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 smell......

[Elsapotk421]

a fair amount of mischief about.....or maybe it's just cowboyneal.

This sure sounds ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

... like a lot more fun than an iPhone. Plus it doesn't require a 2 year AT&T commitment ;-)

I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[UbuntuDupe]

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".

the unlock feature

[ksheff]

will be of great interest to a certain inhabitant of the Sunnyvale trailer park.

I felt a great disturbance in the force

[PeeAitchPee]

As if millions of homeless suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. ;-)

Re:a solution that works somewhat here.....

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[daeg]

I don't know about you, but I prefer real babies for that authentic feel and sound.

Re:I smell......

[Anonymous Coward]

I found the diagrams on the bottom of this page to be most informative.

http://www.instructables.com/id/SDIS7ALF3ER7V5W/ [instructables.com]

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell yeah its a good idea.

If they're showing you how to to do it with a 20 feet, someone will figure out how to do it over a 200ft range.

How about a snipers rifle kinda device that works over a longer range... THAT'D BE SO COOL...
or leaving smaller devices around supermarkets that pulse every few hours...
or hiding them on the carts themselves.

The possibilities are almost endless.

If enough people do it, the supermarkets will realize shopping cart DRM is a bad idea.

Wacky Race

[Joebert]

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.

Messing with the security barrier alarms

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Funny or sick? You decide.

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

It's all fun and games until some public-minded guy hauls you off the "baby" and beats you to within an inch of your life...

Reminds me somewhat of this [bash.org] 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.

Boots on shopping carts? Where are those used?

[Mr2001]

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?

Do I smell...

[Opportunist]

...a new gadget for sale at ThinkGeek in the forseeable future? :)

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[FirstTimeCaller]

Or turning the boxes of pineapple upside down cake mixes upside down! That will show the man!

Re:Redefining the shopping experience...

[The Great Pretender]

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.

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[Goaway]

If enough people do it, the supermarkets will realize shopping cart DRM is a bad idea.

Yeah, how dare they lock up our shopping cart culture with their technological barriers!

Re:Messing with the security barrier alarms

[poopdeville]

I did that to a friend of mine when I was in college. The library had an alarm system in place so that books couldn't be taken out of the library without checking them out. A friend of mine worked at the library and gave me a bunch of active strips.

So I carefully unsewed part of my friend's back pack strap, inserted a strip, and sewed it back together. I also threw some strips in random pockets, just so he'd think it might be over once he found them.

You could always tell when he was leaving the library. The alarm would go off and he'd yell "FUCK! EVERY FUCKING TIME!"

I also put one in a friend's shoe. He became quite neurotic.

A Better Target

[iamnafets]

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!

Re:All done with magnets!

[orangepeel]

But what if you have a pacemaker, and you're really, really short?

Re:All done with magnets!

[karnal]

But what if you have a pacemaker, and you're really, really short?

Maybe you could make some money at the circus?

Re:Oh Great

[brian.gunderson]

Best.Troll.Thread.Ever.

Re:Just wait until the next snowstorm...

[hack slash]

"And all the bread and toilet paper is MINE! ALL MINE!!!"

Now that's a recipe for shit sandwiches.

Shopping carts are parts of the culture!..

[mi]

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.

Re:a solution that works somewhat here.....

[donutz]

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...

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[DittoBox]

I was abou to mention something about "Comments like that one are what the 'Post Anonymously' checkbox is for." But then I realized you were modded 'insightful.'

Twice.

Re:Redefining the shopping experience...

[ColdWetDog]

Sounds like a MiniCooper to me. Maybe not the power steering though.

Re:Redefining the shopping experience...

[Puff Daddy]

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?

(Couldn't resist...)

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Funny or sick? You decide.

[Lavene]

* Too many replies [slashdot.org] beneath your current threshold.

Argh! Why do I keep falling for that??? And I'm not even new here...

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[Sobrique]

How dare they lock up shopping carts. Don't they know, that they just like to go for a swim once in a while, before being brutally dragged back to work by those thugs.

Re:I'm not big on security by obscurity, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So instead of risking my £1, I can buy something that is the same size for £1.50 that is used for no other purpose?

Suddenly the decline of the British Empire makes so much more sense.