interesting find on side of the road this weekend.

[dacflyer]

i was coming home from shopping the otherday. as i rounded the corner to turn onto the hiway. i heard a distinctive ringing noise that was just ringing away on the side of the road, at 1st i thought it was someones cell phone that had fallen out of the car. so i pulled over and went to have a look, well it wasn't a cell phone, it was one of them anti-theft devices. apparently someone riped off a store somewhere.. there was no way to turn it off and it was tooiriestable to leave it there, so i took it home, and it was screaming the whole way. i sat on it to muffle it..lol
at the same time i was hopeing that it wasn't emitting a homeing signal.
when i got home i used my handy silencing tool ( hammer ) i carefully cracked the case open, removed the little CR series coin battery.
theres a lot of electronics on the board just to be a alarm. there was a reset switch, and a trip switch.. maybe someone else knows more about these things.. this unit was black..much like the tan ones that had the dye capsules inthem,, but no dye in this unit..


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[kheston]

dacflyer,

I'm picturing you wincing as you carry the unit to your car and grinning with anticipation as you sit on it for the ride home. Hilarious!

I wonder what piece of merchandise some conscientious citizen pried it off of before flinging it from their window?

Let us know if you find it's useful for anything. Perhaps a local retailer can be talked out of a few dead ones.

--K

[dacflyer]

i suspect they throw the dead ones away, as they are sealed and theres no way to replace the battery..

i think this would be neet to modify it a bit,, put a foto cell onthe trigger, and hide it in the medicine cabinet.. would be great to catch your buddys red handed when snooping around.. once triggered it won't shut up til you reset it..

[Craig]

Can you post a picture of this? It would be interesting to see what it looks like inside.

[Engineer1138]

Nah, if you want a real trick, put one of those passive anti-theft devices in his wallet.

I used to always set off alarms in certain stores. Not all, but after a while I could predict which ones. I specifically remember being in Seattle on vacation and telling my wife as we walked into a Barnes&Noble that I would set off the alarm. Sure enough I did -- I set off alarms in every B&N store I went into. Never understood why.
Then about a year later I was cleaning out my wallet and found that the anti-theft antenna was still in one of the little pockets. Problem solved!!!

i suspect they throw the dead ones away, as they are sealed and theres no way to replace the battery..

i think this would be neet to modify it a bit,, put a foto cell onthe trigger, and hide it in the medicine cabinet.. would be great to catch your buddys red handed when snooping around.. once triggered it won't shut up til you reset it..

[jollyrgr]

Does it look similar to this?



If so, this is a personal safety alarm. You pull the lanyard (or key ring) and the alarm goes off. Put the lanyard back in and it turns off. Possibly this fell off someone's key ring while the were driving. When they tried to put it back on they could not get the pin back in. Possibly they sat on it for a while until they could no longer take it and threw it out the window.

But without seeing the original (or what's left of it) I'm not sure what you have. I have not seen a screaming anti theft device that goes out the door with the product.

[dacflyer]

i already canabalised the unit..the caseing is deep in the trash by now. its not a personal alarm, it is indeed a anti theft tag off of clothing from a dept store.

this is the closest thing i can find on the net.
the one i had was black and had a red led and the alarm.

[jwax]

dacflyer- That looks like one of the old frequency-doubling detectors.
The store sprays 2 GHz from their emitters at the door, and if you walk by with one of these, it picks up the 2 GHz, and with an antenna and a diode inside, resonates and emits 4 GHz. The store has a receiver tuned to 4 GHz, which fires the alarm.
Very different device from what you described.

[dacflyer]

right,this item is the same thing except this item also has an alarm inside that sounds off if you try to remove it from the clothing.pull the pin off and it triggers the alarm,,. it also has the RFID or whatever it is inside it that triggers the alarm system by the doors if you walk past it...

[haklesup]

So if the door detectors don't trigger the alarm in the tag but only tampering will do that. This would explain the apparently unreplaceble battery. It would only be used if the tag were tampered with and would be in standby lasting a long time otherwise. That is assuming the rest of the tag uses the passive RF antenna tag common in stickers just bulked up with the tag to make it herder to steal or remove.

If the tag were active and could be triggered to sound when removed from the store, that would obviously take battery power and circuitry and would need to be periodically tested and returned to the manufacturer for reconditioning making the tags more expensive to operate but a more effective deterrent.

[dacflyer]

right..... the unit is welded together, no way possible to replace the battery without destroying the unit..
i been searching the net, i still cannot find anything like it..

i been playing with it,, well whats left of it... it properly removed from the clothing or what ever its attached to.. the remover somehow disables the arming pin via a switch , i looks like it is held in a disarm or reset mode
same switch does all the same thing.. but the trigger switch is spring loaded, so like a grenade, once the pin is pulled, a sec later the unit starts ringing like a very annoying cell phone ringer a sort of serpentine ringing sound. think of a ringing noise riding a slow sine wave..lol

[dacflyer]

finally ! i found it.....

the 3rd item down...
http://www.mbm-tt.net/SensormaticHardTags.html

http://www.sensormatic.com/EAS/hardtag/ ... pertag.asp

sight may be down right now,, i see the immage, but i cannot get to the 2nd link,,
but at least you see it now.

[CeaSaR]

I've seen these in use in the larger stores in my area. They have a
removal tool that slides under the "head" of the fastening pin, and when
you squeeze, it removes the pin while disabling the alarm. I've always
wondered how they did that. Has to be a magnetic switch inside that the
removal tool deactivates.

What else did you find inside the tag? Any theories on it's operation?
Inquiring minds want to know...


CeaSaR

[dacflyer]

well in a earlier post i basically said how it operates, or shall i say how it did operate..lol

its just a simple alarm device, altho the circuit looks like overkill..if it did more then i am not sure what it was...

it has a 20 pin smt chip mounted on it.. 062A 864 241K .....is all the ID i see on the chip..
3 lines ... chip looks to be house marked..maybe not. it also has a resonator crystal on it and a few transistors a led and the pizo element.

thats about it....