7 ms·

1.2 million grant for this? Now I’ve seen grift, but come on. I want to hire their grant writer. Literally a relay in the starter lead. This looks like one of

• pohl 3y ago
  Prototyping is a tiny fraction of product development.
• AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  https://xkcd.com/664/ https://xkcd.com/664/
  • K0balt 3y ago
    Lol. So true.
• StevenXC 3y ago
  Speaking as someone who's reviewed for NSF before, I'd have expected this grant to also include resources to get the product to market, which I'm assuming you haven't done.
  • hanniabu 3y ago
    Doesn't take much to put a few notes together
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
    Well say we give him 30 more minutes? (Also, their device is supposed to be tamper proof. That sounds more difficult)
    • K0balt 3y ago
      Hmm. If the can figure out how to make it so I can’t just tear their device out and hook up my own battery cable they might be on to something, but most new cars already come with sophisticated anti tampering measures. At any rate, good for them. It will be a great learning experience at least.
  • K0balt 3y ago
    Not on the battery relay, no, but I have done some small scale hardware projects (>10k units) , and for something like this I’d need about 250k to make 10k units of a <$10 BOM setup like this. Not sure what any relevant certificates might cost though. At any rate it’s not going to be good for your vehicle warranty lol. But they might be funding for marketing costs and other soft expenses. Nice project and a great jaunt for a year or two. I’m sure they will learn a lot. Good for them. The real screwy thing here is it’s like they did no market research or customer testing here. There are already a multitude of cheap, sophisticated, highly effective solutions in this segment that are much less user hostile than this gadget seems to be .
  • sbohacek 3y ago
    I don't think so. NSF Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) and NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants include getting products to market. But this is a regular research grant from NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC)[1]. The SaTC does have a Transition to Practice (TTP) option. However, this research is CORE (see the text "CORE" in the project title [2]). The objective is to write research papers. [1] https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22517/nsf22517.htm https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22517/nsf22517.htm [2] https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2245223&HistoricalAwards=false https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2245223&His...
• jaboutboul 3y ago
  If you’re already done with development then why not beat them to market?
  • K0balt 3y ago
    Because there’s no product market fit here. There are a myriad of far more secure and user friendly alternatives. I briefly investigated the market thinking maybe I had something cool, but there are a thousand better solutions under 20 dollars. The only way something like this gets traction is “as seen on TV” marketing to naive consumers, and I have no interest in building for that market.
• memetomancer 3y ago
  This is a frustrating yet common sort of take. Yes, this is simple, as the article clearly points out. Yes it is obvious in retrospect. But did you do anything with your brilliant work besides bodge your terrible car a few more miles down the road? There is value to developing the entire system... to ensuring the keypad mechanism is reasonably robust and tamper proof. There is value to understanding the vehicle as a system and reasoning out this defense strategy. There will be value in preliminary productization of something this for mass production, especially as regards the use of that terrible 12v power port and providing the 'fingerprint' in a safe range of voltage fluctuations to avoid catastrophic and probably non-obvious failure modes. There will likely be D.O.T. paperwork, and UL listing. $1.2 million is probably a bit meager to truly develop something like this. Yes, you can hobble some crap together on your Montero. Congratulation. Hardly a solid foundation to speak ill of this team doing something genuinely productive.
  • K0balt 3y ago
    No, really, good for them. But don’t be talking down on my car. That’s just not cool. That beast is the workhorse of the farm and it gets the job done. None of the windows roll down though and it’s hot as hell inside, so it discourages unnecessary use, saving the planet. It rarely sees pavement but it drags what needs to be dragged and it pulls the utility rigs out after they deliver to us.
    • DanHulton 3y ago
      And that's all well and good, but maybe introspect here for a second? You're upset that your accomplishments aren't being respected, immediately after discounting the accomplishments of others. The point is that your car's modifications and the university's are similar, but different, particularly in scale and broad robustness, which adds difficulty in ways you may not be appreciating. $1.2 million may sound like a lot to you, but to pay a team of people to work on, and provide materials for them to work with (especially cars, which generally aren't cheap, especially used cars right now!)... Well, it likely doesn't go as far as you think it does.
      • 3y ago
• woobar 3y ago
  This is very close to what the original LoJack did in 1979. They added keypad to replace switching on lights: [LoJack] could also include the incorporation of a scheme whereby an additional step was required to activate the ignition. Prior to starting, it would require the activation of any number of the usual vehicle features such as the radio, headlight switch, or other switched device. Without knowledge of the proper procedure, it would be almost impossible to activate the ignition. Modern transponder key based systems made the original LoJack starting system obsolete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack
  • K0balt 3y ago
    As they do this system as well lol. But good for them. They will learn a lot.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • KennyBlanken 3y ago
    > Modern transponder key based systems made the original LoJack starting system obsolete Transponder keys aka immobilizer systems. All those Kias being stolen in the US are being stolen because the US does not mandate any form of immobilizer, and thus Kia on their cheapest models didn't include one. Canada mandates immobilizer systems. Guess where the whole "Kia boys" phenomenon isn't a problem? This is one of many examples of how our "democracy" isn't working. The vast majority of the US populace would agree that an immobilizer system which prevents a car from being started with a screwdriver is a good thing. Every time it's been proposed in congress, the automotive lobby has told congress how very expensive it would be for them (and by very expensive, we're talking probably less than $100 per car.) The expense to society (the owner losing their likely sole means of transport to work, health care, social activities and suddenly having a massive expense), police response to do something (er, just collect the report, I guess), the lost productivity, emergency services, and medical costs of people injured (victims or perps) from joyriders...all that goes unmentioned, because nobody's spending money to put someone in front of Tommy Tubletone from chucklesville to tell him that it'll cost everyone less to mandate the things. Consider that ABS was not mandated in the US until 2012, along with traction control. Compared to a lot of european "socialist" countries, we have much worse alignment between public opinion and legislation, and it's because of how powerful lobbying and corporate election funding is here, and a pervasive, insidious effort to portray anything other than wild-west free-market attitudes as "communism."
• chriskanan 3y ago
  Here is the link to the award (I think): https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2245223&HistoricalAwards=false https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2245223&His... Probably half the award is taken up by indirect costs at the university, leaving the remainder for a few PhD students to be funded, money for the devices, and any studies where they are probably paying participants to use the device. $1.2M doesn't go that far in terms of grants. As far as whether this is a good investment for the government's money, I'm a lot less clear. Given all of the recent car thefts due to TikTok, I assume that influenced NSF and the reviewers.
  • K0balt 3y ago
    Honestly good for them. I’m sure they will learn a lot.
  • samstave 3y ago
    Curious, what % of costs of a grant are usually consumed by the UNi - are these to pay for equipment, power, lab time, etc? Or are they slurping funds for other aspects of the uni's operations?
    • klodolph 3y ago
      https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25910/what-does-overhead-rate-mean https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25910/what-does... Overhead includes things like administrative & support staff, equipment depreciation, etc. It’s often calculated as some percentage of the grant. Then you fill out your timesheet to bill hours to specific grants, so it can all be tracked.
    • intrasight 3y ago
      Universities typically take 50%
    • HWR_14 3y ago
      Usually about half. It's designed to cover the costs of running a university research program spread across all the projects. So a 10MM project provides 10x the funding that a 1MM project provides. Think things like health insurance for the researchers, covering time between projects, lab capital costs, electricity, administration, accounting, even the cost of writing grants. There's a valid question of if that number can be smaller, but the general concept makes sense.
• Mizoguchi 3y ago
  Not sure about the details of this particular grant, but with federal grants usually you don't get a million dollar check to develop your idea. The money is divided in phases each requiring a set of milestones to be completed, reviewed and approved for you to have access to more resources. The total grant may be a million, but you may first get 100K and 6 months to show a working version then the next phase if approved gives you 200K more and so on.
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Most federal grant I've worked with don't have internal milestones gating funding. That is taken care of by separate grants at each phase. You might need to lay out your whole road map for the first grant, but but that entire grant only covers 6mo or whatever.
• cobertos 3y ago
  Huh, the house I'm living in was built with a $300k NSF grant. Though I bought it for $2k at auction (it's 220sqft). Funnily enough, also from U of M Crazy to think you could build at least 4 of these with the same amount of grant money.
• soligern 3y ago
  That’s what people said about Dropbox too. I can set this up in 5 mins with rsync blah blah. There is value and effort involved in making it production ready, seamless, general population ready etc.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • mcpackieh 3y ago
    > There is value and effort involved in making it production ready, seamless, general population ready etc. This wasn't done. Well, it wasn't done by these researchers, but it has been done countless times before by other people. This research is a joke. Edit: I've realized the dropbox comment reference is an appropriate reference, but in the exact opposite way you're suggesting. All the ignition interlock switches already on the market are dropbox. This researcher is the one saying "look what I can do with rsync."
• pseingatl 3y ago
  I thought I had the only 1980's-vintage Montero diesel. 4D55 4 cylinder engine, no turbo. That engine with a turbocharger was sold in Mitsubishi pick-ups, but as of 1985, the 4D55 was not imported. Had to import it myself, long story. I understand there are replacement engines in Chile.
• duxup 3y ago
  There was a news story a while ago that detailed a paper that coined a term, something like “time battery”. It detailed how data centers could save money and power by processing intensive tasks during off hours. It seemed like a simple crib job would cover the entire premise. Let alone all the other strategies out there. It wasn’t clear to me if the paper in question recognized that people already do that with computers. I tried reading it but it was pretty hard to get through.
• bozhark 3y ago
  If you need a grant writer… 100% acceptance of every grant proposal I’ve ever submitted.
• beerandt 3y ago
  Agreed. This is just fancy marketing for what is is essentially a battery with an obscure and overly convoluted password scheme to output >x amps. Also: Plugging in a battery booster down stream of the device's imposed amp bottleneck seems like a stupid simple circumvention. Maybe it isolates the starter circuit, but that starts diminishing it's selling point of being simple and universal, if you need to start dealing with differences in wiring.
• unsui 3y ago
  > I guess I should have applied for a grant. But you didn't. Echoing the sentiment from many of the replies, it's easy to arm-chair quarterback and criticize others' work (and moreover, the existence of the work itself) as intuitively obvious, and therefore lacking value. Besides the fact that it has value to someone (therefore the grant award), the devil's in the details, and a grant like this isn't just for the idea, but also for development and productionizing. But, going back to your point... if you think you can do better, than by all means do so. Seems like sour grapes that someone else is capitalizing on something that is intuitively obvious to you.
• coldtea 3y ago
  >That way I can basically forget that it exists, problem solved. It has been working flawlessly for two years now. The whole thing took me about 3 hours to put on strip board and program, another half hour to enclose and mount it. Give me an hour more in micropython and I could make it require a passcode entered on your phone with a secret wiper switch sequence as a backup. So, basically a custom rig, with some shit that might or might not work from AliExpress, is out of the question for anybody not knowledgable in electronics ("hooked it up with an esp32 and some discrete components"), and needs even more work to have a functionality that would come in standard in a commercial solution. Some of the strongest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 vibes...
  • montag 3y ago
    No offense to the GP, but geez that comment belongs in some kind of Hacker News hall of fame
• SanderNL 3y ago
  Hate to say it, but the tech itself is the easy part. It usually is.