{"id":3807,"date":"2012-08-21T20:09:52","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T02:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royceeddington.com\/?p=3807"},"modified":"2012-08-21T20:09:52","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T02:09:52","slug":"the-latest-in-shopping-cart-technology-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/?p=3807","title":{"rendered":"The latest in shopping cart technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a recent visit to Walgreens, I saw a rather interesting tech upgrade to the plain old shopping cart.<\/p>\n

Inside the shopping basket was a notice on a bright yellow background. “Attention shoppers! Our shopping carts will lock if taken beyond the parking lot perimeter. While distinctive yellow lines mark normal exits, the entire lot perimeter is protected.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Shopping<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So being a total tech neeeerrrrd, I started taking looking at the shopping cart to figure out how it worked.<\/p>\n

The wheels looked OK from inside the basket…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Shopping<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…but at the ground level, it was obvious that one wheel was completely different.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Shopping<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The front left wheel (the same as the warning illustrated) was encased, and not completely solid like the other three wheels. It also felt heavier to spin by hand, but I didn’t notice any difference in moving down the isles when I was pushing the cart.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Shopping<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Did I put enough eeeeerrrrd’s in the neeeeerrrrd description above?<\/p>\n

Anyhow, the “Trojan wheel” had 10 phillips screws all along the perimeter and didn’t make any noise or give any resistance when I changed directions suddenly while driving the cart.<\/p>\n

I’m guessing that this wheel is always listening to a signal that tells it it is “inside” the store grounds, and once that signal fades, a locking mechanism clamps down on the front left axle to bring the basket to a grinding halt. But I wonder if that means the wheels need occasional recharging or if the motion of the basket recharges the unit like our kinetic motion can charge modern watches?<\/p>\n

Another option would be if there is a actual line-of-sight signal fence along the store perimeter, where if the basket crosses the signal line (which would have to be from ground level to about a foot high), the wheel gets the OK to seize up.<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting piece of tech that I see being useful to stop some thieves from getting away with $75-$400 pieces of store inventory<\/a>, but I wonder if these stores thought of how easy this security would be to bypass. If I was a bad guy, all I would do is pop the nut and bolt off the “trojan wheel” and put on a “normal wheel” from another basket! Done!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During a recent visit to Walgreens, I saw a rather interesting tech upgrade to the plain old shopping cart. Inside the shopping basket was a notice on a bright yellow background. “Attention shoppers! Our shopping carts will lock if taken … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t