Chemically removing thin plastic cases

I finally got around to soaking, in methylene chloride solvent, both a proximity key-card and a PayPal token that I picked up at Defcon in Vegas this year.

Here's da pics, first up is the PayPal token:


And here is the prox card:


I obtained my methylene chloride at the same place a number of us have taken to buying our acrylic sheets for laser-cutting.

I'd like to try a few more things like this, to see how they pot stuff or put it together - it might be a handy, and certainly smelly trick, to have in one's arsenal. Sure wish I had a fume hood at home.

Another chemical I'd like to try is called N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone and it is used for chemically 'de-lidding' chips. Must be a burly solvent if it can dissolve IC casings!

Identifying Antennas

I've had these pics for a while, might as put them up now.

If anyone knows what frequencies the antennas are and what type of signals/modulation they use, please leave a comment.

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Identifying Fibre

For those not in the know, this is what the fibre in your 'hood looks like:

No Magnetron Death Ray

I waited for the lady of the house to spend some time out the other day.

I cleaned the garage, set up the test medium - thermal fax paper - and fired up the rig. Both with and without the horn on it.

Nothing. Maybe a little warmth.

I know thermal fax paper will detect microwaves, or rather, will turn black when exposed to the ones in my kitchen microwave. But it's just not working with the rig in the garage. And, inexorably, I have arrived at this conclusion: it is not a simple matter to turn a microwave into a 'death ray' or something that will mess things up. Duh.

I'll store the rig away if any other ideas come up in the future, but this idea is flatlined for now. Might be good for causing interference in the ~2.4 GHz area, but that's about it.

Gah

Stupid RSS feeds. Pulled the last post because it sounded too whiny and ranty, but of course, stuff lives forever on the internet. Starting to understand that perhaps, just maybe, writing drafts and leaving them to chill for a day before tweaking and/or publishing might be a good thing.

Prototype anti-taser panel completed

Yay! I sewed up a panel by hand today (miracle of miracles it doesn't look like total shit) for testing, and it seems the basic idea is sound. Using a few sharp pins held by alligator clips, in turn hooked up to a multimeter, I jammed them into it. No matter where I stuck them, I got a good solid connection.

Fairly thin, if you ask me:


I wish I had a convenient way to simulate a taser strike, impact, voltage and all as I believe torture, err, taser devices are illegal for citizens in my region of the world.

UPDATE: My wife saw this, and ran the panel through her sewing machine. She said it took it fine! :)

More anti-taser tech

So, if anyone is curious, this is what appears to be a standard Taser projectile:


Unpleasant looking, eh? Especially with that nice little fishhook barb on the end. Probably the same deal if you get one stuck in you, too: either push it in and then pull it out gingerly, or go to the ER and have them make a small incision with a scalpel to remove it.

But there's a silver lining in this cloud: notice that it's all one piece of metal, top to bottom. It's not insulated such that only the tip is exposed. This means that even if two of the barbs are stuck in your body, a short between the two barbs anywhere on their surface will render the voltage useless. It won't affect you, and you won't feel it. Remember kids: voltage takes the path of least resistance.

Now, if the body of the taser barb WAS insulated, and only the tip was exposed, it'd be a different story. It could pass through a wad of conductive material without shorting, and once it stuck into your meat, if only the tip was conductive then the volts would make it into your body.

So, here's my cheap & easy anti-taser idea: quilted material/clothing made by sandwiching fine steel wool between two layers of material. Ideally the first layer would be something thick and tough, like neoprene or leather. This would force some small stand-off distance between the taser barb and your skin, and hold the barb in place so that it can remain short circuited.

But enough words, a picture is worth a thousand of them:





Now if I could only find a taser and some poor SOB willing to help me test this :) But that presupposes that I've sewed a garment out of this stuff, and I'm quite certain my wife will not let me use her sewing machine to do this. I suck at hand-stitching too, so I think I'll have to look for a cheap, used sewing machine, and perhaps use a leather/suede needle on it for extra toughness.

I had some other ideas that I'll keep looking into as well. Aluminized (sp?) mylar or metallicized plastic foils might work too.

Another was the use of ferrofluid, and soaking clothing in that. However, I don't know how conductive ferrofluid is, but I do know that it is not commonly available, and probably somewhat expensive. It could very well be just as effective, and cheaper, to soak a thick jacket in very salty water.