All this talk about 555 timers is causing projects to pop out of the woodwork like this one that reverse engineers a shopping cart security mechanism. The wheel seen above listens for a particular magnetic signal and when encountered it locks down the yellow cowl, preventing the wheel from touching the ground and making the cart very hard to move.
[Nolan Blender] acquired one of these wheels for testing purposes and he’s posted some details about the hardware inside. But the first thing he did was to put together some test equipment to help find out details about the signal that trips the mechanism. He connected a coil to an audio amplifier and walked around the market looking for strong signals. Once he found a few strong bursts with that equipment he grabbed an oscilloscope, hooked it to the coil, and made some measurements. He found an 8 kHz signal at a 50% duty cycle at 30 ms intervals (it would be hard to make a better case for why you need an oscilloscope).
With the specs in hand, [Nolan] grabbed two 555 timers, an audio amplifier, and a 200 turn antenna around a ferrite core to build his own locking mechanism. If you’re ever stopped short in the middle of the market, just look for the hacker at the end of the aisle holding the homemade electronics.
[Thanks Colin]
