Stopping Cars With Microwave Radiation 522
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers have created an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop by sending out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. A 200-pound unit attached to the roof of a police car can be used to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles. The average power emitted in a single shot is about 10 kilowatts at 100 hertz and since each radiated pulse lasts about 50 nanoseconds, the total energy output is 100 joules at a distance of 15 meters. One concern with the device is that it could cause an accident if a car is disabled and a driver loses steering control. The device could also disable other vehicles in the area so the most practical application may be for perimeter protection at remote areas. Criminals have a work-around too. Since electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, the system will not work on automobiles made before that year."
What happens when... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What happens when... (Score:4, Informative)
What's to stop it from killing the engine to the police car?
Directional antennas [wikipedia.org] are not exactly new technology. They work just fine for high-power microwave transmitters.
when strawmen attack (Score:3, Interesting)
What's to stop it from killing the engine to the police car?
What's to stop me from changing your quote to make it easy to counter?
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On the other hand : "But the Eureka Aerospace system is only six to eight feet long (antennae included) and not quite three feet wide." That thing is kind huge...
Might stop people using their cell phones while driving though.
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Military spec is even more extreme.
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But I think this technology will become almost common military weaponry in the future, especially as so much military hardware is going remote or fully autonomous.
That said there are ways to screen out some RF. For example
http://www.techtickerblog.com/2006/04/14/pa [techtickerblog.com]
Looking for really, really ignorant investors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fraud Alert. Fraud Alert. Fraud Alert.
Read the first comment to the article: "What happens to the pacemaker in the guy driving? Does speeding become a death sentence?"
Another comment: "If there are innocent victims in such incidents - such as hostages - how are you going to microwave the car without hurting the people?"
What about reflections? Fried police car, anyone? "I just looove the smell of burning plastic in the morning"?
I think November 13 is a little early for April Fool's day.
Quote: "These pulses are amplified to 640 kilovolts..."
Did you see the red whiskery antennas that extend in front of the car? Criminal: "There's that dorky police car again. Turn right. Microwaves only go straight." Or, are those not antennas, but an artist's rendering of microwave flames shooting from the top of the police car?
From the article: "The system has been tested on a variety of stationary vehicles and could be ready for deployment in automobiles within 18 months..."
Translations: 1) It hasn't been tested in heavy traffic. 2) As soon as we find some really, really, really dumb people with money to invest, something could happen.
Moral of the story: There is no time to play video games. You need all your time to learn about the world around you, not about fantasies. If you spend all your time with fantasies, anyone can tell you anything, and you won't be able to evaluate if it is the truth.
Quote from the story: "Finally, a specially designed antenna beams the microwave energy toward an opposing vehicle through a part of the car, such as the windshield, window, grill, or spacing between the hood and main body, that is not made of metal. (Metal acts as a shield against microwave energy.)"
Ohhhhh. It must be an opposing car, not one going in the same direction. The car must have no mirror-like surfaces. There must be holes. It can't be a camper going in the same direction.
Has no one who already commented on this story heard of firewalls, the kind in cars? Has anyone heard about tight-fitting hoods? Does the invention work only with hoopties [urbandictionary.com]?
Is it really true that no one who reads Slashdot has looked at the insides of a car? Does this "invention" work only with cars that don't have electronics shielded with a metal covering?
Those dumb car makers never heard of electromagnetic noise? Even though spark plug wires have 40,000 volts? Car computers have no shielding?
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e) must open door at drive-threws as windows don't roll down
Is a "drive-threw" where they throw your food at you? Now there's a unique concept: a dictionary that doesn't know how to spell! What will these younguns come up with next, ray guns to kill cars with?
Oh, and from the definition (which I'm afraid I can't trust too much as it is from a dictionary with spelling errors), this car-killing ray gun wouldn't work on a hooptie; old junkers don't have microproces
Better Idea - Car Taser or CARPOON (Score:3, Funny)
Or even better yet - a CARPOON! Fire a barbed tipped harpoon at the car, and just hit the brakes. It would make for much better TV watching. Spearing the fugitive driver in the head (oops- darn) from an errant shot would be a minor detail that would need to be worked out.
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Somebody get this man some VC funding, STAT! Tell me you wouldn't want to see this on an episode of COPS.
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Won't stop my 1980s car (Score:2)
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Sure you can kill the clock if you want, that won't stop me!
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Re:Won't stop my 1980s car (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Won't stop my 1980s car (Score:5, Funny)
That's why this microwave transmitter has a dial with the following settings:
Microprocessor Disruption (default)
Sparky Metal
Mortal Kombat Raiden
That last setting is the most noticeable. I preferred the old microwave emitter, which referred specifically to your driver:
Light
Medium
Dark
Solomon
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Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they liable for other cars? (Score:5, Interesting)
It would not be long after entering service before they hit the wrong car and the question becomes, how will the courts treat that?
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I'm pretty sure the technology has been available to crafty criminals for some time now. This is an old story, as I remember reading about a homebrew project HERF gun, complete with a video of the guy stopping a car in its tracks, right here on Slashdot eight years ago [slashdot.org]. Although, the car-stopping video could be a misplaced memory that actually goes with this later story [slashdot.org]. This is the commercialization of that tech, but (and my memory may be fuzzy here) the one I remember was built with a bank of capacitor
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It turns into an old fashioned foot race when the '67 Camaro they're driving as a workaround runs out of gas 30 seconds later.
Disabling Police Cars? (Score:2)
Forget "criminals" (Score:5, Funny)
Cop: "HAHA I'M ON UR HIGHWAYZ CLOCKIN UR CARZ!!1 OMG FIVE MILES OVAR!!!"
Me: "lol noob" *MICROWAVE-PWN*
Cop: D: WTF WALLHAX
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Go back to carburetors and distributors, I guess. Modern cars are nice, but I miss being able to do my own auto tune-ups.
Actually this theme reminds me of the old Gordon Dickson "Dorsai" novels, where countermeasures were so sophisticated that people went to "spring rifles" because they were hard to jam. I remember thinking that was a great convergence of complexity and simplicity. And I remember my father t
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screw that! A gun that disables microprocessors?! I'm worried about more than stupid cop cars. In midflight, there goes planes, spaceships, satellites, and missiles...I'm too lazy to think of any more but how many guidance and propulsion technologies in transportation devices use microprocessors? A LOT!
As the distance to the microprocessor increases the power needed increases as the square of the distance. You can reduce that requirement a bit by focusing the beam but given the 100J requirement at 15 feet, trying to disable a plane 20,000 feet above you is going to need a lot of power. Disabling satellites is going to require enough power that you essentially need a dedicate power station.
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Its not "ignorant", and its not "misuse".
The transitive form "Begs the question foo" is distinct from the intransitive form "Begs the question" (the latter with no object). The latter only makes sense when referring to the petitio principi fallacy, the former is equivalent to "raises the question". The are different in form, and therefore unambiguous, they are both in long use, and it is purely misguided and ignorant to claim
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which also makes me wonder why, if someone were intent on illegality, they couldn't put their own little faraday cage around the car's ECU. A little box made of copper with a drain wire to the car frame too hard to implement?
Faraday Cages (Score:5, Funny)
Faraday Cage: Your CPU's tinfoil hat. Never leave home without it!
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, MOST of the car chases you see on TV are:
1) Drunks or druggies, not in their right minds
2) Car thieves (not riding their own wheels anyway)
3) Suicide-by-cop idiots, who WANT to be killed, not stopped safely
Okay, fine, the really intelligent criminals might be able to prevent themselves from being stopped this way. Granted. But the really intelligent criminal is NOT going to find himself involved in a car chase anyway, because he's too smart to let that happen.
Frankly, I've wondered for years why they didn't do something like this. Or mount a piton system in the front of your average police cruiser, that could pneumatically or explosively shoot out a grappling hook that stabbed thru the trunk of the fleeing vehicle and drag it to a stop. Most police chases involve very close pursuit at reasonably slow speeds - so why not nail the guy's trunk and drag him to a halt, instead of trying to PITT him and risking all kinds of damage to both vehicles?
So I'm happy to finally see this kind of technology under real development.
And for those of you who are worried about innocent bystanders, remember that EMF falls off as the square of distance. Whatever power kills a car 45 feet away (100 joules) probably won't even blip an engine 450 feet away (1 joule). There will be plenty of chances in most car chases to SAFELY utilize these things.
https://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=409268 [google.com]
Crazy math (Score:3, Informative)
With that in mind it would not be difficult to imagine the beam missing or passing through. Think of how nasty it would be if you lock up cars in front o
Grandma was found dead at the scene (Score:5, Funny)
Coming home from our house Christmas eve.
Cops say microwaves can be used safely,
But as for me and Grandpa, we disbelieve.
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Perhaps not funny.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Killing the CPU that controls the brakes, or randomly firing an airbag/ gearbox system, might not be clever either.
As reported in The Register, this is all likely to be shit of the bull and more useful for military use than police use.
Curses (Score:2)
Tinfoil (Score:5, Funny)
Can't stop a Diesel (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can't stop a Diesel (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an old diesel powered mid-1970s backhoe. Like any diesel engine, it does not have a distributor or spark plugs. Diesel engines use compression ignition instead of spark plugs. It has a purely mechanical type fuel injection system. When I turn the key off, the engine just keeps on running while the electrical system has been turned off. To actually turn the engine off, I need to hold down a small lever, which is hooked to the fuel injection system, for several seconds. I am not sure if the newer diesel vehicles have any microprocessors or electronics in their fuel injection systems or not. The old ones at least were purely mechanical.
The article said that the microwave radiation system would not affect cars manufactured before 1972. Apparently, the old points and condenser type ignition systems used in gasoline engines built before 1972 are not affected.
When flying in a small airplane back in the early 1980s, I was surprised to learn that it's engine used dual-magnetos. Magnetos had also been widely used in old antique cars, back before being replaced by distributors with points and condenser. Magnetos spun a magnet inside a coil to generated their own electricity and used a contact breaker and had ignition wires going directly to the spark plugs. I doubt that engines with magnetos could be stopped by microwave radiation pulses. Do newer airplanes still use magnetos? Do they now use microprocessors or fancy electronics somewhere in either the fuel system or ignition system? In the airplane, the key could be turned to different positions to choose to use either magneto or both magnetos at once. If the rest of the electrical system failed, the magnetos could generate their own power and keep on working.
When I was teenager, I remember my uncle showing me an old magneto which had come from an old car. He said "hold these two wires for a moment. Don't worry its not hooked to a battery, I just want you to hold them while I spin the shaft slightly." Of course, a magneto doesn't need to be hooked to a battery, or anything else, to produce high voltage ignition pulses.
Faraday cage (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, are these rays energetic enough for, say, crowd control? And what if the cops are chasing someone with a pacemaker?
Re:Faraday cage (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the cops involved are suspended with pay during the official investigation, which will find that the cops could not be reasonably expected to have known that the person had a pacemaker, so they will be off the hook, AS USUAL.
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And people will agree with that outcome since the person who died was "disobeying a police office", a crime so serious it certainly deserves summary execution without trial.
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And no, not enough power for crowd control, but I think it would stand a good chance of messing with a pacemaker.
Carjackers? (Score:2)
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and the pacemaker is going to keep you alive through the stress of a high speed chase?
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I get the feeling people with pace makers generally try to avoid getting involved in highspeed chases.
Re:Faraday cage (Score:5, Informative)
Coaxial feed thru capacitors through a RF gasketed cover followed by a small RF choke and ferrite bead should do the trick.
Re:The real scoop on RFI suppression (Score:5, Informative)
RF on a wire can be shorted directly to the case with no way past due to lead inductance when coaxial feed through capacitors are used. They work well and are used on every microwave oven made. They are on the bottom of the magnitron. The fillimant leads come from the bottom inside a box. They then go through feed through capacitors to keep microwave energy from radiating out the wire.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7184256.html [freepatentsonline.com]
photos here at the bottom of the page..
http://www.samwha.co.th/capacitor.htm [samwha.co.th]
RFI suppression on motors..
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6307344.html [freepatentsonline.com]
RFI protection for pacemakers.. PDF alert..
http://www.interferencetechnology.com/ArchivedArticles/medical/Article08web.pdf?regid= [interferen...nology.com]
A full filter often includes an inductor. Here is an example. PDF alert..
http://www.dearbornelectronics.com/pdf/EMIFilters.pdf [dearbornelectronics.com]
This shows performance curves of various filters. A 3 DB change is the half power point. To have the same effect on a device 3 DB less sensitive would require double the power. Many of these devices have more than 80 DB attenuation at 10 MHZ and above. This would provide a high degree of immunity as the RFI source would need to be very close and very powerful to overcome the attenuation compared to an unprotected device.
Info on ferrite beads is here...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ferrite+bead+RFI [google.com]
Unlike a capacitor or inductor, a ferrite bead doesn't re-direct the RF current. It converts it to heat, and in the process, attenuates it. A capacitor on a wire, may make a tuned antenna at some frequencies. The ferrite bead is to prevent these tuned peaks by eating the power. Used in combination with a feed-through will prevent a tuned standing wave building on the wire.
A capacitor and inductor simply make a tuned circuit with a venurable frequency. Diodes, discharge tubes, resistors, and ferrite beads prevent a high Q tuned circuit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor [wikipedia.org]
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War Zone (Score:5, Interesting)
It could even be set up on a speed trap so that if you enter a road block at a certain speed it would shut off the car automatically.
I guess once again the problem may lie in the fact that most cars in Iraq and other hot spots may not have the Electronic components needed for this. But hey if it stops something like http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4323209.stm [bbc.co.uk] then i think its worth it?
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No offense dude, but please read the posts before you respond to them, especially when they're just 3 or 4 sentences.
Organic shield (Score:5, Funny)
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This really seems like a bad idea. If the pain is anything like the
Collateral Damage? (Score:5, Insightful)
So when there is a chase in a populated area, the cops will leave a wake of disabled cars? That will be fun to clean up later...
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Even more amusing, it sounds like this sort of device is *meant* to be used in heavily populated areas. In rural areas, there will be few roads, and ample time to set up a road block/run a tire slasher across the road, and little risk of injury to bystanders using either method. So really this little EMP gun is lose-lose: either it will be used in heavily populated areas and you'
Big deal...was done in the 80's (Score:5, Funny)
Steering? (Score:4, Informative)
With that said, if the steering somehow could not be controlled with the PCM disabled, I smell lawsuit. This computer killer thing would also disable any other computerized device... like airbags.
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That'd be pretty exciting.
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I'm pretty sure that cars exist/are planned that use "drive by wire"; that is, there are no physical connections between the driver's controls and the throttle, brakes, and steering, it's all handled by the computer.
"Pretty sure", eh? I bet you can't name even one. Throttle, yes. Brakes and steering, absolutely not. No engineer in his right mind would design an automobile braking system that didn't revert to pure hydraulic "foot pressure in=braking pressure out" upon loss of power. Neither would NHTSA permit such a car to be sold. Same thing with the steering.
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My car:
PCM dies - get a new one
ABS Computer dies - Get a new one
Airbag controller dies - Get a new one
Other car:
PCM dies - get a new one
ABS Computer dies - Get a new one
Airbag controller dies - Get a new one
Brake pedal dies - YOU DIE!
Re:Steering? (Score:5, Informative)
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Humvees (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice Gadget, but What I really want (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nice Gadget, but What I really want (Score:4, Funny)
"All Your Bass Are Belong to Us"
Simple circuits defeat this (Score:4, Insightful)
In all: bad idea. Instead, put unique RFIDs in cars, and simply logon and turn them off. Cleaner.
200 pounds (Score:2, Insightful)
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200 lbs is not exactly efficient, unless it's got one hell of a range.
I guess since it's research, it can't be slated as ready for use, but even with miniaturization, this is far-off.
Uh huh... (Score:2)
And then there's the guy that shapes the body of his car into a reflector - that focuses the energy into a nice tight beam right back at the head of the chump driving the pursuit vehicle. fvfvfvqkwazzappppp.... POP!
Diesels (Score:4, Informative)
I've run diesel engines with NO electric power (dead/frozen battery, broken alternator belt). As long as the fuel is gravity-fed, it'll run.
Fat chance stopping someone who decided to take a front-end loader to make an "ATM withdrawal".
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Modern cars simply *will not* run without the "brain box", not to mention all the other little microprocessors.
My '84 Volvo will not run without its "brain box". At all.
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You don't need a terribly messy brain to run a mechanically injected diesel engine.
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really? (Score:2, Informative)
Concerns are quite valid (Score:4, Informative)
However, steer-by-wire systems are quickly coming into play in America, especially on some of the lower-end GM products. Now I'm no GM engineer yet, but from what I gather the steering system is either on the GMLAN high speed bus or it has its own bus but still gets data off GMLAN.
Now suppose the ECM stops giving out speed information on the GMLAN bus. Hopefully there is a contingency plan in the steering logic so that you can still have some steering I/O even without the vehicle speed information, but if the output isnt on its own bus, I cant say I'd want to be in that car.
Window Tint (Score:2)
Finally, a specially designed antenna beams the microwave energy toward an opposing vehicle through a part of the car, such as the windshield, window, grill, or spacing between the hood and main body, that is not made of metal. (Metal acts as a shield against microwave energy.)
Guess I will have to go ahead and replace that window tint, and make sure its the metallic type.
What would make a good reflector? Preferably parabolic.
Faraday Cage won't necessarily stop this! (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of old school communications protocols are based on single-ended signaling, where one voltage represents a 0 or 1. This includes RS232, Parallel, and even ISA and PCI slots on your motherboard. However, almost everything new that's outside the computer is based on differential signaling -- reading the differential voltage between two wires. This includes 10/100/1000BaseT ethernet over twisted pair, USB, Firewire, etc.
Here's the key difference: when you get noise coupling onto your signal, whether it's a pulse from the engine ignition coil firing or from this car-stopping microwave device, it tends to be the case that the voltage of *both* of the differential wires is increased by the same amount -- so that when the voltages are subtracted, the effect of the noise cancels out.
However, this exploits the fact that no devices have an infinitely large common-mode range. That is, the average voltage of the differential pair must be within some predefined limit, or your circuit won't work. By putting in a big enough pulse, this microwave device might be able to move charges around on the outside of the car body (which happens to be the ground that most devices hook to) enough to move the voltages significantly. This would cause any devices (think an oxygen sensor or a tachometer) to act as though they were momentarily dead.
Thus, even with differential signaling (which cars already use), it's possible to break things by putting too much common-mode noise on top. See Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
--
Can you code? Want to become a hardware hacker? Educational microcontroller kits for a digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Not USB (Score:3, Informative)
USB doesn't use differential pairs. There are 4 lines - power, ground, transmit, receive. It was designed to replace RS232 and parallel ports - they weren't going for great speeds. I'm actually quite impressed that USB 2.0 works as well as it does as it is a bad design.
But 1394 does use differential pairs. There are either 4 or (more commonly) 6 lines. Power, ground, transmit+, transmit-, receive+, receive-. It is poss
Re:Faraday Cage won't necessarily stop this! (Score:4, Informative)
A Faraday cage is only protective for wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation which are larger than the size of the gaps in the Faraday cage. The car's metal exterior has some pretty big gaps... and beyond that, the panels aren't even connected well to each other electrically. (RF people will put copper mesh down along all the edges of their devices to get everything.) For the microwave wavelengths, they'll come right in and induce all kinds of voltages on your car body.
Still, it's possible to defend against this kind of thing. I just think that the practical defense has more to do with optical isolation and circuit design rather than a Faraday cage shielding.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
microwaves are a Hazzard (Score:5, Funny)
At least the Duke boys will be safe in that '69 Charger...
Yeah, well... (Score:4, Funny)
people are useing something like this on slots.... (Score:4, Interesting)
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine [wikipedia.org]
Modern slot machines are controlled by EPROM computer chips and, in large casinos, coin acceptors have become obsolete in favor of bill acceptors. These machines and their bill acceptors are designed with advanced anti-cheating and anti-counterfeiting measures and are difficult to defraud. Early computerized slot machines were sometimes defrauded through the use of cheating devices, such as the "slider" or "monkey paw" used by notorious slot cheat Tommy Glenn Carmichael. However, more recent attempts at defrauding slot machines involve manipulating the EPROM, such as by directing microwaves toward it to disrupt its proper functioning.[6] Casino insiders such as Ronald Dale Harris have also been discovered manipulating the software in slot machines in order to defraud casino operators.
REMOTE MICROWAVE JAMMER DEVICE
http://arcadenemy.freewebsitehosting.com/microwave.html [freewebsitehosting.com]
yotube video of it working on a us game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMdEZezkrZ8 [youtube.com]
Can't wait (Score:2)
Similar things (Score:2)
A friend of mine had a transmitter that operated on the same frequency as police radar. It wasn't a real radar, so it was a lot smaller and easier to conceal. When driving down the road (and I went with him a couple times), he would turn the transmitter on. It was funny to see somewhere between half and two-thirds of the vehicles ahead of us hit the breaks, as seen by all the break lights suddenly coming on.
I found that a transmitter on a certain frequency would shut off cruise control systems from many
100 Hz? (Score:3, Informative)
Slightly different application of the technology (Score:2)
It seems that the 200-lb weight of the unit, the problems inherent in trying to beam a microwave signal several yards to the engine compartment from behind the vehicle, and the dangers of collateral damage, could all be eliminated in one fell swoop, by redesigning the technology, not to work from a police car rooftop, but from a "stop stick" type device, similar to the spike strips police already use to disable vehicles by taking out their tires.
Instead of a spikes, the strip could contain the necessary app
'67 AMC Rebel (Score:5, Funny)
Also, because the average car thief wouldn't even be able to *start* my car, much less actually drive away in it. It's hard to evade cops when the slightest mistake while sitting at a red light or going through a toll booth causes the engine to die.
Oh, and did I mention that to restart the car while moving, you have to put the transmission halfway in between Reverse and Neutral, turn the key, then quickly shift back over into Drive in case the magical transmission gnome decides that you were closer to Reverse than Neutral?
Re:'67 AMC Rebel (Score:5, Informative)
My '81 (Score:5, Informative)
What about all other electronics? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no idea what offence would justify the use of this gadget. Going 1 mph over the limit?
It's the fuel injection and electronic throttle (Score:2)
The two big things I can think of are fuel injection and electronic throttle control. If you have a carburator and a mechanical throttle, then I'd think you'd be good to go. A lot of the early electronics were more to do with emissions controls. Like there were O2 sensors or something like that, but many gen-x'ers remember ripping all