Rental electronics device

All of the above :-)

Why not an RTC? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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                   Spice is like a sports car... 
     Performance only as good as the person behind the wheel.

That certainly seems to be a lot more reliable than waiting for a battery to fail. One RTC, one fresh battery before the thing ships, some method of coding the setup so that only authorized personnel (or the usual determined hacker) can turn it on (so no one can just unplug & replug the battery, for instance).

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Not necessarily, AS LONG AS this is made clear to the user beforehand.

Too inaccurate.

John

(...)

I agree.

Set at the factory and invisible to the end user?

I assume you don't mean the Olympus method of forcing the user to enter the date and time at every battery change.

Sounds like a plan. Thanks!

--Winston

(...)

fail.

You're right. My first Olympus voice recorder failed in 4-1/2 years. it took the next one 2-1/2 years to crap out. With dedication and hard work, I am sure we can make them fail before they ship. :)

setup so that only authorized personnel (or the usual determined hacker) can turn it on (so no one can just unplug & replug the battery, for

We have a consensus. Thanks!

--Winston

Olympus doesn't warn the user that the 'retail sale' is really a 28 month rental....

Well I suppose I could behave honorably towards *my* customers.

Good thought. Thanks!

--Winston

(...)

Ah. Thanks!

--Winston

As others have said.. not necessarily, but if this is a volume/widely available product with high profits _expect_ the reset method to be hacked rather promptly. Some kids do this just for fun.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Winston, Is this that old argument about digital O'scopes with functionality disabled to sell as lesser models?

What kind of rental electronic devices were you thinking of for this setup?

Why is it I just can't shake the feeling that you had a comedy/sarcasm motive here?

Was this a wry commentary on the life span of consumer electronics from Olympus?

In poking around on the net, I don't see any evidence that my example devices, (the Olympus digital voice recorders) have been hack targets at all. Lots of results with Google, but none of them appear to be related to the process of actually recovering operation of a broken recorder or preventing the inevitable failure of same. I imagine that if these were game consoles or something else valuable to the 'hacker' type, that they would indeed have been hacked a long time ago. But then the console manufacturers are more careful in hiding their obsolescence.

I expect that the target audience, ironically professionals such as lawyers and such, probably toss a broken recorder and buy another for a hundred bucks. It is too far below their pain threshold to bother with.

--Winston

Not at all. The lower - specified scope still performed it's function as well as it ever had. It did not konk out as a result of an intentional design feature. No foul there.

That would require an NDA, Greegor.

Well OK, partly.

But mostly I want to be able to enforce my rights as lessor should a lessee fail to live up to his responsibilities to return out-of-lease gear.

Ideally, I want to do that in an above - board, honest, legal but most importantly honorable way.

Unlike what our friends at Olympus keep doing.

:)

--Winston

Once I worked at a place that had problems with copied control room equipment, so we put a 12 month license condition in the thing, it counted runtime, not reference RTC, to defeat people changing the time. Was a free phone call to clear the thing as purpose was to catch machines we didn't know about (knock off copies). Worked okay. Did find some copied machines too, we had option to let them die as unlicensed copies.

Grant.

Whoa. They cloned your control room equipment so carefully that they included your 'run time tool'?

*That* is a good quality knockoff. I wonder if they copied panel dents and dust placement too!

:)

--Winston

That came free in the firmware ;) Encrypted string stuff, hard to work out.

Just a copy, complete with the binary in roms. Back in the late '80s, early '90s

Grant.

I can't believe this is a deliberate feature - much more likely a screwup. If it is a known fault you would probably have some redress under consumer legislation as the fault was present at the time of purchase.

legislation as the fault

Not if it only had 12 month warranty? Lots of modern stuff seems to fail only weeks after mandatory warranty period of 12 months (in AU) expires.

Grant.

fail.

setup so that only authorized personnel (or the usual determined hacker) can turn it on (so no one can just unplug & replug the battery, for

Consider the legal impacts, you would have to provide 'full' disclosure... This is well established in case law WRT software that is time-bombed...

You're forgetting that the US doesn't have any consumer protection laws worth speaking of.