Having accidentally ended up with a (paid for!) bottle locked shut with one of these security caps, it suddenly became a challenge to open it.
The functionality is very good, and no amount of twisting and pulling was able to remove the cap - in fact it just locked on tighter! So without a suitably powerful magnet to release the latch I improvised by cracking the lock cap off with a thin screwdriver.
Obviously I then had to investigate the mechanism to see how it worked.
Given the difficulty that LIDL staff often have with removing these caps from bought bottles, it might be worth them trying a different approach. Place the bottle into the unlocking station and then twist the cap in the locking direction slightly to allow the ratchet to disengage easily.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- https://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
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The functionality is very good, and no amount of twisting and pulling was able to remove the cap - in fact it just locked on tighter! So without a suitably powerful magnet to release the latch I improvised by cracking the lock cap off with a thin screwdriver.
Obviously I then had to investigate the mechanism to see how it worked.
Given the difficulty that LIDL staff often have with removing these caps from bought bottles, it might be worth them trying a different approach. Place the bottle into the unlocking station and then twist the cap in the locking direction slightly to allow the ratchet to disengage easily.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- https://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
This is going to be an interesting twist in the usual videos. This is a bottle security cap from Little and the reason we have it in the first place is because my colleague bought a bottle of gin and when we got back and went to have our gin and tonic uh, we discovered there was a security cap on top and we couldn't open the bottle. I Worked out who worked and popped this little cap off which releases the spring, but it's an interesting mechanism to see how it works. So you put your bottleneck in here and when they twist this, these two steel wire ropes closed that there's one's got there.
Well, both are plastic coated, but one end of each isn't a rotating ring and the other end is locked to the solid casing and it's spring loaded so it wants to by default open up. However, there is a little device here which has a ratchet on it and it's also got a steel slug. It's not a magnet, just a steel Slug and a spring. and when this is in place, as you tighten it up, it clicks loudly and it grips around the bottle and it won't go back.
And the tighter you twist it, the tighter it grips the bottle. and when they want to release that, they presumably put it into an almost solenoid like magnet. a cylindrical magnet without core that basically pulls a slug back and as soon as it's pulled back, it releases it. and that's why you hear them bang and bang it trying to get it to open.
In reality, if they put a very slight bit of twist pressure as they put it into the magnet, that would just theoretically pop open and they'd open easily. However, supposing you do try and take one of these out of the place, it should normally set off the alarm. It didn't set off the alarm in this instance. and the reason for that is because this plastic cap the end here with the directions of twisting it to lock.
It also has a little Channel and in that channel is a tuning circuit and a piece of foam to actually just hold it in position and then a plastic cap over that. Let me bring in the notepad to show you how this works. I'll show you the full thing in fact. So I shall just zoom down just a little bit more onto this.
Oh, wobbly, wobbly wobbly surface. Uh, focus on that and we can take a look. So here is the case. There is the fixed inner ring and there's the outer ring that has the ratchet toner.
I've just shown parts of the ratchet I Think it goes all the way around in this could be wrong. Oh no it doesn't I'm quite accurate in the area I've covered. it is basically just this area here because that's all it's needed to close that there's a little paw that goes into it and stops IT winding back and there's a little slug of metal that is attracted by, presumably the core magnet that they put it into I've never really looked at that. Maybe I'll look next time, but I'd expect it would be a big new iron Boron magnet.
Um, and there's the system whereby as it rotates the outer ring here is the one that rotates and just pulls those wires so they physically lock onto the bottom. the tuned circuit that sets off the alarm I Believe looking on Wikipedia that there is a standard frequency for this. It's basically a ferry Rod by the look of it with a coil uh one, two, three four five, six seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen fifteen turns look of it and a little capacitor which is unmarked across that um and this, if you were to drop it in someone's pocket, would conveniently set off the alarm every time they went to. Littles or indeed, some other shops probably. But that's very simple I Believe it just basically has the antenna transmitting uh, fixed frequency in the receiver and it detects some sort of variation in that, maybe a damping of the circuit or perhaps, uh, some sort of phase shift caused by this device. Uh, very cheap, Very simple. That's also, uh, very similar to the way that the paper stickers you get with the coil and then the two pads in very close vicinity that also acts like a inductor and capacitor. But in that case, to deactivate those ones, they uh, pulse it with a high current pulse and it induces enough voltage to break down the insertion capacitor and make it that fail short circuit.
And when that happens effectively, it's just a link through and it bypasses the circuit from operating when you remove the deactivated tag. But these ones are not deactivatable. So there we have it. the um, the little and probably many other shops security system.
It's quite neat, basically speaking. Uh, just out of the wire ropes to grip the bottle and a ratchet with Magnetic release to to take them back off. Again, very simple, actually quite a clever little device.
Can you buy strong alcohol in UK Lidl stores??
I'd like to see more of these types of security devices.
Loraina Bobbitt would have loved that!
We have similar anti-theft tags here in South Africa, but with a single loop that goes around the neck of the bottle/cap only. It seems that no one here has thought of unscrewing the cap and drinking the goofy-juice directly while hiding behind a sleeping store manager…
Great video, thanks Clive. Suddenly I have to go and find a sleeping store manager or kiosk attendant , excuse me please!🙃
I had a security tag in my shoe that didn’t get deactivated and I had great fun with it. I would walk out with someone sketchy looking , the alarm would go off
Of course, my hands were empty so security would stop the other folks. That worked great until the helpful lady at a Home Depot figured out it was my shoe and had me stand on a deactivator for large devices and thus I was deactivated.
That's quite a clever LIDL device! (I'll show myself out.)
So what I'm seeing is that I'd only need a coil and a capacitor to play some jokes on people 😂
cheers big clive mate.. off to lidl tomorrow with a magnet. fancy a good whisky..
there is a shop in my area in the US that is very excitable when there security gate gets tripped and all manner of lights and recorded instructions. They use a small square sticker with super tiny wires in a spiral on the underside of the sticker. I like to take a sticker off of some cheap item( almost everything is tagged) and stick it to the bottom of the shopping cart and then not take my cart out to the parking lot when I'm done.. then the next poor sap that uses it triggers it and the loss prevention guy will check all there crap and cant find what is triggering the alarm….I know its petty..lol
Sainsburys has a security device fitted in the front left hand caster wheel of their shopping trollies.
If you attempt to take a trolly through the security barrier, without the trolly having passed through a till/payment area, the wheel locks up and it can't be pushed any further.
Try it for yourself, its quite good fun! (use an empty trolly)
How would you measure the precise frequency of that ferrite antenna? Edit: Decided to find out for myself. Simple answer is you'd use a grid dip meter. You can see a video of such a meter in use by searching for "Robert Sumption checking toroids", he seems like a nice old bloke with interesting hobbies.
If you could go into more detail about how a tuned ct could cause a distortion, e.g. phase shift, in a field to set off an alarm, that would be very interesting.
I've had a few of those security devices come home in clothes I purchased in the past. Like you, they didn't set off any alarms, and I took them apart, finding a nearly identical device inside.
Lidl is a cesspit of lack of care to customers
I put a security coil in my uncles car key fob every time he went into a DIY superstore it would set the alarm off . He was a maintenance engineer and would visit several stores daily on his rounds .
so all a would-be thief would have to do is to bring their own magnet and ping problem solved.
It kind of makes me wonder if there are portable 'solutions' that disable the tags.
OTOH … a Faraday cage (sp?) kind of solves the need for disabling the tags as it would prevent the signal from triggering the alarm.
Years ago people complained that their car remotes quit working outside of a retailer in the states with some reporting it to the FCC. Well as things go it was in the district of a Radio Ham who worked for the government. He headed out to the store with a spectrum analyzer and communications monitor with directional antennas. Within a few minutes they had pinpointed the source of the interference. It was coming out of one entryway to this department store. Basically a harmonic frequency at 433 MHz which is a common frequency used on car remotes. It was a very broad signal that basically wiped the band clear of everything. I could only imagine the look on the store manager when he was greeted by an agent of the FCC and informed of the issue they had with one of these security systems. The manager promptly had it disconnected and called their vendor and requested a repair on the system. Within two days their system was back on line with no interference to motorists parking in the lot.
Yes there is a good chance you can build an EMP device commonly found on YouTube to blast the stickers open so they do no longer function. You might also interfere with the security sensors with an HF transmitter operating at around the 8.5MHz frequency but it’s your butt if the FCC or Ofcomm in the UK catch you. It’s not a fun day if they show up on your door.
If you have an LCR meter and are lucky enough to have "scored" on a tag that utilizes a discrete coil and capacitor you can carefully cut apart the device and measure the capacitance of the cap as well as measure how many microhenrys are in the coil. With this info you can construct a device with parts of like value that can be purchased from companies like Farnell in the UK or Mouser or Digikey.
Now if the coil has an odd value, there are web sites that can tell you how to wind your own coils to obtain an odd value that might be used.