1. "Then it take a picture with a webcam and send him a page."

Bahahahah! That makes this hack funny :)

*click* BUSTED!!! :)

Posted at 11:53PM on Apr 16th 2008 by frank

2. @james: no you're not.... that's the very first thing i thought of, but i'm too lazy to post :-p

by the way, this could actually be a good idea if made on a bigger scale... ie. put it on the back entrance of some corporate building, activate it on night, trap thieves/intruders and take photos of 'em (not necesarily when entering, they could enter through the roof or something, but they'd very likely have to exit thru the back door)

Posted at 1:27AM on Apr 17th 2008 by darklightconnection

3. Was I the only person who thought of this?

http://xkcd.com/382/

Posted at 5:34AM on Apr 17th 2008 by James

4. That's handy. A laser's sure better than a string, I guess.

Posted at 6:00AM on Apr 17th 2008 by RT (Panzer Time!)

5. on a side note: the squirrel will then chew its way through the wood and escape

Posted at 7:21AM on Apr 17th 2008 by tim

6. .:Infra Red:.

What about an electric garage door sensor instead of a bright laser.....

..I used to see a bight red light under my mouse. then I got a new mouse and I see nothing... lol

Posted at 9:14AM on Apr 17th 2008 by dash

7. I had a customer who owned a bunch of apartment buildings. In one of them, someone kept robbing the laundry change machines. One day after many attempts of figuring out who it is, who rigged the machine so that when opened, it permanently locked the door into the laundry room and sounded an alarm. I wish I could have been there when he was caught. (And the person WAS caught)

Posted at 9:18AM on Apr 17th 2008 by DigitalMind

8. I love digital electronics as much as anybody, but it strikes me as wasteful to put such a powerful microcomputer to use running logic that could be replicated with a single transistor. As for the camera, if you must know precisely when something gets caught, rather than implementing a beeper or something, you could add a second laser (to reduce the chance of false alarms) wire everything up to an old cell phone, and buy a prepaid sim card for it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I bet that would be a hell of alot cheaper, not to mention you could run it on batteries that way.

Posted at 3:36PM on Apr 17th 2008 by Wolf

9. Neat project but an embedded PC is complete over kill for this.
I would have used an ATiny,PIc 12Fxx or even a PICAXE controller.
If I needed more features including web update I'd use a rabbit 2000 or an 8052 and perform com over a Zigbee.
The latter two can even query a cell phone camera module for a low res pic of what ever is in the trap.

Posted at 7:33PM on Apr 17th 2008 by Stew

10. I like this project, but I just don't think break-beam is the same as laser guided.

Posted at 10:33AM on Apr 18th 2008 by Sol