Comments by "Paul Frederick" (@1pcfred) on "Home Depot introducing DRM to power tools to prevent theft." video.

  1. They can disable the driver IC and the tool would not function at all. Brushless motors need to be electronically commutated. That chip can easily be turned off. When it's off your tool won't do squat.
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  2.  @CreepSoldier  bypass the board and the motor won't run. I'm sure they're doing this with brushless tools that need a driver. It costs them virtually nothing to do. The hardware is already in the product.
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  3.  @SimplyVanis  why wouldn't you buy second hand tools? I buy tools almost exclusively second hand. If I can get it used I do. I get tools for pennies on the dollar for what they sell for retail.
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  4. Makita already has that battery crap.
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  5.  @jimmyb1451  what's clear to me is you do not know me at all. You could have just clicked on my name here and found something out. You could have seen this video for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgbeyNNBZ68
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  6.  @fltfathin  well it would be no quick gimmie, that's for sure. It'd be a theft you'd have to work long and hard on to see any payoff. Do any of those off the shelf drives fit inside a power tool? You don't have to make it impossible just impractical.
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  7. Nah it's not going to make the tool any more expensive. The tech is already in the tools. That's how they got you. The tool is already so complicated there's no way you're going to be able to bypass it. They're doing this stuff with brushless tools that have motor drivers in them. So they build the feature into the driver itself. It's just a chip respin. You're not swapping that chip out. Heck you can't even buy a replacement. You don't have the skill to rework the board anyways. You are completely locked out nine ways from Sunday. That's why it works.
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  8.  @avi8r66  Ah a conductive body widowmaker tool. With those you're counting on the ground you're plugged into being good. Otherwise the body of the tool can get live. Hit a live wire drilling into a wall or a floor and goodbye! That's why we have double insulated tools today. Because often the ground wasn't good on circuits. Most assholes took the ground plug out of their tools. Making them one accident away from lying on a slab.
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  9. Now you know why we're facing a worldwide chip shortage today. Too much crap has chips in it and we can't keep up with demand.
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  10.  @lacombar  someone knows the score.
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  11. I knew a guy that did that. He'd shoplift then return what he stole for a refund.
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  12. Companies that want to stay in business know they need to foster trust between themselves and their customers. That is a difficult relationship to build. With tools I have a lot of options. Companies know that.
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  13. You'd be surprised how cheap it is for them to do. A single screw would cost more than these modifications. That's the state of electronics today. This fact is why they're doing it in the first place. It's just that trivial. Adding Bluetooth is just adding a bit to an existing IC and adding a squiggly line to the circuit board. Amortized over a production run it wouldn't cost pennies per unit. Is the engineering complex? You bet. But we're just so good at doing it that it's nothing at all.
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  14.  @tonytunnell9873  whole no one is perfect some fall further from the mark than others do. Some are way off in fact.
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  15.  @drkastenbrot  if the pandemic scrambled things then they're not very robust. It is not as easy as you claim. I know precisely how it all works. I know exactly what went wrong too. We're just barely managing. That's if there's no hiccups. The pandemic caused a hiccup. We still haven't fully recovered from it years later.
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  16. Yeah because you don't have to pay staff.
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  17. Sometimes protection features do cause problems. Done right the feature can be valuable though. You smoke the windings in a drill and you're circular filing it then. But if overload protection kicks in you're happy when the tool works after it cools down. Anti-theft will be like overload protection but it'll be a one time deal. Once the tool is unlocked I don't see why they'd want to lock it again. So they can design it so it is foolproof.
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  18. The new power tools have complex electronics in them. BLDC motor drives are pretty sophisticated devices. I can guarantee they're the stuff they're implementing this on. They're putting it right in those drive chips too. Where you can't get to it. Hermetically sealed.
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  19. So take your clothes off and run screaming into the woods then. That's the only viable option available to you. If you're dead set against living in a technological society with the rest of us.
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  20. The trouble is where that kill switch is. It's inside a chip where you can't get to it. You need to access everything else that chip does. So just bypassing the whole chip is not an option. You're on the outside looking in. You're definitely not smart enough to get away with anything either.
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  21.  @GadgetAddict  if what you say is true then their engineering department isn't worth spit. Their whole tool sucks as a result too. If they just pot the electronics it isn't worth the effort. Picking that crap off is not my idea of a good time.
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  22.  @BinarySpike  one part of me wonders if the security was implemented in an appallingly stupid manner. It has happened. There are ways of doing it that would be difficult to circumvent. As the comments show the dumb ways are very obvious though.
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  23.  @seanclark8452  if every tool has a unique ID and the key to unlock it is based on that ID then sniffing isn't going to crack the code. Digital cryptography is fairly robust.
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  24.  @seanclark8452  more people had an interest in breaking wifi than I can see stolen power tools attracting. But I suppose if determined people do invest the effort they'll likely find a vulnerability. Then the question remains if they'd even want to share it. Finally will their solution be end user friendly? Just because some geek can do something doesn't mean everyone else can. Johnny the crackhead might not have the technical ability.
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  25.  @wibblywobblyidiotvision  there's a bloody good chance your typical shoplifter does not know what a JTAG is. The people with the skills to crack digital encryption are not prolific petty criminals. Although they are the sort that would tackle the project just for the challenge. The security doesn't have to be impossible just impractical. Thieves want an immediate turnaround. If they know they have to do anything extra it will deter them.
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  26.  @M167A1  learn how to take from the unwilling.
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  27. Yeah that would go over real good for any company that tried to do that. They'd be out of business so fast it'd make your head spin.
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  28. You can't repair it without the DRM. So your question is moot.
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  29. All corded drill have universal motors in them. That means they work on AC or DC. That's what makes them "universal". You series up enough car batteries and you can run any corded power tool. Usually anything over about 70V will run them OK.
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  30. That Bluetooth is costing them essentially nothing. They're going to be spending the engineering budget anyways. The hardware is basically free in the volumes they're dealing with too. A screw costs more than adding an electronic feature does today. They can add Bluetooth to an existing part. Bake it right into a chip. Now they're ordering the 111-B instead of the 111-A. They don't care!
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  31. I think they should make people put shock collars on before they enter the store. Because you animals need discipline!
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  32. I've found a lot of anti theft devices inside power tools. Those white plastic things with the magnetic strips in them. They're usually glued inside the handle. The same crap you find on the boxes. They put them inside the tools too. I've just taken a lot of tools apart.
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  33. Like thieves use tools.
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  34. It won't cost any more. They'll just respin chips that were already in the item.
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  35. How are they making anything harder for you? You were going to the checkout register anyways.
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  36. I bet you can't.
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  37.  @pyotrilyichtchaikovskyii6638  you disable the BLDC driver IC on a brushless motor. That's how. You simply tell the sequencer inside the chip to not run. If it does not run then neither does the motor.
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  38.  @pyotrilyichtchaikovskyii6638  these companies can spin their own chips up. I wouldn't make a motor drive for a $200 tool. It may not be rocket science but it is work.
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  39. You like brushless tools? Then you want technology.
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  40.  @currentsitguy  yes but DRM can easily be added to all brushless technology. It would just be another form of "protection". There's a little chip inside all of your brushless tools that turns them on and off already. That's why they run at all. They're electronically commutated. That means the motor coils are switched on and off via electronics. You just put a master switch inside that chip that disables it. It has an enable already. You simply add an additional internal enable line. Like a machine where you have to close two switches before it activates. Either enable is not activated and the chip fails to function. Your tool does not work then.
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  41.  @InfernosReaper  why is it a point of failure? It can be implemented in such a way that there is no way it can possibly fail. It can be a logic fuse inside an IC that is closed and then when the product is activated the fuse is blown open. There's no way that fuse will ever close again. So how is it going to ever fail? It's a one time switch. That's 50 year old technology. It is very reliable.
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  42.  @InfernosReaper  that's not how they'd do it at all. There'd be no one pin you could short out to bypass things. This is happening over Bluetooth. They'd be pretty effing stupid to do it how you think they would. Motor drives have logic inside of them. They're not quite microcontrollers but there's nothing stopping a manufacturer from putting a full blown microcontroller inside a drive IC these days. I could see why they'd want to do that for a number of reasons. Bamboozling people like you aside from it.
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  43.  @yosefmacgruber1920  just lean your back up against a tree trunk. Come on. Kick it old school!
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  44.  @saywhat9158  a kill switch in the tool solves all of the problems and you won't even know about it. Unless you're a thief.
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  45.  @redhammer92  this whole world is horsecrap. More than we'll ever know.
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  46. You have no idea how brushless motors work, do you? The words electronic commutation have no meaning! They could definitely devise cryptography that you couldn't easily crack too.
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  47.  @Haldrie  this feature can be implemented in such a way that it is impractical to disable it. The security is embedded in a chip that is necessary for operation. That chip is disabled when the security feature is active. It's off and there's no way to turn it on. These people are not children. They can devise a scheme that cannot be cracked. They can put it in a place you cannot get to too.
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  48.  @nicwelch  nope they're not going to add a chip. They're going to modify a chip that is essential to the tool's operation. What you're thinking is too easy to bypass. They're going too bake the security deep into where you can't get to. You don't know nothing bout no electronics. My guess is they put it in the BLDC driver IC. Without that all you have is an electromagnet. Tool no workie.
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  49.  @pyotrilyichtchaikovskyii6638  you are right. But not how you think. It is not a simple mechanical switch. It's never that simple. Not now at any rate.
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  50.  @justmyopinion4101  they don't call modern electronics solid state for nothing. Although once I did run across some chips that were killed by vibration. But that was only one particular IC. I've dealt with tens of thousands of ICs too. Generally integrated circuits are extremely tolerant of physical shocks. In WW2 we made vacuum tubes that we could shoot out of cannons. Now that's mind blowing. They were part of our proximity fuses. Very top secret stuff. Patton loved the things. He used them against German troop concentrations all the time. They'd detonate right over their heads. Raining death down on them. Murica!
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  51. They can add this feature essentially for free today. That's the nature of technology. Another transistor in a chip isn't going to end up costing anyone anything. A thousand more transistors won't cost anything. Whatever it takes them to implement this. They'll be created when all the other transistors are that you already need. So it's a freebie from a manufacturing standpoint.
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  52. What if the kill switch is in the trigger? That's where I'd put it. Well I'd put it in the BLDC motor drive IC. If power doesn't come out of that chip the motor won't run. All that chip does is switch power on and off too. So it's very easy to tell it to not switch on at all.
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  53.  @CockroachSlidy  if you're not an authorized seller good luck selling anything for full price. I as a consumer know I can't go back to you if there's a problem. You're gray market goods. So that means forget about black and white.
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  54.  @tissuepaper9962  that's the thing. You don't have physical access to the hardware. Not really. It is embedded into the microchip. You can't really get into there either. Well, I suppose you could. But having done so you'd have destroyed the device itself. Which makes access impossible for all practical purposes. Integrated circuits are black boxes. Even ones where access is their primary goal still tend to be rather enigmatic due to their physical construction.
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  55.  @currentsitguy  what if the tool will not function with a third party battery?
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  56.  @rrteppo  you can steal it but the tool will never work for you.
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  57.  @tissuepaper9962  how do you know how they implement the cryptography? Perhaps the tool is queried and the tool sends a unique ID which is then hashed to create a key? One pair of challenges and responses may not be enough to crack that scheme.
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  58.  @bravohomie  with what wood was going for last year I wouldn't put it past them.
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  59. They can make it pretty foolproof. Just a fuse that needs to be blown in a chip. Once it's good it'll stay good forever. But the only way to blow that fuse is using a digital key.
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  60.  @TravisFabel  if the fuse is inside the integrated circuit package itself you are not going to be able to access it. It will be a microscopic little thing. It is not a fuse to protect against an overload. It is a fusable link used in logic. A programmable bit. You disconnect the chip and the tool won't work at all. The chip is essential for operation. The state of the fuse determines if the chip works. Sure it may be possible to use a whole other motor driver in a tool. We don't have to make something impossible just impractical. Changing the driver in a brushless tool to get it to work is impractical.
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  61.  @tonytunnell9873  Milwaukee patented using lithium ion batteries in power tools. Not that they invented lithium ion batteries or cordless tools. They just had the bright idea of patenting it. So they're slime. SawStop tried to get legislation passed to mandate their tech. So they're slime too. SawStop was founded by lawyers. So they're super slime. They sold the company after their lobbying failed.
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  62. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy!
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  63. It looks like the molotov cocktail I've tossed through the front window is consuming the property. Have a nice day.
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  64. I never steal anything. People are such scum. I hate you all!
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  65.  @austinmatney7591  you know the score. All these people think there's just a simple switch inside power tools. Yeah maybe in the 1950s. Them days are over now. Today good luck selling someone a tool that isn't brushless. Even a brushed motor will have a VSR on it. So there's plenty of places a manufacturer can embed a kill switch that would not easily be bypassed. I bet they're only targeting brushless tools with this security. They're building it right into the drive IC. No chippy no workie.
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  66. What are the chances of you ever buying another product from a company if that happens to you with one of their products? In that case I'd imagine they'd be interested in taking care of you even with a product out of warranty. Just to lessen the bad press they'd get.
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  67. The drills people want today are complicated. They need to be to run longer and deliver more power than the simple tools.
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  68. Wrong. Even a brushed tool has a VSR unit in it. Which is considerably more sophisticated than just on and off. Brushless tools are electronically commutated. Without the drive IC they will never work. That bluetooth will be embedded into other tech essential to the product's operation. You pull it out and your device will be completely non-functional.
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  69.  @ic.84  that would work. It would not be as ergonomic as a trigger is though. I do not think it would be worth the trouble really. Brushed tools are pretty low end and inexpensive today. They're not the hot products thieves would be interested in stealing.
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  70. People with that much technical skill are usually not petty criminals.
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  71.  @currentsitguy  what you pay for depends on the terms things were sold with. You do not get to decide that either. You only get to decide if you wish to enter into agreements, or not. If not then you do without.
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  72.  Sebastian Hahn  why should I look at keurig? What do they have to do with power tools here? There are all kinds of different DRM schemes. None of them have anything to do with each other. They all exist separately.
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  73. I doubt it.
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