Scientologists Ask Federal Government to Restrict Right to Repair | Hacker News Reader

Scientologists Ask Federal Government to Restrict Right to Repair

404media.co

48 pointsdetaro9 comments

The petition doesn’t name any specific device. But the Church of Scientology uses a “religious artifact” it calls an “electropsychometer” or “E-Meter” to “measure the spiritual state or change of state of a person”

Is it possible that this is just some odd variation of an ohm or microvolt meter? Has anyone here taken one apart?

Yep, it's a narrow-range (~2 ohms) precision ohm meter, specifically a Wheatstone bridge[0]. Newer models have a microcontroller. There is a teardown video[1] of a newer model found on eBay. Scientologists spared no expense (e.g. $20 potentiometers, custom injection molded case)!

There's also an older teardown and a huge amount of info from Dave Touretzky on these things [3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatstone_bridge

[1] https://hackaday.com/2018/07/19/whats-inside-a-scientology-e...

[3] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/

Ever wonder how much it costs them to build one? Who manufactures them? Does the Church have a manufacturing arm?

BOM cost is probably pretty high, but certainly not the $5k they charge.

The parts are all standard, but high-end. Considering the copious amounts of hot glue, through-hole components, and the look of those copper tubes, I'm guessing they order boards from the usual suppliers then do final manufacturing in-house.

The boards look wave-soldered with some hand work, the pots are definitely hand soldered, there is heat shrink tubing on a bunch of connectors (but all the pieces are cut to slightly different lengths obviously by hand) on a bunch of connectors...

It looks to be on par with decent boutique analog audio gear from the 80s/90s, or careful hobbyist work. They really should be using Silastic instead of hot glue, though.

$5k doesn’t sound too crazy for a custom device like this. If it were Mil-spec it would cost $20k each at least.

That third article on cmu is the one I found most interesting. Their devotion to this is wild. Training classes... and the microprocessor is to have a master auditor. It's like some kind of really devoted live action role play.

http://web.archive.org/web/20230831164847/https://www.404med...

Sounds like Scientology doesn't want people opening up their so called "E-meters" so they can protect their manufactured illusion they actually do something.

paywalled

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