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."

Redefining the shopping experience...

[__aaclcg7560]

Why not have all the carts locked up when someone takes a cart outside the zone and have an alarm goes off on the offending cart. That way the perp can be lynched by the shopping mob before the carts unlocked. That should reduce the number of incidents.

a solution that works somewhat here.....

[Elsapotk421]

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.

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

[demonlapin]

That gets people to take it back to a cart corral instead of just dropping it in the parking lot... I think this is more aimed at people who try to steal carts (they're surprisingly expensive).

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

[Anonymous Coward]

That already happens (at least here in Ireland, where a euro ain't worth much anymore), and is considered a feature, not a bug. It doesn't really matter _who_ returns the trolley, so long as someone does.

Re:Funny or sick? You decide.

[QuantumG]

Don't worry, it's only a matter of time before doing something which is "traumatic" to another adult is reason enough to lock someone up. Our society is turning into a bunch of cry babies who are "traumatized" by just about everything, so that will mean everyone will be in jail.

Oh wait, never mind, we're all treated like inmates anyway.

Re:Locking was done differently in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

For a dollar, I'll take the $800 cart home, thanks.

Re:Oh Great

[Gibbs-Duhem]

Um, did you RTFA? Look at the signal, it's obviously an encoded byte. You would prefer to create a system where you have to rebuild the entire system if they change the code? She even explicitly mention that different stores have different codes, and that she included a simple switch to choose which signal to broadcast... seems like smart engineering to make your interface as easily modified as the system it's interfacing with.

Did you look at the hardware or read the descriptions of the design? It's pretty clear that she is not at all afraid of circuitry, and even included *many* disclaimers showing people places where if they didn't follow the electronics design properly they could be seriously injured.

Charming

[Le Marteau]

Senseless vandalism. Swell. How laudable. Life is tough enough, but how about locking up some wage-earner's cart, after he has suffered under the hands of a sadistic boss, just wanting to get some grub and go home. Delightful.

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

[spoco2]

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

What the crap are you talking about?

Having shopping carts lock when you try to take them outside the designated area is a perfectly FINE thing for a store to want to do... how many times have you seen shopping trolleys dumped in the most odd places? There's nothing wrong with them trying to stop people stealing their property, they cost a lot of money and should only be used in that area anyway.

My god some people just like to jump up and down whenever anyone is doing something to protect themselves, no matter how just it may be.

Bah to you sir, bah indeed.

Something I don't get

[lena_10326]

Why didn't they just build the device to always lock when there's no signal? A transmitter in the store emits a continuous signal that keeps the wheels unlocked. When you take it out of the parking lot and go out of signal range, the wheels lock up.

Seems a bit more prank proof that way.

Re:Locking was done differently in Australia

[chgros]

For a dollar, I'll take the $800 cart home, thanks.
And what will you do with it?
The system is not so much designed to prevent cart theft as it is as an incentive for people to put carts back in their place (not all countries have minimum wages as low as the US so they can't afford to pay people to do that)

Re:Funny or sick? You decide.

[TheLink]

Fetal pigs are tiny, but if a human was hit by say a 2kg pig at 50mph, that human could get significantly hurt.

Re:is this really a solution?: YES, it is.

[TheLink]

Sounds cheaper to domesticate humans properly in the first place.

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

[JustShootMe]

Yeah. That's utterly ridiculous.

This is not shopping cart DRM. This is the equivalent of putting a strap on your car stereo and bolting it to the frame. Not only that, but a shopping cart is REAL TANGIBLE PROPERTY.

Anyone who thinks that stores don't have a right to protect their own property has lost all touch with reality.

Re:No degree needed.

[Vampos DeCampos]

True, but come to think of it, I'd probably use a microcontroller too. Low part count and cheap enough; I can get an attiny13 for about $1.7 where I live.

Re:Redefining the shopping experience...

[Don_dumb]

And if your source of interaction and human contact is the local grocery store... maybe you should be ordering your groceries over the internet and use those hours you'll save every week or month to actually go get a life and have real interactions with real people

I assume you live in America where Villages dont exist?

Re:This sure sounds ...

[ultranova]

Maybe true: no 2 year committment to ATT, but perhaps a 1 year committment in the local state penitentiary :-).

Are you seriously claiming that you'll get jail time for fucking with shopping carts ?