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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

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Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#361

Post by function_seven »

pmontra wrote: post #316
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…

My father disconnected the distributor (correct word?) and took a piece of it with him. Definitely a killswitch. That was in the 70s. Cars got more complicated around 1980.

Mine removed the starter relay at night. (The car didn't have a distributor AFAIK, or if it did, it wasn't as accessible).

This wasn't to foil thieves, it was to frustrate the repo man.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#364

Post by dcow »

olyjohn wrote: post #312
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…

That's the problem with the whole concept. Anybody can build a shockingly simple kill switch for $5 and a 5 video on YouTube. What are they trying to bring to market exactly? Cars have been around for 100 years and there have been hundreds if not thousands of these things brought to production during that time. They're all junk, they all fail and flop. And great if you thing that those voltage fluctuations are gonna…

If you read TFA then you'd realize they've solved almost every issue you throw down. They allow enough current through to power electronics (like your break-in alarm) but not enough to turn the engine over.

The target market for this is not "anyone with basic car or electronics knowledge who can do it themselves"... it's, "people who want an extra level of defense against car thieves".

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#365

Post by red-iron-pine »

x86x87 wrote: post #154
the__alchemist wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Who steals a police car, and with the cop nearby? Would love to hear more.

You wouldn't steal a car! https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg

i wouldn't.

but i'd totally download a car

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#366

Post by etrautmann »

sushid wrote: post #234
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…

Half is taken by the university? How does that work?

Overhead is required to pay for space, electricity, admin, etc. This is not inherently a problem, but the percentages getting too high is...

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#367

Post by _ea1k »

foooorsyth wrote: post #227
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…

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.

> $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.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it sounded like the $1.2mm went to some prototypes and a research paper.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#368

Post by function_seven »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #335

There's a lot of people remarking about this not being novel or the grant being too high, but I'd make two other critiques. First, what happens if the electrical characteristics of your vehicle change in some way? New vs old battery? Busted headlight? Phone plugged into an outlet? Diesel air intake heater grid kicking in on a cold day? What if you need to jumpstart your vehicle? It just seems so finicky in the real w…

This is a two part system. There's the relay under the hood, and a keypad plugged into the cigarette lighter port. When you put the correct code in, the device will induce the voltage fluctuations that tell the under-hood relay to close.

I think the whole "flip on wipers, flash high-beams twice, turn on map light" thing is a fallback for when you don't have the keypad or don't want it to always be plugged in. If the voltage variances for those actions changes, I suppose you can retrain it with the keypad plugged in.

And the point of that analog signalling is to make installation easy. You just plug the keypad into the lighter port. It handles the rest.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#369

Post by kid64 »

andirk wrote: post #342
janalsncm wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, it seems like car theft is on the rise, yes. And it’s spiking in particular metro areas (Milwaukee, Chicago) more than average, although national trends are also up. https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CCJ%E2%80...

In California, if youre car is stolen and then found, the cops will give you a fat ticket and tow your car and then give you a ticket for it getting towed. Somehow getting the car towed is also a ticket.

Yep. Shameless re-victimization.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#370

Post by K0balt »

sbohacek wrote: post #322
StevenXC wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who's reviewed for NSF before, I'd have expected this grant to also include resources to get the product to market, which I'm assuming you haven't done.

I don't think so. NSF Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) and NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants include getting products to market. But this is a regular research grant from NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC)[1]. The SaTC does have a Transition to Practice (TTP) option. However, this research is CORE (see the text "CORE" in the project title [2]). The objective is to write research…

Holy shit, so 1.2 mil to develop this and write some papers? This is some oceans eleven shit right here lmfao.

That’s amazing!

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