Theft prevention/recovery aids

[jdogric12]

Prius owner thinking here... could something be created to capture the energy of vibrating guitar or bass strings, and recharge a battery?

[cjj]

Prius owner thinking here... could something be created to capture the energy of vibrating guitar or bass strings, and recharge a battery?

Well, that's basically what the pickups do, convert changes in a magnetic field into an electrical current. But, as we know, without an amplifier, there's not much of a signal there. The actual power generated by a guitar pickup is very small and not enough to do any sort of real work such as charging a battery. Plus, you never get something for nothing. If you were to make some sort of pickup that did generate enough power to be useful, it would have to take that energy from the motion of the strings, which would surely dampen the motion and change the tone, probably making it fairly useless for producing music...

[jdogric12]

Bummers.

[jps]

Prius owner thinking here... could something be created to capture the energy of vibrating guitar or bass strings, and recharge a battery?

KERS

Although, it might work better attached to the average indie-rock musician, especially a drummer.

[Tarrbot]

This was my issue with the APDN solution that Martin did a while back. Not many have a "DNA" reader yet.

While APDN has had some neat and decent announcements, they still need some sort of delivery system/network in place for scanning this.

If they could make a reader that's no larger than a flashlight (and have that reader not be hundreds of $$) then it would eventually start their ball rolling in the right direction. While they have a reader/scanner, I'm not sure it's cheap enough for mass marketing at this point.

Full disclosure: I like the science enough that I bought a few thousand shares of it at one point.

[johnhall]

This system has nothing to do with theft recovery or identification. It is intended primarily to authenticate genuine product, an anti-counterfeiting system. In other words, all Martin guitars will have the same ID.

It's also used to mark items for trackability, except that there's no per item serial number, just a generalized number. A bank might mark their own currency, for example, to prove it was stolen from them after a robbery.

In any case, this company is so secretive that it makes it almost impossible to evaluate their product.

[Ivan3000]

What about a battery that recharges from the input jack being in there?
Or, a tesla coil style: Mini tesla coils in the knobs so that when you turn them, it gives a charge.

[Tarrbot]

This system has nothing to do with theft recovery or identification. It is intended primarily to authenticate genuine product, an anti-counterfeiting system. In other words, all Martin guitars will have the same ID.

It's also used to mark items for trackability, except that there's no per item serial number, just a generalized number. A bank might mark their own currency, for example, to prove it was stolen from them after a robbery.

In any case, this company is so secretive that it makes it almost impossible to evaluate their product.

Thanks Mr. Hall for replying to this.

I wasn't trying to suggest it is an anti-theft device/scheme but rather that it might be interesting if one could take the DNA technology and apply it in a personal use such as marking your own property. A 21st-century Sharpie, if you will...

[johnhall]

If you've touched your guitar, you've already marked it with your DNA! The problem is in the fast and efficient decoding . . .

[cjj]

What about a battery that recharges from the input jack being in there?
Or, a tesla coil style: Mini tesla coils in the knobs so that when you turn them, it gives a charge.

But where does the energy come from?

I suppose you could use a stereo jack/plug and run power on one signal line (or have the guitar signal AC coupled at the guitar and amp with caps and put DC on the signal cable), but this would be really non standard.

As for Tesla coils, what, exactly are you talking about? A Tesla coil is a resonant RF step-up transformer that takes some relatively low voltage (like 10kV) and turns it into several hundred kV (or even million kV) and is great for making huge lightning like sparks. Loads of fun, but not exactly something I'd want in a guitar. Plus, you need a significant source of power there too...

Tesla with one of his coils.

A modern day version:

[jps]

[cjj]

Of course, with a Tesla coil in your guitar, arcing huge bolts several feet in all directions, that just might be an effective theft prevention device...

[rickenbrother]

Of course, with a Tesla coil in your guitar, arcing huge bolts several feet in all directions, that just might be an effective theft prevention device...

...and if you forget about remotely disabling it or the "YOU" recognition system fails, it might also prevent you or a friendly fellow musician from playing it or doing anything else ever again!

[cjj]

Of course, with a Tesla coil in your guitar, arcing huge bolts several feet in all directions, that just might be an effective theft prevention device...

...and if you forget about remotely disabling it or the "YOU" recognition system fails, it might also prevent you or a friendly fellow musician from playing it or doing anything else ever again!

Well, actually, Tesla coils aren't as dangerous as they look. I used to give demonstrations and walk out to mine holding a big nail, letting the arc come over and hit the nail. It looked very impressive and always got big "oohs" and such.

Because it's high frequency, the current travels via "skin effect" and just goes over the surface instead of through you. Plus, it's high voltage, but really low current, and current is what kills you. You can get "RF burns" from where the arc hits you, which is the main reason for using a piece of metal like the nail for the arc point...

[incubus2432]

We deal with some of these theft tracking/GPS systems at work. People get so frustrated with me when I tell them that I can't really get any practical use from it. When something gets stolen I may be presented with some good starting evidence and an eager victim BUT when calling a company that supplies the tech am often told that they can't release tracking info without a warrant.......even with the owner's/victim's consent. The ability for me, as a lowly patrolman, to get a warrant in a timely fashion is practically nonexistent. By the time a detective gets assigned the case, and quite frankly assuming they are not a complete boob, the trail is cold and, with luck, an unsatisfying RSP (receiving stolen property) charge is all that will stick. It's pathetic and a far cry from how things should be or are depicted on TV.

On-Star is a great system and the company will give us up to the minute location info with no hassle. The hassle, believe it or not, is that our call taking dispatchers often hang up on the On-Star rep after receiving an initial location. So by the time the call filters through the system and gets to us there is a delay of several minutes plus how long it takes for us to get to the location....car is long gone. We, fortunately, have some great dispatchers that run our channels that call On-Star directly and give us real time locations. Good times I say! Lo-Jack is an OK system as well but the receivers we have in select police cars amount to nothing more than a beeper with a directional arrow and a code we give to the dispatcher that they can run to get us a plate and vehicle description.

We have had people get robbed/shot/stabbed and the "perp" (I love using cheesy police terminology) flees with the victim's cell phone. Most modern cellphones are gps trackable by the carrier......but, again, the carriers will not give us the info in a timely fashion. It's not like they can't verify that we are legitimate police quickly but it doesn't matter. Some of us have a "connection" in our Intelligence Unit that has connections somewhere that can get us cooperation pretty quick but that is assuming everyone in the chain is working and available. With a robbery situation you are possibly losing a good chance to catch a "fresh" suspect.......imagine the frustration when dealing with trying to locate a kidnap victim. Simply ponderous. The modern smartphone tracking available to the owner directly is very cool and it has made for a few unpleasantly surprised suspects/arrestees.

Anyway, not trying to sidetrack things too much but just highlighting what JH has stated from my perspective. If we don't have direct access to the technology to track these type of devices odds are you won't get the results that you expect/deserve. CSI has completely misrepresented what is available to the average police department (I'd rank mine a touch below average actually). We often don't even take surveillance footage copies available from victim establishments since there are so many proprietary codecs that we simply don't have the ability to view them. All of this technology is great in theory but useless if we can't access it in a timely fashion.