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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

news.umich.edu

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Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#221

Post by rhaway84773 »

brk wrote: post #212
memetomancer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a frustrating yet common sort of take. Yes, this is simple, as the article clearly points out. Yes it is obvious in retrospect. But did you do anything with your brilliant work besides bodge your terrible car a few more miles down the road? There is value to developing the entire system... to ensuring the keypad mechanism is reasonably robust and tamper proof. There is value to understanding the vehicle as a…

It is obvious in retrospect because this concept has been around for 30 years. A common killswitch mechanism that I remember being implemented in the early 90's was a system that tied into accessory devices. On my friends car you had to put the key to ACC, then turn the cruise control on and off, and then engage and disengage the parking brake before the car would start. No other obvious lights, buttons, switches, et…

And despite being around for 30+ years it’s not broadly adopted despite a significant rise in car thefts.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#222

Post by gadders »

Waterluvian wrote: post #14

I knew someone with a shitty pickup truck where he wired a light switch into the fuel pump and hid it under the steering column. The truck would be stolen something like 5 times a year and every time he would find it abandoned a km or so away when the gas in the line ran out. I drove in it once to get lunch and near the beginning the car begins sputtering and he's like, "oh right, you're thirsty" and reached under an…

In the UK in WW2 for a period of time everyone had to disable their vehicles when unattended by removing the rotor arm

https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/47622/

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#223

Post by klodolph »

samstave wrote: post #193
chriskanan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the link to the award (I think): https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2245223&His... Probably half the award is taken up by indirect costs at the university, leaving the remainder for a few PhD students to be funded, money for the devices, and any studies where they are probably paying participants to use the device. $1.2M doesn't go that far in terms of grants. As far as whether this is a good in…

Curious, what % of costs of a grant are usually consumed by the UNi - are these to pay for equipment, power, lab time, etc? Or are they slurping funds for other aspects of the uni's operations?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25910/what-does...

Overhead includes things like administrative & support staff, equipment depreciation, etc.

It’s often calculated as some percentage of the grant. Then you fill out your timesheet to bill hours to specific grants, so it can all be tracked.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#226

Post by vkou »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #221
brk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is obvious in retrospect because this concept has been around for 30 years. A common killswitch mechanism that I remember being implemented in the early 90's was a system that tied into accessory devices. On my friends car you had to put the key to ACC, then turn the cruise control on and off, and then engage and disengage the parking brake before the car would start. No other obvious lights, buttons, switches, et…

And despite being around for 30+ years it’s not broadly adopted despite a significant rise in car thefts.

Is there actually a significant rise in car thefts? Or did we just hit an acute rise in car thefts of two particular models, caused by the discovery (Well, publication, really) that they are still using 30-year-old security?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#227

Post by foooorsyth »

memetomancer wrote: post #143
K0balt wrote: post #84

1.2 million grant for this? Now I’ve seen grift, but come on. I want to hire their grant writer. Literally a relay in the starter lead. This looks like one of my afternoon projects, and I’m not even joking. I have a 1990s montero diesel and it leaks power, and I often forget to disconnect the terminal. So I bought a relay from AliExpress (same one shown in this photo but one size up) and hooked it up with an esp32 an…

This is a frustrating yet common sort of take. Yes, this is simple, as the article clearly points out. Yes it is obvious in retrospect. But did you do anything with your brilliant work besides bodge your terrible car a few more miles down the road? There is value to developing the entire system... to ensuring the keypad mechanism is reasonably robust and tamper proof. There is value to understanding the vehicle as a…

I work for a major OEM in automotive. Getting ANYTHING “simple” into real cars, especially anything related to physical access and starting the vehicle, is a huge undertaking. $1.2 mm is cheap for this sort of feature, assuming that money goes to the actual implementation, standardization, homologation, and integration on the assembly line.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#228

Post by Ekaros »

hutzlibu wrote: post #53
postmortembees wrote: post #20

This is a very engineering solution to a very not-engineering problem. Would this deter thieves? Possibly! Would thieves eventually be able to work around it? Also probably! Would it increase the friction of getting in and driving? Definitely! Today, your house keys are basically useless for security -- getting into your house is trivially easy both destructively and not. But we all use house keys because they feel s…

"Today, your house keys are basically useless for security" They are not useless. Only some people have the skills and tools to open them - so they are useful at keeping most people out, even though they don't provide perfect protection. Most thieves are not professionals, but for example junkies who look for something easy. A simple automatic light, is already doing wonders to keep them away.

Being in country that uses proper locks... Yep, people aren't picking them in field.

Good locks are expensive, but they also last a long time. And nearly unpickable is good enough. There is wall of window next anyway that then becomes much easier.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#229

Post by alphazard »

fnimick wrote: post #43
screamingninja wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. What's even worse is that it takes a huge research grant to come up with this. > With a new $1.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation...

That amount of money is absolutely nothing compared to the waste that goes on in the startup industry. Remember the $445 million self driving pizza oven delivery van?

The "waste" in the startup industry has corrective mechanisms built in. Investors can pull their money out and take their business elsewhere.

Taxpayers cannot pull their money out of the NSF and reallocate it to a different government agency.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#230

Post by fdr »

DanHulton wrote: post #191
K0balt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, really, good for them. But don’t be talking down on my car. That’s just not cool. That beast is the workhorse of the farm and it gets the job done. None of the windows roll down though and it’s hot as hell inside, so it discourages unnecessary use, saving the planet. It rarely sees pavement but it drags what needs to be dragged and it pulls the utility rigs out after they deliver to us.

And that's all well and good, but maybe introspect here for a second? You're upset that your accomplishments aren't being respected, immediately after discounting the accomplishments of others. The point is that your car's modifications and the university's are similar, but different, particularly in scale and broad robustness, which adds difficulty in ways you may not be appreciating. $1.2 million may sound like a l…

The professor did gloss over briefly the difficulty in making the system work for a large number of vehicles, before arriving at a viable "signature" idea, as the article describes. Sounds like an area with a lot of false starts (heh) and time consumption, and dead ends.
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