Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday March 09 2018, @12:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-sweet dept.

Tampa Bay area bomb squad members are making Easter possible this year for the blind.

"A basic switch, a little beeper or buzzer and then a nine volt battery and it's just a basic circuit that we sauter[sic] together and we build into the eggs."

Bomb squad members took a break from their usual training and turned their focus to Easter eggs and kids with disabilities.

"This gives these children the ability to [go] out and hunt Easter eggs like all the other kids. Just gives them that little bit extra ability to be able to locate the eggs utilizing the beeping Easter egg," said Sergeant Jarrett Seal with the Tampa Police Department bomb squad.

The hunt will benefit close to 50 kids who are visually impaired.

[...] Not only will kids get to have an Easter egg hunt, but they'll get to have one whenever they want.

"This year [they're] all going to take home a bag of Easter eggs donated by the bomb squad and now they can do it whenever they want to, and they can go to grandma's house and have an egg hunt or they can go to the community egg hunt and have one there," said Mongelluzzi.

Source: http://wfla.com/2018/03/05/tampa-bay-area-bomb-squad-members-make-beeping-easter-eggs-for-visually-impaired/


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @01:06PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @01:06PM (#649937)

    Or is it donated by the taxpayer?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by lentilla on Friday March 09 2018, @01:38PM (9 children)

      by lentilla (1770) on Friday March 09 2018, @01:38PM (#649944)

      Oh come on. Five bucks of componentry, and likely an hour's worth of donated time per egg. A clutch of two hundred eggs comes to a grand.

      Got to be one of the cheapest ways I've yet seen to maintain and build team morale.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @02:08PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @02:08PM (#649952)

        It's easy to belittle them for complaining about it, too.

        • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @02:38PM (#649965)

          It's easy to donate other peoples resources.

          It's easy to belittle them for complaining about it, too.

          Show me the evidence they are donating other people's resources, your fucking eyed-shit!

          • (Score: 3, Funny) by Osamabobama on Friday March 09 2018, @05:31PM

            by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:31PM (#650096)

            ...your fucking eyed-shit

            All of these words are valid spellings of real words, and the hyphen suggests that some care was taken in assembling this phrase, but I'll be damned if I can extract any meaning.

            --
            Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by SparkyGSX on Friday March 09 2018, @02:24PM (3 children)

        by SparkyGSX (4041) on Friday March 09 2018, @02:24PM (#649957)

        Nah, more like a 50 cents to a buck for the parts (the battery is probably the most expensive), and after the first few, someone experienced with a soldering iron can probably do 10-20 an hour. If you really want to do a lot of them (giving 50 kids a handful to take home translates into quite a lot), I'd have used a coin cell instead, and designed a small and really simple PCB that you can get produced for less than 10 cents each. You could even use a NE555 or something to make it beep briefly every few seconds, those things cost about 8 cents each in bulk. The switch and buzzer they used now look expensive and labor intensive to wire up.

        I really do applaud the idea and effort they put into it, but I'm a bit disappointed about their apparent lack of knowledge of electronics and engineering. This could be so much easier to scale if they had just asked pretty much anyone with an electrical engineering background or teamed up with a hackerspace or something.

        It is kind of ironic that the bomb squad is making "scary beeping electronic things" to hide, while they usually get called out for such things, especially in the US. Remember the Boston Bomb scare? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic [wikipedia.org]

        --
        If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
        • (Score: 5, Funny) by JNCF on Friday March 09 2018, @03:57PM (1 child)

          by JNCF (4317) on Friday March 09 2018, @03:57PM (#650035) Journal

          It is kind of ironic that the bomb squad is making "scary beeping electronic things" to hide

          "Wait a minute, if you're defusing an Easter egg... where did we put the bomb?"

          • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday March 09 2018, @05:33PM

            by frojack (1554) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:33PM (#650097) Journal

            Especially since you or I could get arrested if caught carrying one of these things anywhere that attracted police attention. They'd call the bomb squad to " disrupt" it.

            Didn't they do that for throwies?

            --
            No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by Osamabobama on Friday March 09 2018, @05:34PM

          by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:34PM (#650099)

          ...50 cents to a buck for the parts...

          Also, as this is for sight-impaired kids, they can save money on the eggs by buying the grey and black ones that nobody else wants.

          --
          Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:11PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:11PM (#649992)

        It's easy to belittle them for complaining about it, too.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:46PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:46PM (#650049)

          It's easy to donate other peoples resources.

          It's easy to belittle them for complaining about it, too.

          Show me the evidence they are donating other people's resources, your fucking eyed-shit!

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @01:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @01:10PM (#649938)

    Kind of lame, but I can't wait for the news item (in a few weeks): "TSA intercepts blind terrorist with electronic eggs."

    Better would be some combination that punned on easter eggs (the software kind)...

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by schusselig on Friday March 09 2018, @02:39PM (1 child)

    by schusselig (6771) on Friday March 09 2018, @02:39PM (#649967)

    As demand for competent AI to filter out internet porn from Rhode Island has depleted the pool of qualified bomb handling robots, a new generation of visually impaired people are being trained to fill the gap.

    Sergeant Jarrett Seal commented to the Associated Press, "those blind kids won't be discouraged when they see the other kids blown to bits, because, like, they can't see!"

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 09 2018, @02:44PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 09 2018, @02:44PM (#649975) Journal

      So, they do explode, those eggs, eh?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by Rich on Friday March 09 2018, @02:56PM

    by Rich (945) on Friday March 09 2018, @02:56PM (#649980) Journal

    If the kids would make those devices (*), and someone sees them, the bomb squad would immediately have a professional job and much trouble would ensue.

    (*) extra hilarity points: for the squad to enjoy a playful easter...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:31PM (#650017)

    Ah so that's it was the bomb squad.

  • (Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Friday March 09 2018, @03:44PM (1 child)

    by captain_nifty (4252) on Friday March 09 2018, @03:44PM (#650026)

    This seems nice, but how many times is the bomb squad going to be called out for small unidentified beeping packages.

    To me it looks like perfect job security wrapped up in some poorly thought out PR exercise.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 09 2018, @05:38PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:38PM (#650105)

      They'd rather get called for a beeping easter egg than a buzzing dildo.

  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday March 09 2018, @05:27PM (2 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:27PM (#650091)

    Make some beeping easter eggs on beeping easter for beeping visually impaired children and hide them beeping anywhere where any beep can stumble on them and think it is a beeping bomb or some such beep. What could beeping go wrong? :P

    At lest the beeping bomb squad will already be on hand.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 09 2018, @05:40PM (1 child)

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday March 09 2018, @05:40PM (#650108)

      It's a wonderful hollywood fallacy that the bad guy would take the time to wire a beeper, red 7-segment array, and blinking LED, to his carefully hidden bombs.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by TheSouthernDandy on Friday March 09 2018, @07:04PM (1 child)

    by TheSouthernDandy (6059) on Friday March 09 2018, @07:04PM (#650164)

    ...that we sauter[sic] together

    That's "sauté"

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Friday March 09 2018, @11:30PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 09 2018, @11:30PM (#650301) Journal
      You made me ROFL with that one - have definitely earned a +1 Funny from me!
      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
(1)