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Comment on UK police could get Ghostbusters-style backpack devices to halt ebike getaways

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I don’t believe that at all. It’s gotta be just a directional microwave gun. It’s gonna fry the semiconductors to shut it off, but it will any nearby electronics as well. That includes medical devices. You can find people on YouTube making these things for fun.

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Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It doesn’t sound like an EMP device - it needs line-of-sight and “works by tricking the engine into thinking it is overheating”.

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- Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah and I don’t believe the ad read. Either it’s actively hacking the device or it’s just a directional emp(or it’s just junk). The fact that it’s calling an electric motor an “engine” is a clue that the people writing the press release don’t know how any of this works. At best, this is what they’re really selling.
  
  If it wants to trick the motor controller into reading the motor as overheating, it would need to know the communication protocol of every escooter and be able to overwhelm the communication between the motor and motor controller with it’s own signal. That’s assuming it’s wireless and why would it be wireless? Also, these things can go up in smoke on their own. I doubt as many of them as we’d like actually have overheat protections.
  
  If the escooters had lowjack software on them and knew to shutoff remotely, you wouldn’t need a backpack’s worth of tech and it would be easy to bypass by cutting the antenna.
  
  Also,
  
  electromagnetic rays This doesn’t mean anything. Could be a ham radio, could be an rc car controller, could be a flash light, but it sounds like a microwave gun if you need a backpack to power it and the escooter isn’t going to be recoverable. Neither will any cell phone, car, laptop or any other consumer electronic or medical device near the target.
  
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  - HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Or given the lack of knowledge of the writer.
    
    There are only a few different temp sensors used in the bms systems on all lithium battery management systems.
    
    Developing a frequency that interferes with the signal from the sensor to the bms. Would be a viable way of shutting the bms. So the engine down.
    
    But just a guess.
    
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