The first step in the process was to find the signal that they use to lock up the shopping carts. To do this i decided to make a coil antenna so that I could find the signal. The transmitter wire is not very hard to find, it is usually a back line around the edge of the parking lot. I have to admit you get lots of weird looks sitting at the edge of a parking lot at 3 am with a laptop in you hand and sitting on the ground behind your car..

Sitting on the ground behind the car getting the signal

The Signal Wire at the edge of the parking lot

The process to get the signal is rather simple, all you have to do is hook up the loop antenna into the audio input of your computer and use an audio recording program, i recommend Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) After recording you should get a signal similar to the following: Wal-Mart unfiltered (Screen Shots Below) after doing a little signal analysis you should be able to get something more like this: Wal-Mart Filtered

Wal-Mart Unfiltered

Wal-Mart Filtered

After getting the clean signal the only thing that was left to do was to export that as an mp3 file onto the ipod. This file alone combined with the antenna that you used to pick up the signal works to lock up the shopping carts from a short distance. The next thing that I did in order to increase the signal strength was to build an amplifier to boost the signal.

Amplifier

After all of this was done all I did was put the ipod on repeat on the filtered signal and walk around the store, unfortunately i am only able to get about a foot range with this setup but I am planning on revising this to see if I can get more . I will keep updated if I do so. I am hoping to post a video sometime soon.

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The first thing that you are going to need to do is download the Arduino environment:

Download Here

If you need a step-by-step guide to installing the Arduino Software one can be found here:

Step-By-Step Guide

<-Update->

So here are the Videos i promised..

Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It’s an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.

Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can be communicate with software running on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP.) The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free.

The Arduino programming language is an implementation of Wiring, a similar physical computing platform, which is based on the Processing multimedia programming environment.

Why Arduino?

There are many other microcontrollers and microcontroller platforms available for physical computing. Parallax Basic Stamp, Netmedia’s BX-24, Phidgets, MIT’s Handyboard, and many others offer similar functionality. All of these tools take the messy details of microcontroller programming and wrap it up in an easy-to-use package. Arduino also simplifies the process of working with microcontrollers, but it offers some advantage for teachers, students, and interested amateurs over other systems:

* Inexpensive – Arduino boards are relatively inexpensive compared to other microcontroller platforms. The least expensive version of the Arduino module can be assembled by hand, and even the pre-assembled Arduino modules cost less than $50

* Cross-platform – The Arduino software runs on Windows, Macintosh OSX, and Linux operating systems. Most microcontroller systems are limited to Windows.

* Simple, clear programming environment – The Arduino programming environment is easy-to-use for beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users to take advantage of as well. For teachers, it’s conveniently based on the Processing programming environment, so students learning to program in that environment will be familiar with the look and feel of Arduino

* Open source and extensible software- The Arduino software and is published as open source tools, available for extension by experienced programmers. The language can be expanded through C++ libraries, and people wanting to understand the technical details can make the leap from Arduino to the AVR C programming language on which it’s based. SImilarly, you can add AVR-C code directly into your Arduino programs if you want to.

* Open source and extensible hardware – The Arduino is based on Atmel’s ATMEGA8 and ATMEGA168 microcontrollers. The plans for the modules are published under a Creative Commons license, so experienced circuit designers can make their own version of the module, extending it and improving it. Even relatively inexperienced users can build the breadboard version of the module in order to understand how it works and save money.

**NOTE: THIS IS A DIRECT COPY FROM www.arduino.cc**

Now that I have my own Seeeduino I can stop borrowing my  roommates Arduio and start working on some of my own projects. I also manages to pick up a 13.56 Ghz RFID reader, Ethernet Arduino Shield, and a few other small items. I have a few projects coming to my mind..

..Arduino Segway Clone?

..Remote web-based system control

..RFID Cloning

..Data logging via Internet

..Remote space travel in a Arduino sized shuttle?

I have a feeling that you will see some of these projects start to show up on my website..

… Now if only i could speed up the next package i am waiting for from robot marketplace and get back to that vision robot..

This morning i looked down on my desk and saw my Parallax Sumo Board and decided that i should try to find something to use it for..

So in the spirit of Halloween I had to do something simple using it so i decided to do a simple LED Pumpkin light using 5 RGB LED’s Below are some pictures and a video of it in its current state.. Currently all it does is cycle between 4 different colors.

As I add onto it I will be posting more pictures.

I will be posting pictures as I build it. And hopefuly you will see it at Defcon in 2010!

After a few years of having her LG enV the port on the bottom of my mother’s phone died, leaving her with no battery life and no way to charge her phone.  So she decided to go get an Apple iPhone 3GS, but the problem was how to get her numbers off of her old phone?

A power supply, some wires, and a little bit of soldering later i figured it out..

If you were to look at the battery on the phone there are 4 connectors, two of them are for power, and the center two communicate with the phone (the level of the battery and state). If you try to connect 3.7VDC to the phone on the outside pins the phone will turn on and say “Not A Genuine Battery, Powering Off In 9..8..7…” So the next step would be to connect the two center pins (as you can see with the green and white wires), but then again i got the same message. At this point it occurred to me that you have to have some power in sync with the battery, so has the phone turned on i held a wire that was attached to the positive 3.7VDC to the positive side of the batter (you can see this wire coming out of the red alligator clip) After the phone powers on you are then able to disconnect this wire with no problems.

.. And of course you sit down with google docs and copy all the numbers into a spreadsheet..