Could I make a little gun and just walk around through the parking lot and aisles of the supermarket and freeze all the carts in place?

    • Chozo@fedia.io
      30·
      2 months ago

      What’s interesting about these carts is that they only ever seem to be deployed at stores that I wouldn’t think were prone to cart theft, to begin with. They’re always in the nicer neighborhoods at the overpriced stores that nobody should be shopping at in the first place.

      Meanwhile, every cart at the stores in the worse neighborhoods look like they’ve been used as target practice for an M1 Abrams tank, have no locks, and can be found scattered on random street corners for a 3 mile radius from the store.

      • Airowird@lemm.ee
        71·
        2 months ago

        Because the former location just virtue signal, the latter can’t afford to lose the majority of customers.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        One of the proposed features is locking the cart if someone is about to walk out without paying.

        The cost of the RF locking wheels isn’t far off the price of a replacement cart. (Not to mention the investment in digging up the entire outline of the lot burying the line.

      • felixwhynot@lemmy.world
        6·
        2 months ago

        The hacker who did the Def Con talk linked in the Hackaday article also did another one, they are both very interesting

    • rumba@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, I just watched a youtuber take apart a modern one. Found the maker and the manual for the system. Then watched some more people taking the system apart (including the one you linked)

      Neat stuff:

      • Looks like it’s <9 Khz signals (7.2khz in the one I looked up), at that frequency, you can do a replay attack using your phones speaker from 0 distance.

      • the electronics in the wheels are potted, including the battery so they’re disposable at EOL.

      • Apparently, the unlock signal is just an inverted lock signal. Easily detectable.

      • Their system has the ability to lock/unlock all carts, only the carts left in the parking lot overnight.

      • One of the features available is for them to identify and freeze a particular cart if it doesn’t go through a checkout.