We have all seen these small tags on items in stores that have high cost and are easy to conceal and walk out of the store with. Since these items are left on the items sold the cost must be small and they need to be simple to de-activate by the cashier when the item have been purchased. The technology turns out be be very clever and extremely low
Ian Scott Johnston has a local only burglar alarm that he would like to be able to interface with remotely. He has hacked in an arduino with a GSM module to allow him to control the system via SMS text messages. The enclosure is large enough to house all of the additional modules that he needed. The built in regulator was a linear style which was swapped out with a
KF5OBS shares a tour of the Teledyne LeCroy Factory. Unlike a high volume electronic manufacturing like TV manufacturing this facility has stations where the equipment spends significant time. They can afford to do things this way since these are not built in the millions. It is interesting to hear that these scopes need to have an antivirus scan performed before it ships. Just like high end sports cars, many of these
This is an inexpensive component tester called the FISH 8840 which you can find from many online eBay retailers for around $30. The interface is very simple, attach a device to be tested and press the test button. It turns off after about 20 seconds, pressing the off button puts it into sleep mode immediately. There is a ZIF socket that allows you to insert leaded devices and pads
Peter Oakes goes over a Arduino based Industrial PLC system called Industrial Shields. If you are an Arduino programmer and are looking to incorporate your design into something that is a bit more robust this might be for you. I was thinking the system would just use some of the standard Atmel chips that are common in Arduino systems and just use the IDE for programming but it actually incorporates the real
Shake the Future shows us how to remove the internal buzzer of a small alarm clock and wire it to a much louder siren and strobe unit. This simple hack involves taking the small clock completely apart to get at the electronics that activate the internal buzzer. When the clock activates the alarm there is a small open relay that closes, with this wired in series with the siren the
If you have a laser cutter focusing the laser on your work can be tedious if your system doesn’t have a way to adjust the distance from your work to the laser automatically. Now as much of a pain this is for a flat item it is impossible to generally do with an item that varies in height. Martin Raynsford has solved this issue by bolting a Wiimote to
