Going crazy - How does this device work?

I'm going a bit crazy trying to work out how a marketing gizmo operates. Would appreciate any thoughts!

My local supermarket just installed a small Pillsbury promotional freezer, roughly cube shaped, and about four feet on each side. On the side it has the doughboy, and a word bubble that says "Hear me giggle!". I naturally assumed there would be a microswitch on the lid triggering a speech module, or maybe a light-gate triggering when you reach in.

However, it's much, MUCH more subtle than that. If you open the lid, nothing happens. The thing only giggles when you touch a product inside the freezer. However, not ALL products trigger it. The freezer contains mostly cinnamon buns and biscuits, which come in a foil-coated cardboard tube with steel ends. If you touch one of the metal ends, the giggle starts. If you touch the tube part, it might or might not start giggling, depending on whether you touch a shiny part or a printed part.

There happened to be a non-metallized cardboard box of frozen pastry in the freezer also; handling that box, picking it up, moving it about, etc. did not trigger the voice.

The inside of the freezer is all plastic, so I don't think it operates by making the contents one plate of a capacitor. My best guess is some kind of microwave motion/prox sensor, but I'm damned if I can work out the details.

Reply to
larwe
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My $0.02: The plastic box of the freezer is inside a big coil - probably just a few rounds of wire around the plastic container - which is part of an oscillating circuit. Moving, adding or removing metal objects inside the coil will detune the oscillator, which is detected and triggers the giggle. Frozen products all have a small layer of ice on it, which will melt instantly when touched. If you touch something metal, the water will conduct nicely and make your body part of the oscillator. Sounds feasible to me.

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Reply to
Ico

If this is true, it would have a self-calibrating time period so it does not keep giggling for too long when the stock level in the freezer changes (someone restocks, or someone buys).

However, if you put your finger on a tube, it giggles continuously until you remove your finger (I left it there 15 seconds). It stops instantly when you remove your finger. I'll have to test what happens when you take a product out of the box.

Reply to
larwe

Try putting in some other metal objects, such as keys or coins.

Also, did you play with this long enough to exclude a simple random mechanism (like timing) that only appears to be correlated to touching metal objects ? Our brains are excellent at picking up patterns, sometimes even when there's just noise.

Reply to
Arlet

Pretty much has to be capacitive, IMO. Maybe picking up (or shunting) something with your body capacitance.

Since just putting your hand inside does not trigger it, perhaps it has something to do with the shelves? Does touching them trigger it?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Okay, another possibility, some kind of low level RF signal, and the human finger/product contact introduces nonlinearity which produces detectable harmonics.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Theremin used as a trigger?

-Dave

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David Ashley                http://www.xdr.com/dash
Embedded linux, device drivers, system architecture
Reply to
David Ashley

Has Joerg been moonlighting again?

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

There are no shelves. The freezer is just a blue plastic box with a clear plastic lid; inside it's lined with white plastic. Product is stacked up from the bottom; no shelves at all.

Reply to
larwe

Could it be a camera with a computer doing some recognition? Here in Montreal in the underground city, there are several spots where a projector points on the ground, and if you walk over the projected image it gets distorted only where you step, as if it were water. It can even follow several feet and you can play this "game" where you step on things and they float away. So it's definitely doable, even routine.

Reply to
a7yvm109gf5d1

I've seen this sort of thing; Toys-R-Us has something like that in Manhattan (or did last time I was in there a few years ago; time flies!). However there doesn't appear to be an aperture of any sort inside the unit. There's certainly no cable running away from it except a power cable.

Reply to
larwe

maybe theres a luaghing gnome inside ...

Reply to
colin

There's a little man in the roof over the box looking down who hits a remote 'giggle' button every time you touch certain products, and not others! Just to drive you insane! ;)

Regards,

--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, 
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Reply to
Mark McDougall

Can you see the bottom? How do you know there is no metal in the bottom . If the cans have metal ends it would make sense that they are touching a metal plate in the bottom. It sounds like you have to actually touch something on the package that is electrically connected to the metal ends which in turn would be touching the bottom possibly through other cans.

I remember playing with capacity operated relays when I was a kid. Those were the days of vacuum tubes and the circuit used a complex coil and a triode, IIRC. I think I have seen simple circuits using a transistor, but I don't recall the details. The basic concept is that the human body adds a lot of capacitance when it touches the circuit, much more than a few tins of biscuits would. So I don't see this device needing any calibration.

Reply to
rickman

Yes, I dug down to the bottom looking for some magic. It's lined with a one-piece vacuum-formed white plastic sheet.

Reply to
larwe

Reply to
krishna

On the

I hate these things. Our local super-iscount big market used to have a "MOOOOOOO" sound coming from the dairy department. Now tell me that doesnt make you want to kill something the 33'rd time you hear it.

Even worse, another place had those "singing fishes" and somebody had to press the button as soon as the previous song stopped. ooooooooohhhh,,,,

!
Reply to
Ancient_Hacker

When I was a evil sinner I was a technician at PC world during the time when Microsoft's Barney was being released. As an aside, it is possible to induce an unrecoverable fit in Barney by pressed all his limbs at once and flashing your hand in fron of his eyes but that's Microsoft for you. It's quite heart-wrenching to watch his little purple arms shiver as he wordlessly mouths for his life...

Every time a kid came into the store they would make a beeline for Barney and start him singing his song and thoroughly irritataing the sales team who would periodically break him. The technicians would then be tasked with fixing him (and trying to increase his volume) and very soon it spiralled out of control and ever more viscious ways of slaughtering Barney were attempted requiring ever more serious repairs. This included barney being nailed to a wall with a screwdriver through his eye.

Barney eventually met his demise as a head-first blockage in one of the staff toilets following a recent "fix" which made him sing his song endlessly and loudly. Poor little fella couldn't swim apparently.

Reply to
Tom Lucas

Ooh, this makes me think of the most woundrous 'last poses' of many Furby's i've seen.

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:wq
^X^Cy^K^X^C^C^C^C
Reply to
Ico

Any of note? Google has drawn up a depressing lack of results. There's definitely a website in this - after all cat-scan.com (now sadly defunct) managed to draw an incredible number of hits.

Reply to
Tom Lucas

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