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posted by takyon on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the glitter-lining dept.

Hackaday:

[Mark Rober] was fed up with packages going missing. He kept receiving notifications that his shipments had been delivered, but when checking his porch he found nothing there. Reviewing the CCTV footage revealed random passers-by sidling up to his porch and stealing his parcels. It was time to strike back. Over six months, [Mark] and his friends painstakingly designed, prototyped and iterated the perfect trap for package thieves, resulting in a small unit disguised as an Apple HomePod. The whole scheme is wonderfully over-engineered and we love it.

The main feature of the device is a spinning cup on the top which contains a large amount of glitter. When activated, it ejects glitter in every directions. You could say it's harmless, as it's just glitter. But then again, glitter has a way of staying with you for the rest of your life — turning up at the least expected times. It certainly leaves an emotional impression.

The trap uses an accelerometer to detect movement, geo-fencing to determine when the package has left the property, glitter and a fart spray to make the thief regret it, and smartphones to capture the thief's reaction for the enjoyment of the hacker.

Also at BBC.

See also: Jersey City PD, Amazon work together to catch package thieves
Jersey City PD nabs 12 this week in porch package sting


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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:46PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:46PM (#776002)

    Its not stupid if they rarely get caught.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:58PM (1 child)

    by sjames (2882) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:58PM (#776013) Journal

    On the other hand, there's a guy around where I live that will now suffer the humiliation of doing time for stealing a jumbo pack of toilet paper.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Tuesday December 18 2018, @10:05PM (2 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @10:05PM (#776070)

    If the cops won't do anything even with clear video evidence of them and their crime, then it's not exactly their brilliance keeping them from being caught.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @10:57PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @10:57PM (#776096)

      So is it little kids? I guess they must be 16 if theyre driving.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 20 2018, @03:39AM

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday December 20 2018, @03:39AM (#776658)

        From the video it looks like no kids, but everyone else from maybe 20s to 60s.