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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 :)
The perfect weapon for the pigs... fucks with the subject, can be easily denied ("bright lights? You taking drugs again?"), and it leaves no trace of "torture" even when used multiple times.
$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.
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.
Just when the rest of the world seems to be getting as fat and lazy as you are, American enginuity kicks it up an notch and the rest of the world can only watch in awe and disgust.
Cheaper Bedazzeler? No wonder America is a country of bankrupt trailer trash.
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
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.
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
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.
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)
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...
Could we stop sucking up to women just because they're a bit techy? All the projects on her site have all been done before, she seems to have repackaged them and made a glitzier site.
Big deal. I've seen Nixie tube clocks and propeller clocks since years, no one ever called going to Radio Shack hardware hacking.
Get back to me when she designs and builds a 20GHz diode sampler and has a lab with time and voltage standards, more than one spectrum analyzer and a boat anchor scope for looking at GHz+ signals.
This is arts and crafts, not hardware hacking.
OBPC (One bedazzler per child)! discount if you buy a telescope to see it with...
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)
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.
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.
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
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!
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!
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.
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?"
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.
"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
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?
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?
>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.
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'
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?