Hardware Hackers Create a Cheaper Bedazzler 282
ptorrone writes "Hardware hacker extraordinaires Ladyada (Adafruit Industries) and Phil Torrone (of MAKE magazine) have just published an open source 'Homeland Security' project, a non-lethal LED-Based Incapacitator: THE BEDAZZLER. After attending a conference where the $1 million 'sea-sick flashlight' (THE DAZZLER) was demoed by Homeland Security, the duo decided to created an under-$250 version, and just released the source code, schematics and PCB files. The team also released a 5 minute video describing the 'official version' as well as how they created the 'open source hardware' version."
That's ... (Score:3, Funny)
Odd name (Score:5, Funny)
When I hear BEDAZZLER, in my head I hear a Infotainment show host voice. He continues by telling me how easy it is to attach colourful rhinestones to my own clothes and fabrics at home, for only $19.99 plus postage and packing.
Re:Odd name (Score:5, Funny)
But my problem with the name of this device is that it doesn't bedazzle at all. It causes motion sickness.
They should call it BENAUSEATOR or BEPUKINGTHEIRGUTSOUT or something along those lines, more accurate.
Re:Odd name (Score:5, Funny)
But my problem with the name of this device is that it doesn't bedazzle at all. It causes motion sickness.
They should call it BENAUSEATOR or BEPUKINGTHEIRGUTSOUT or something along those lines, more accurate.
Are you talking about the military device, or the $19.99 infotainment device?
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When I hear BEDAZZLER, I think of superheroes.
Haha. Just to be clear though -- "Dazzler" is the lame-ass mutant with the amazing ability to make shiny sparkles, while the "Bedazzler" is what her she used to make her disco ass even more lame.
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BEDAZZLER is easier to say than BECALLINGRALPHONTHEBIGWHITEPHONE.
(caps filter appeasement text) Le Lorem Ipsum est simplement du faux texte employé dans la composition et la mise en page avant impression. Le Lorem Ipsum est le faux texte standard de l'imprimerie depuis les années 1500, quand un peintre anonyme assembla ensemble des morceaux de texte pour réaliser un livre spécimen de polices de texte. Il n'a pas fait que survivre cinq siÃcles, mais s'est auss
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No, no...
Think of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. And certainly not Brendan Fraser and what's-her-name that Hugh Grant was attached to when he got caught. (in Vegas? in a taxi cab?)
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Oddly enough the attached rhinestones have the same affect as the LEDs.
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Misleading Title (Score:3, Funny)
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brilliant !
Watch the movie. It didn't really work, to my disappointment as well.
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It works great for the flashblindness, nausea, dizziness, disorientation. The occasional vomiting? Maybe not ;)
Really? Cool! You should cut out that last comment though because it sounded like the whole project didn't work.
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Nice! (Score:5, Funny)
Next project: under-$250 LHC.
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I got to get out of here.
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They did that on Top Gear already, well sorta. It was pretty awesome though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b4WzWFKQ20 [youtube.com]
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If you ever needed a proof... (Score:3, Funny)
... this it for the First Contact with women :)
Seems kinda pricy still (Score:5, Funny)
$250, huh? This:
https://www.mybedazzler.com/
certainly nauseates me for a lot less!
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Except that... (Score:5, Informative)
At the end of the video, the creator uses it on a test subject and it doesn't work - which she even admits.
"Ok, so it turns out it doesn't work so well. But it's great for raves."
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Re:Except that... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused what the purpose of this article is. Is it 'Gee Whiz' look what you can build at home? Or is it look how much money was wasted creating the original? Or what?
Yes, the original version costs $1 Million to create, this was created for $250. Except, you know, she didn't have to come up with the idea, and she didn't have to do any of the original research, and there's no garauntee that hers won't cause permanent blindness, and hers doesn't work. But other than that it is a total bargain.
The purpose of the article (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the idea was, "It doesn't work, but it's still pretty neat."
Keep in mind that she never said, "This is as effective as the DAZZLER." That was the nominal goal, and at the end, she clearly states that they didn't get there. But I really don't think they expected to replicate a million-dollar device.
Sometimes, the cool stuff that comes out of making something like this isn't whether or not in the end it actually works or is as effective as you want it to be, but what you learn along the way and what you do end up with. (In this case, a device that is cool at raves.)
The submitted did submit it under a somewhat misleading title, though, in implying that the thing actually works.
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Re:The purpose of the article (Score:4, Funny)
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So no flashing is necessary to induce headaches.
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And doesn't the Geneva Convention speci
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And doesn't the Geneva Convention specifically ban weapons where the primary purpose is blinding people?
Permanent, not temporary. Otherwise flash-bangs could be considered banned weapons, for example... or, really bright spotlights.
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Laser weapons. It specifically bans laser weapons where the primary purpose is permanently blinding people.
Oddly, it doesn't ban laser weapons where the primary purpose is killing people.
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Re:The purpose of the article (Score:4, Informative)
The maximum safe exposure levels of light (as a function of wavelength) is well known and documented, e.g. by OSHA or other occupational standards bodies. Incurring temporary blindness isn't necessarily dangerous and is sometimes used in vision science studies. The procedure is called "bleaching" as it relates to a temporary chemical depletion of the rhodopsin pigment. Its not permanent blindness so I don't think the Geneva ban would apply.
The choice of green light in the original dazzler is smart because it saves power (green being close to the peak wavelength sensitivity for the human retina), and its also a relatively safe color to look at. Blue is an order of magnitude or so more dangerous. Red is safer but not as visible so the power requirements would be much greater.
The people who cooked up this $250 hack don't seem to be aware of that fact that light damage is wavelength dependent and have made theirs with full RGB color... so yeah, this is why we give money to the pros.
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I'm confused what the purpose of this article is.
I believe the purpose was "see this patent - here's a picture of it in the video - we just built a device that infringes".
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I'm confused what the purpose of this article is.
I believe the purpose was "see this patent - here's a picture of it in the video - we just built a device that infringes".
Never mind... The patent requires a spatial scanning element that directs the beam around. They don't have one.
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And there's a guarantee that the original one won't cause permanent blindness? Ever? To just one person?
Re:Except that... (Score:5, Informative)
From what Ladyada has posted here and elsewhere, I'm convinced that it's as effective as the Homeland Security version. Which is, not very.
The basic problem with nonlethal weapons is that they assume there's a range in which a weapon is more than annoying, but less than dangerous:
|====annoying===| sweet spot |====dangerous====|
But because people vary in their responses, it looks more like this:
|====annoying===|
|====dangerous===|
In short, until you deal with the fact that a weapon that will kill Grandma will only make an enraged 250-pound meth addict even angrier, you're wasting your time.
Re:Except that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Replying to my own post ... actually, the problem is not just that what's dangerous to one person in a crowd is merely annoying to another. The overlap occurs in individuals too.
If a person is sufficiently motivated, especially if they're well-trained or on drugs, even *lethal* force can be inadequate to stop them.
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Where are these training programs, and what are in these drugs, which allow a dead person to keep going? I'll take two!
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A weapon like that which can induce migraines will only piss some people off enough to beat the asshole wielding the thing into a bloody pulp - and the great thing is a weapon like that is assault so a physical response inducing pain or even maiming the asshole shining that thing in your eyes would only be self defense - and it would help the victim's migraine go away thanks to the adrenaline and endorphine rush. :) Violent responses shouldn't be limited to meth addicts because normal people occasionally w
Re:Except that... (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's 108 decibels, so
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Um, yeah.. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the *parts* that cost $1M, but the salaries of a small R&D team that actually bothered to test and modify their concept until they had a working model, then a small-run production to demo the working prototypes, which probably had to meet little standards like environmental, shock, and anti-corrosive metrics.
The first of anything always costs a lot -- it's the economies of scale that bring the cost down in the long run, the same way these clowns could buy LEDs for $.
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If engineers and scientists really were like 'Big Corporations", patents would last for 150 years plus the life of the longest lived member of the originating team. That patents have a nice, reasonable 20 year limit is a great refutation of all your sarcasm.
Let's see. Your second paragraph is an invalid assertion. Your first paragraph makes another one by implication - patents aren't a means of seeing researchers get paid, only possibly for compensating a percentage of successful ones. I don't think anyone
Re:Except that... (Score:5, Insightful)
How well does the million dollar dazzler work? For all we know the dazzler is a useless pork barrel project that's only hyped by Homeland Security to makes us think they are doing something useful.
You can always make it cheaper. (Score:5, Insightful)
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who's Ladyada? (Score:2)
Sounds like Lady Gaga's nerdy sister.
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let's have some fun, this makes me sick
I wanna take a ride on your throw up stick
(2x)
(2x)
I wanna kiss you
but if I do then I might hurl on you, babe
it's complicated and stupid
got my ass queazey and spewing
guess he wants to play, wants to play
Throw up game, Throw up game
hold me and love me
just wanna spew lunch for a minute
maybe three seconds is enough
for my stomach to quit it
let's have some fun, this makes me sick
I wanna take a ride on your throw up stick
don't think too much, just bust that kick
I wanna take a
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You should really get yourself one of those fancy 80-columns displays.
NOT a "cheaper Bedazzler." (Score:5, Informative)
Watching the video, at the end of their demonstration, she says, "Well, turns out it doesn't work that well, but it is great for raves." I'm not accusing them of shenanigans, because they're not misrepresenting that it actually works. However, I am accusing the submitter of exaggerating the effectiveness of this thing by calling it a "cheaper Bedazzler."
It's not like they have recreated for $250 what the DHS did for a million. I don't doubt that what they've created is irritating to look at, but the thing is five times the size of what the DHS had created for them, and would be totally ineffective in an actual situation in which it would be needed.
But she's right, it probably would be kind of fun at a party, and it does look like a neat project to play around with.
Re:NOT a "cheaper Bedazzler." (Score:4, Insightful)
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And the most significant questions for the real thing are probably all unit cost related. How much will individual devices cost? Will this get cheap enough that small town police forces will all have one? Will we see 3 dozen of them used simultaneously at the next G-20 protest? Will DHS provide grants so that every county sheriff's office in the nation has one, and what will that cost the taxpayers? We live in strange times that we know the financial situation for the cheap dance party knock off, but have l
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Look for future headlines that include the terms Lite-Brite and Flowbee.
The what? (Score:2)
The "Sea Sick Flashlight"? That's the best they could come up with?
What's wrong with its proper name, the Chunder-Gat [theregister.co.uk]? I'd settle for Chunderbuss if Rankin/Bass objected.
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Because that prompts every nerd to shout "Chunder! Chunder! CHUNDER! Chunder-Gats, HOOOOOO!"
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My kingdom for a mod point. That's the funniest thing I've read on here in a month.
HOLY CRAP!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:HOLY CRAP!! (Score:4, Funny)
So I guess that's the future of crowd control? The riot police will just read lists of ways in which our tax money is being spent. The real clincher is when they read off the cost of creating and providing copies to all law enforcement of a list of ways in which our tax money is being spent...
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Frequency range (Score:2)
I noticed on the adafruit site that the original Dazzler used a low Hz pulse like 9Hz - 15Hz or somewhere around there. It reminded me of back in high school in our electronics class when we hooked up a speaker to a frequency generator. One of us had read somewhere that a loud pulse at 9Hz - 11Hz or so would produce sickness in people so we set the freq at 11Hz and cranked it up. After a few seconds people started complaining about headaches and not feeling well so we turned it off.
Now if you consider th
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I wonder if there's a frequency for gullibility, aggression, fear, etc...
I don't know about that, but I bet there's a frequency for the placebo effect. Your anecdote reminds me of the people that are 'alergic' to WiFi, but only when they know it's around. I'm not necissarily saying that there's nothing to it, but I'd require some pretty significant double blind tests before I buy into the idea of a nauseating sound. If nothing else I would think there would be plenty of times when such a frequency would be prodeced in industry, leading to everyone that works there beign const
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Screw your tinfoil hat, where are my tinfoil glasses?
Rhinestones? (Score:4, Informative)
I thought a Bedazzler was one of those things sold on TV that lets girls add rhinestones to clothing, so when I read the summary I was really curious what the Dept of Homeland Security was doing with them.
Who will sue them first? (Score:2)
Will it be:
a. The company that makes the Dazzler
b. The company that makes the BeDazzler (that rhinestone pressing gadget)
Patents? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Do you violate the patent if it doesn't work? (Score:2)
That's an interesting question for all the /. armchair lawyers. Is something a patent violation if it doesn't actually work the way the patent says?
Anyone else remember X-Men's Dazzler? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Anyone else remember X-Men's Dazzler? (Score:5, Funny)
I get a huge kick out of the fact that the name is a likely play on the X-Men hero "Dazzler", who used light to disorient people.
Or it could be that the name is a likely play on the word "dazzle [merriam-webster.com]", as in "to lose clear vision especially from looking at bright light", but your guess is good too...
I think these would be great to use against police (Score:3, Interesting)
I think these devices would be great to use against riot police by protesters.
I wonder how long before they will be illegal?
Good luck with that. (Score:3, Insightful)
>No, the proper way to deal with abusive police is for the citizens to put legal
>political pressure on the local and state politicians who control the police.
Good luck with that.
1960's technology Revisited (Score:4, Funny)
Back in the late 60's I worked on a program at General Electric, Utica, NY called LAMPS. The technology consisted of very bright strobe lights flashing in the 8 Hz - 10 Hz region. These lights were flown in aircraft and used in the Vietnam war to disorient the enemy. The strobe frequency is unique in that it disrupts brain wave activity that caused the enemy target to loose control of bodily functions (not just vomiting).
We did our testing at night and the lights could be seen from a nearby highway. This resulted in multiple auto accidents.
Chasing what kind of light again? (Score:2)
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if homeland security (ostensibly a government entity) spent the money to develop it, is it patentable?
Re:Patents? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. Unlike copyrights, the government can (and does) own patent rights. When the government funds the work giving rise to the patents, the contractor (or university) will own the patent, but the government actually get a non-exclusive right to the patent. See Bayh-Dole, 35 U.S.C. Sec. 200 et. seq.
When Bayh-Dole applies, the owning entity then has an obligation to actually exploit the invention. If they don't the government has "march-in" rights that would let the government take ownership. Not that that's ever happened.
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Yes, assuming that they used a private contractor to design and build it which is probably the case.
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Tell the pigs to stop being dicks and letting the power go to their heads and we'll have reason to show respect.
Until then, they're dirty, dirty, corrupted pigs.
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What would you call police who abuse their power? Nice men who beat me to death?
I'd call them "dirty cops". Sadly there are far too many, but not all cops are.
Re:Pigs will like this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pigs will like this (Score:4, Insightful)
To a cop there are three kinds of people: Cops, cops' families, and suspects.
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To a cop there are three kinds of people: Cops, cops' families, and suspects.
To Infernal Affairs, there is one kind of person: suspects. This includes themselves!
Re:Pigs will like this (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet, when you get in trouble, your first call will be to 911 and the first responder will most likely be a police officer who will try and help you or your family in any way he can.
I'll order a pizza instead. The pizza guy will show up sooner, might actually help, and is less likely to hassle me instead. Cops are good for providing paperwork required by insurance companies, and little else.
Pardom me if I have nothing but contempt for cops, but I have seriously been in a situation where I (as a pizza guy) had just been robbed, was still bleeding, and the cop hassled me for consuming his valuable time with my problems, called me stupid for delivering pizza to that neighborhood, and then gave me a ticket for some some expired sticker. Oh, and made sure to get free pizza from the restaurant.
Re:Pigs will like this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd call them "dirty cops". Sadly there are far too many, but not all cops are.
"Dirty" cops are a subset of the problem. They are the corrupt ones who misuse their position as law enforcement for their own gains or play along when officials above them do the same. It is a problem. I agree that not all cops are dirty.
There are also cops who are not corrupt but still fail to "protect and serve". Some are un-necessarily brutal. This ranges from beating up suspects who offer no resistance (until it became clear they would be beaten up), perhaps for a minor technical infraction. In some cases, people who have done nothing wrong at all (however minor) end up on the wrong side of a beat down.
Others don't cross that line but have obviously forgotten that their job is to "protect and serve" not to be treated with the sort of deference that used to be reserved for Chinese emperors. They are the ones who seem to take personal offense if they can't find something you did wrong so they can write you a ticket. They "thought they saw a beer" and when proven wrong, keep looking for something else. They ooze the attitude that you serve them and they will GET you one way or another. If there's actually nothing at all, even a technicality, they can write you up on, they will "let you off with a verbal warning" rather than just apologize for the inconvenience. Yes, I know it's awkward to accuse someone and then find that your wrong. That's WHY an apology is in order. Your best hope is that the other person will accept it graciously. It would be a lot less awkward for them if they hadn't subvocally appended "you dirty little sack of shit" to everything they said to you before being proven wrong.
Next on the list we have those who somehow enable the above categories. They treat what would otherwise be considered a brutal assault worth not less than a year in prison as "some kind of mis-understanding" (yeah, the mother of two didn't understand that she might get yanked out of the car by her hair and kicked in the ribs if she pulled over like the law says she must for a minor traffic stop) and do nothing significant about it. They missed the part of kindergarten where we learned about saying you're sorry. They might reluctantly admit that some officer's actions were out of line but you can actually tell from the attitude they project that in their minds they're sure the victim was guilty of something and somehow managed to put one over on the bleeding hearts.
While only one category above is "dirty cops", all are unambiguously "pigs". They are the ones that make cops unwelcome in a neighborhood. They are NOT by any means 100% of the police force, but the odds that any particular cop approaching you is one of those are high enough to tempt even the most law abiding citizen attempt to avoid the encounter. They make parents think twice before advising their children to go to a cop if there's a problem. Some of them are decent enough when they're NOT on duty (to the point that friends and family would be shocked to see their on duty behaviour).
The remainder are "police officers". They are what 100% of the police force needs to be made up of. They are, of course, imperfect human beings like the rest of us but they acknowledge that and try to get it right anyway (just like most of us). Because they can acknowledge that they are imperfect human beings, they are able to understand that the rest of us are as well and act accordingly. They can even understand the concept of "no harm, no foul" in spite of laws written in black and white (by imperfect human beings).
The big problem they face is that it doesn't take many "pigs" amongst the "police officers" to make it in an honest citizen's best interest to assume the worst. It takes even fewer to be a problem for honest citizens legally doing things that are politically inconvenient (like protesting). When the problems are higher up the chain of command there may be little or nothing a proper "police officer" can do about it.
It is because of all of that that cops as a whole come to be regarded as "the pigs".
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Now I understand what the GP was saying; he meant cops. I thought he was talking about swine. Someone should mod you up.
Wait... maybe the GP was a woman talking about men? Some people have a hard time using language effectively, I guess. Either way, you're right.
Re:Even if it worked (Score:5, Informative)
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'Could we stop sucking up to women just because they're a bit techy?"
No, but thanks for asking!
Re:It's probably not bright enough. (Score:5, Informative)