Ingenious Low-Cost Tilt Detection System (2018)
imgur.com
imgur.com
Another one is the Tip’n’tell system, which uses fine coloured sand and clear tape to detect tipping in one direction. I once saw one of these affixed to the side of a large autoclave which had been shipped to our university. There’s a whole series of these shipping indicators, for detecting acceleration (shock), temperature (too hot/too cold), and pressure.
IF you are shipping something that really needs to be rejected if tipped, cover the stickers with a panel, shipping manifest, etc. Make sure the receiver knows to remove the covering and check before signing for the package.
Those Tip'n'tells double as great makeshift earthquake sensors. https://i.imgur.com/v83aNzV.jpg
But if the shippers are serious, and use to moving 6-7 figure equipment around, they'll expect it.
Great, now they elevated a simple case of negligence (at best) to fraud.
I imagine you'd have to ship these really carefully. :P
(Yeah I know you'd probably add the sand after attaching it to the package. :P )
This isn't a low-fi analog sensor used for taking novel measurements of things. It's meant to be affixed to packages to determine if they were mishandled during shipment. If a package was dropped or overturned, the ball bearings will fall out of place and (presumably) be almost impossible to return to their original positions.
Pretty cool.
You'd want the widget to have a tracking number on it though, because otherwise they could just rip the whole widget off and slap on a fresh one.
I'm hoping that's what the purpose of the number along the right edge is.
Unless they have fixed them, the bearings are metallic and can be reset with a magnet. (I had to do this a few times when I bumped the thing putting it on)
(Though if the ball is metallic, you can use a magnet. This kind of tampering can be detected by putting one on the inside of your package.)
This is only because the sort of person who would rough up a package and only then figure out how to 'fix' it, becomes a computer programmer instead.
npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! errno 66
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in ...
npm ERR! ... eh, who are we kidding. Don't quit your day job.
"These are a ripoff. I ordered an entire case of these and every single one of them was already used when they arrived in the mail."
I think that comment was intend to be funny, but it does point out a serious problem: how do you ship these things to the end-user without triggering them?
Found it: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/25/13048668/vanmoof-shipping...
That speaks volumes.
At first I thought they were meant to insert the ball, but the holes look too small.
Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuLClpWRmQ8
You can see that each hole has a red colored pin in it, and you can see the pins come away with the backing (at about 0:21 in the video).
...which is presumably why these have unique serial numbers! They really did think of everything. (You have to make sure the shipper communicates the serial number to the recipient for that part to function, though.)
See the C097412 in the bottom-right corner? Your replacement will be C097413 or something, and won't match.
I suppose you could stick one on the inside and one on the outside, as paxys suggested. Then you'd have both deterrent and tamper-resistance.
As an extra bonus, if some schmuck tilts and replaces it, the deterrent will still be in force for the next guy down the line.
You put sticker #C097412 on the crate yourself, record the number, and the shipper takes it away. If things arrive damaged--and these are usually used on very expensive shipments--you can check the tilt indicator AND its number. I would bet it's much worse if indicator #D108523 arrives instead.
As an added impediment, they're often on the surface of the item but buried beneath a bunch of plastic wrap/padding/etc.
You'll often also put a variety of them inside.
It's not just rough handling, but temperature and humidity too. You can audit this sort of thing by sending occasional fake packages with precise recording instruments in them, but for usual shipments just use a variety of indicators.
You have #C097412. You remove it, and put on #D108523. You then replace the barcode and serial number underneath with #D108523.
Assuming the warehouse worker can afford all that, someone offering anti-tamper-bypass-as-a-service is going to run headfirst into the FBI, SCA, and other well-resourced government organizations with which a sane individual would never consider fucking. That does not lead to rising property values in Tokyo.
Tilting packages doesn’t seem particularly fun or lucrative. It’s not even a particularly effective form of sabotage: maybe you’ll increase the damaged-in-shipment claims by a bit, but maybe not.
If you’re already forging and breaking into wear houses, surely you could find something more enjoyable, profitable, or vicious to do than provide post-hoc cover to a rough shipper.
You are a delivery worker. You will get fired if you aren't fast enough. You will also be fired if you trigger a tilt indicator.
You're on your final warning, and replacement tilt stickers cost $3 on ebay.
A delivery worker won't be hacking e-mails - but if they know hardly anyone checks the tilt sensor serial numbers anyway...
I have no idea how much such a service would cost (perhaps your life is much more exciting than mine), but I'd imagine skilled forgers don't come cheap, as they could easily find something more profitable to do than faking tilt indicators.
At some point in transit, the package tips over (oops). You sneak in and swap the indicator for #D108523 while it’s awaiting a connection.
When it arrives, the recipient checks the crate against the invoice. She notices that the indicator numbers don’t match: the email says C097412, but the crate has D108532 on it. She won’t sign for it. She calls the vendor and says “There may be a problem with the very fragile, VERY EXPENSIVE microscope I ordered from you. Send me another one that’s demonstrably intact or get a service team out here NOW to check this one over. Legal says you’re not getting paid otherwise.”
Several other people are about to have bad days. The vendor checks their own logs and finds that the crate did indeed go out with C097412 on it. They proceed to ream out the shipping company. A lot of things might happen next, but after most of them, you get fired.
You might have gotten away with it if you could change that email, but how would you at the shipping company, have access to either parties’ email or records? And if you did have such access—-and wanted to use it for evil—-surely you could think of something more lucrative than fractionally increasing the number of possibly-damaged items received?
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey%27s_Resort_Hotel_bombin...
In practice they aren't hard for a motivated person to reset, but they do result in handlers along the way being a bit more careful with your stuff.
While replacing a sticker is legal, doing so to trick someone into paying you is usually criminal fraud.
Criminal liability is a _far_ bigger leap than normal deceptive business practices.
On the other hand trying to build such an thing is good source of interesting stories, like sales reps of three different semiconductor manufacturers calling you at 4AM and wanting to know what the hell you are designing and whether it in fact is not missile guidance system or some other ITAR covered thing...
Of course part of the value in the posted indicator is the resulting better (less rough) handling of a shipper that sees the monitoring device.
A good example of this phenomenon is the article posted on HN a few months back about bicycle companies shipping their bikes in TV boxes resulting in significantly less damage.
And no, we didn't use just one... of anything.
This is better because with the tilt detection system you will not measure large vertical accelerations, which I suppose in most cases will also spoil the shipped product.
To prevent this attack you could use two labels on two vertical orthogonal faces.
Low cost, simple, and effective low tech way to monitor a shipment.
Acoustic tweezers are usually meant to move much smaller particles (e.g., a cell), rather than big macroscopic things, though I think someone had a system that moved 1mm+ bits of foam.
tl;dr: it sticks to a package and has a tamper proof mechanisim to detect if it was inclined.