In this short video, Jeri and company answer the age old question: what’s inside one of those anti-theft sensor alarm devices used by the big box stores? You could call this destructive reverse engineering, or literal brute forcing. It looks like the alarm is triggered by the cutting of the attached bands surrounding the package. Possibly the sensor wire could be bypassed prior to cutting it as suggested in the video comments.
Leave a comment
“Deconstructing”
Portal gun FTW
I have the clear plastic box that Walmart used to and maybe still does use for video games and such. Took less than a minute to open it without damaging it. I think it has some sort of RFID device but I don’t have a reader and never played with it.
too bad they didn’t dive more into the circuit and the workings.
Nice way of opening. Where you can buy these precision-hammers?
Easier method – stick the device in water.
But we already knew that defeating it is as easy as stripping away a good chunk of the insulation with a knife then clipping an aligator jumper to either side of where you plan to cut so that you get a nice bit of length to work with. And if you want your lead back, just duct tape the exposed leftover leads back together.
Now, just don’t do any of that!
Any usable parts inside?
Kinda wondering what was expected? It’s not a sonic defense weapon, just supposed to notify that theft is occuring. Most thieves are only successful if they can do it quietly. you can defeat it by stripping and jumping…yadda yadda…try to do that in a store w/o being noticed. The objective in making these is not to make a $75 theft-proof device, it is to produce the cheapest effective deterrant possible. To me there is no surprise in the basic operation of the device, I would have liked to see more of the capabilities on the pcb such as how it disarms w/o going off, battery, etc.
My wife bought a pair of jeans at Kohl’s that had what appears to be a RFID tag imbedded in a piece of fabric sewn into them. She didn’t remove it, although it said to. Next day we went back to return an item, she was wearing the jeans….beep,beep…
She removed it and gave it to me, now I just have to figure out to detach it from the fabric tag. Maybe I’ll see if I can read it with my Parallax RFID reader…
That sucks that they would sew it in to the pants!