Former NASA engineer deploys glitter stink bomb trap on package thieves
YouTube content creator Mark Rober put together a special device to surprise package thieves after receiving no help from the police.
Thieves have grown exceptionally bold stealing packages right off the doorsteps of homeowners, but what happens when one draws the ire of a mechanical engineer that previously worked for NASA? Hilarious hijinks is what.
Mark Rober is said former NASA-employed engineer and he uses his skillset for unique creations, scientific experiments, and more on his YouTube channel. He learned he had a package theft problem when he saw that something allegedly delivered never actually arrived. Via his outside cameras, he spotted a couple that walked his neighborhood with backpacks and snatched up the item that was placed at his doorstep, so he devised a plan once the cops confirmed they wouldn't be able to track down the assailants.
How does this punishment for package stealers work? It's a pretty thoroughly thought out device from execution to recovery. The punishment comes in the form of a glitter bomb that gets sprayed around wherever the thief decides to open the package. The entire fiasco is recorded via four smartphones that are connected to a circuit board that pings GPS when the package is jostled. When the package is outside of a specific area, the cameras start recording.
One may be thinking that the incredibly annoying glitter clean-up job may be a small price to pay for four smartphones, but Rober figured that issue out as well. The phones are housed in a container that doesn't immediately reveal what they are and, as a lovely cherry on top, there's a fart spray that gets deployed five times every thirty seconds. The horrendous smell made the initial thief toss the package, which allowed Rober to deploy this decoy package and capture the reactions of multiple assailants. Even if the package wasn't ditched, Rober set up the phones to upload the footage to the cloud automatically.
This a pretty complex DIY solution for package thieves, but will hopefully inspire other victims to get creative while also deterring the thieves entirely. Tell us in Chatty what kind of hilarious punishment you'd deploy if someone grabbed a package off your own steps and stay tuned to Shacknews for other cool creations.
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replyCharles Singletary Jr posted a new article, Former NASA engineer deploys glitter stink bomb trap on package thieves
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I think Mark Rober is legit.
He has a whole bunch of YouTube videos that are well before this where engineers cool things.-
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What are you basing that on?
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Based on How many people/Videos he got stealing his and his "friends" packages is a little to convenient for my taste. It like this one Package "Bomb" video i watched. The guy claimed multiple people we're "stealing" his packages. Then proceeded to film 10 different people coming to his front porch, that was clearly filmed all in one day. We leave in 2018, where people pretend to be Paralyzed for Subs/views, I have very little faith in Humanity at this point. I work in video, its very easily to manipulate people to seeing what you want them to see. I feel like I'm explaining to my Mother that Reality Television is not real. lol
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Dude, package stealing is an absolute epidemic these days. If he and his friends have cameras, catching people steal packages is pretty easy.
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"I feel like I'm explaining to my Mother that Reality Television is not real. lol"
You're basing this off your feelings and what you have perceived in only your own experiences, and then being insulting about it. "Fuck you, too", would be my normal response here.-
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I'm sure you do.
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You don't have any evidence to prove it's legit either. We have to take him for his word. Other than some suspicious and convenient circumstances , and him using something you can easily clean up (IE not Paint or Liquid). And having a lot of Video from 1 incident, that he has to have his "friends" package stolen too, which gives him more footage.
No one can prove it Fake and no one can prove it's legit. Unless someone involved steps forward and admits it either way. Which like the "Prank Wars" Didn't happen for a long time until they admitted it was fake. Again...Manipulation.-
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Glitter is lots of things but "easy to clean up" is not one of them.
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"not Paint or Liquid"
Thinking about this from an engineering pov, paint it liquid use would greatly diminish the likelihood that you might every be able to reuse the package bomb. That would be okay if single use were your goal, but considering the amount of effort involved, anyone even thinking about doing this would want to reuse the package.
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Naw, dude is legit. He has no reason to lie.
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Sure, but the device works, and it's incredibly easy to get people to steal packages from doorsteps in major cities. He has no reason to fake it. That, and nothing about these people screams 'actors' to me.
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One of the ones he recorded didn't even function properly. You're really reaching here.
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Then you can Lable it as My opinion then. But in 2018, I wouldn't put it past anyone to Lie to there viewers to get noticed, get more sub or views. You have to admit this video would've have gotten nearly the amount of attention if he was just showing up the device at a friend Party. I'm just saying keep an open mind. People are shitty and will do lots of things for Money and/or exposer. that's all i'm trying to convey.
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His videos get massive amounts of views, anyway. It's an incredibly popular channel already, and none of his stuff has involved faking reactions, from what I can tell.
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I attribute the success to the fact that many if not all of us have had a package stolen from our front door and this is the closest we will ever get to revenge. Call it fake or real it doesn't matter to me, I giggled gleefully every time it went off in his video.
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I know yesterday when this was posted people were saying "you should have it spray ink" or stuff. But what this thing did simply created a clean-able mess in the car /home/whereever it was opened, no permanent damage or the like. If it did that, he could be liable even if the persons acknowledged package theft. But no one is going to claim to be a package theft just to get back over glitter and fart smells.
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Paint or ink would also likely be destructive to the device, limiting the use to one time. Though work was put into the box that anybody reasonable would want to be able to use it more than once.
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He's already got those.
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speaking of which the whole prank wars (collegehumor) stuff was recently revealed to be fake. everything was setup between streeter and amir. im saddened knowing this
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https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/7o4vu3/til_amir_streeters_prank_war_on_collegehumor_was/
they revealed it on amir's podcast and I can confirm this reddit post. streeter was hesitant to say because he wanted to make more lol. its funny they go into how hard it kind of was because Jimmy Kimmel had them on and they had to pretend it was all real
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it was great entertainment, and I feel better knowing it was fake, since some of that stuff was too much to be OK even among friends tangled in a prank war.
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the acting gig for human giant lol, i feel better knowing it was fake now
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this was so gooooooooood. horrible.
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Yeah he helped fake the moon landings too.
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Seems completely legit to me.
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You're a wierd one. You choose the weirdest hills to die on, and you're always super confrontational about everything.
Who cares if it's "fake" or not? He built the machine and demonstrated how it works. You should be mad. His channel has like 660M views and 12 videos with more views than this one. even if they are ALL "fake" who cares? Dude's building stuff and it works.-
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The plight of the parcel thieves trying to make their way in life.
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That's not all you said. You also gave shitty reasons for your assertion. Even if it is fake, your reasons should be mocked.
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History of the channel? He makes things...?
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This is not the thing to be cynical about.
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Yeah, but you're wrong here.
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Do you think that it's perhaps better that would-be parcel thieves now worry more about facing negative repercussions for their actions than a dude gets some views on his youtube channel under staged pretenses?
I don't mean this as an attack, I'm just interested in hearing your line of thinking on this. -
This is some pretty absurd levels of holier-than-thou faux nobility you're displaying.
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What?
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WHAT IF LINUXGATE? SHACKNEWS INVESTIGATES
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Ok, GBurke - I'm at least going to say, I think it is a bit fishy myself.
The average house cost in Winnetka IL is about 1 million dollars (I'm eyeballing the prices on realtor - they run from a low of 245k to a high of 3.9 million - with most in the 650 - 1.5 million range). While this doesn't negate the fact that a crime of opportunity could happen here - my experience living in an area where the median house price is 300k and I never lost a package. Whatever, anecdotal right?
Then, I googled the crime rate for Winnetka IL and found this fun tidbit:
Winnetka IL crime rate
One's chance of becoming a victim of crime in Winnetka is one in 134. Compared to communities within Illinois, Winnetka's crime rate is lower than nearly 73% of the state's cities and towns. Compared to other communities of similar population size, Winnetka has a crime rate that is noticeably lower than the average.
By comparison the crime rate where I live is 1 in 52. Again, never lost a package, and have had packages sit on my doorstep for hours at a time. Still anecdotal.
The outfits of everyone involved appear to be similar fall attire. I'm not so crazy that I'm going to go into checking weather patterns, but it does seem to indicate that this footage was collected in a very short period of time. So I'm to believe that a package was stolen from the same two houses on multiple occasions enough times to get this footage in a place where the overall crime rate is roughly half the national average, making it a very, very low crime area?
Also - the police were unwilling to follow up, even though they had presumably at least high definition footage of the people not only stealing the package, but opening it? No one knows the police will sometimes be picky about who they go after than me - I was put in the hospital by 3 pieces of shit from my neighborhood when I was 17 - I told the cops what house they went in and even told them one of the kid's names, and the cops still wouldn't press charges. So I know they are fickle, but turning down video evidence, in what appears to be an affluent area - where maybe you could even argue that the cops might be bored and might welcome actual police work?
I'm making a lot of assumptions, but something seems off here to me. I don't care either way mind you - I won't die on the hill, but I wouldn't be shook if this was faked.-
You know he lives near SF where the weather is usually around 60-70 in the summer?
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The city police are in conjunction with Walmart and Amazon are deploying gps enabled decoys and cameras starting today. https://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/new-apd-program-will-combat-package-thefts-in-albuquerque/5183947/?cat=500
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lol probably, but as the article mentioned it's estimated only 15% of package thefts are reported to police. But with Amazon and Walmart sharing their data the police now know where most of the thefts occur because people may not call the police but they'll definitely hit up Amazon for a replacement.
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