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Comment by schiffern | Hacker News Reader

  >useful as a tamper detector

If anyone's actually looking for this, check out tilt and shock indicators made for fragile packages.

https://www.uline.com/Cls_10/Damage-Indicators

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hHHt-S9kY

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If it's about intrusion detection of packaged goods lentils, beans or rice are very useful [0]. Cheap but great tamper detection.

[0]: https://dys2p.com/en/2021-12-tamper-evident-protection.html

These shock watches and tilt watchers are quite expensive. I wonder how much must be the package worth to be feasible to use this kind of protection

It may not just be monetary value. Shipping something that could be ruined by being thrown around (e.g. IIRC there were issues with covid-19 vaccine suspensions and sudden shocks ruining it) that just won't work may need this indicator even if the actual monetary value is otherwise low.

Did you notice the column indicating number of items per box/carton?

Shockwatch is $170 for 50 items, for example, and the label $75 for 200.

Not dirt cheap, but I guess that’s because of the size of the market.

you're right, I missed it. 3.5usd does not seem so bad

Fun fact: MythBusters used shock watches extensively when testing anything involving impact, because they were massively more reliable than any of their digital instrument.

Problem is when transporting tilt watchers, you can’t tilt the package either.

These are pretty normal when shipping scientific equipment.

Link wasn't a storefront or brand recommendation, just a handy overview for people unfamiliar with the category.

The SpotSee/ShockWatch brand does seem to be more expensive (almost $4 per device), but they have interesting variants like shock-triggered RFIDs.[0] Otherwise you can find competitor products at roughly half the price.[1]

[0] https://shop.spotsee.io/impact_indicators

[1] https://impactograph.com/product/shock-indicator-labels/

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