this guy took a package from my porch
and now he's about to open it in his car
but what he doesn't know
is this is a custom-built bait package
that is recording him on four different
cameras and it's about to unleash
a pound of the world's finest glitter
along with some other surprises but to
understand how he got to this point
first we need to rewind a bit about
seven months ago i noticed a package
being reported as delivered but it never
arrived so when i checked our security
cameras
i noticed this lovely couple out for a
stroll
[Music]
as you can see they have backpacks on
and they're just going around the
neighborhood making an afternoon out of
this
if you've ever been in a situation like
this you just sort of feel
violated and then i took this to the
police and even with the video evidence
they said it's just not worth their time
to look into so then you also feel
powerless i just felt like something
needs to be done to take a stand against
dishonest punks like this and then i was
like
hold up i built a dartboard that moves
to get a bullseye every time
i spent nine years designing hardware
that's currently roving around
on another freaking planet if anyone was
going to make a revenge bait package
and over-engineer the crap out of it it
was going to be me
so i started with a sketch and some cad
and then i hit up my buddy shawn who was
really good with this type of small
electronic stuff
and we got to work ultimately when they
opened the package i just wanted to
celebrate their choice of profession
with a cloud of glitter because i mean
who doesn't love glitter
that's easy i could just do that
passively with like a spring when it
opens
but i also wanted to record their
reaction and that's what makes the
engineering here an order of magnitude
more difficult because if you think
about it this thing has to sit on a
porch
all day and it can't be plugged in and
you have no idea when someone will come
and pick this up so it's not like you
could just hit record on the camera and
then put it in the box because you're
gonna run out of battery and storage
space
on top of that i need some way to
recover this footage in case i never get
the bait package back so after six
months and lots of design iterations
and so much testing here's where we
landed
[Music]
this custom printed circuit board is the
brains of the operation it has a
built-in accelerometer
and when it's jostled it will check the
gps signal to see if it's been moved
from the porch and if so
it sends a signal to all the phones to
wake up and start recording
and i'm using four phones that have a
wide angle filming mode and are angled
back
and this 3d printed portion is contoured
this way because it represents the field
of view of the phones
so as you can see i'm guaranteed to
capture their reaction no matter which
way they open it from
and nestled in here we've got a can of
fart spray no joke you can clear a room
with one spray of this stuff so we made
a cam on a small motor that sprays it
five times
and not only is this just a nice touch
but we keep repeating
five sprays every 30 seconds until they
throw the package out of their car or
house
before they realize there's four phones
inside this increases our chances of
finding it because we always know the
package location at all times due to the
gps
on the phones but even if we don't
recover it all four phones have lte data
plans so they upload the footage to the
cloud so i can still see what happens
and then for the ps3 resistors
we have a cup here on top that spins
from a motor underneath
so once you load in a butt ton of the
world's finest glitter the motor spins
really fast and the centrifugal force
fires it evenly in all directions then
we cut holes in the side of the lid and
covered them with one-way film so two of
the cameras could see them as they
walked away
and then finally to make it look like an
actual delivered package we added some
shrink wrap
and a delivery label which is perhaps my
favorite part of the whole thing because
if the thief wasn't in such a hurry
they'd see that the package is actually
coming from my childhood hero and
inspiration for this project kevin
mcallister
i even looked up and am using the
address of the actual house they filmed
the movie in
and of course it's being shipped to his
boys harry and marv
and there's a charge port in the bottom
because if it doesn't get stolen in a
given day
i can bring it in and then recharge all
the batteries in the system overnight so
the idea is the bad guy comes and takes
it off your porch
then lifts the lid and these two limit
switches tell the circuit board brain
inside
that the lid's been removed and then
that sets everything in motion
and i may be biased but sometimes a
well-engineered design
is beautiful
[Music]
because the phones have gps we created a
virtual geofence around my house so i
get a notification when the package has
been moved off the property
so i put it on the porch and now all
that was left to do was wait
okay so i was at work and i got a
notification that the geofence we set up
had been tripped
so then i checked the cameras and sure
enough the package is gone so i checked
the gps and sort of tracked it
and it appears they're in a car because
they seem to leave my house
pretty quickly but it seems to have
stopped in a parking garage
which is where i'm headed to now and if
you're new here this isn't a prank
channel so i am completely out of my
comfort zone
and there she is
oh
oh see some glitter this is like
recovering the black box of a crashed
airplane
it would still work even if i didn't get
the box back the footage would upload to
the cloud but it's just faster to plug
the phones in so
i'm gonna go home and find out how this
somehow ended up here
so it appears he was walking down the
sidewalk and then suddenly makes a hard
left
then he takes the package and gets at
his car and eventually makes it to this
parking garage
where this glorious sequence unfolds
[Music]
[Applause]
no way
look at that dude look at my car dude
everything
oh my god i don't know what this is
literally like everywhere
oh
get out of here but you shouldn't even
grab that what the [ __ ]
get out of here
take this stuff out of here
[Applause]
[Music]
keep that change you filthy animal
so the moral of the story is just don't
take other people's stuff
not only is it not cool but on the plus
side you'll never find yourself in this
situation
or perhaps even worse this one get in
here like who you had in here