelengths and patterns (or lack of patterns) are the most effective, studies into the way that light interacts with the eye and brain, a few development models as the product is refined, some cash to pay the guinea people as you test it, money spent ensuring that the product meets whatever guidelines the government set forth (weight/portability, sourcing and type of materials, waterproofing, durability, etc) and a host of other costs associated with developing a brand new product. All that's assuming they started with the idea of "a flash light that makes people puke;" If their mandate was "make us a new kind of less-lethal weapon" then there are even more costs incurred as they research, weigh and evaluate competing ideas. To make fun of the company for spending $1m on the device is a little naive; to praise this group for being so much more clever than the contractors in making it cheaply is likewise.
Don't bedazzle me bro'
Perfectly put.
I also think that because so many of them are pigs, it drives the real police officers out. I think a lot of people join up with good intentions and then either succumb to the terrible attitudes or change careers.
Collaboration is how the industry works in the real world. Anyone with an *actual* resume worth reading would know that. We can only surmise you're not only hiding behind anonymity, but also ignorance. Well, I guess you're not doing a good job of hiding *that*...
I gotta wear shades!
...
So a million dollars for a device that can be defeated just by closing your eyes? Are you serious? And no one recognizes this?
Agreed. It can't be easy for a real police officer to watch all of that going on and be able to do nothing about it.
There probably is something to that. At the least, the lack of beat cops reduces the chances for a casual low pressure (and much more pleasant) interaction with police.
Happily, I have had more pleasant than unpleasant interactions with police, but it's hard not to let the few unpleasant ones vastly outweigh the pleasant ones in my mind.
Interestingly, in the two most unpleasant interactions that stand out so strongly I had done nothing at all wrong. OTOH, when I forgot to put my new car tag on, the officer that reminded me was quite nice about the whole thing. Then he gave me directions to the place I was trying to find at the time.
I do not think that you are correct. Cops are mostly useful for solving crime after it has happened. If I need to protect my family or my property right now from someone it would be up to me to do that. Ill call 911 later to get an ambulance for the guy I just shot.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I actually know a(n admittedly small) number of my local officers by name and face, and through decent, normal means. I've never been in any trouble that requires an officer to visit me in a negative light.
Granted, we've had the police come over a couple of times, but these were for deaths in the family (of which this appears to be a normal thing to do in my town -- if you call and report that someone has passed away, a police officer will swing by and visit, and I guess this goes in the record as official proof that a person is now deceased).
Even then, these officers were professional, and compassionate. They were there for us for nearly an hour, while the funeral home sent their people to carry my people home.
Hell, when I lost my mother, one of the officers (one I know by name, surprisingly, and long before my mother's passing) actually offered me a hug, which I gratefully accepted.
As for beat cops, I guess you could say we have them in some places. I used to work in a shopping plaza here. Instead of a rent-a-cop (security officer), we actually had a city police officer sitting in the plaza, and a cellphone that we can directly reach him on (our store kept the phone, and probably paid the monthly bill for it, too), should we, or any other shopkeep in the mall need to reach him. Everyone knew the officers that worked that plaza. They'd work a six hour shift there, then trade off with another officer, so we had twelve hours of coverage, five days a week.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.