Nope! Look at the LED screwed into the case (Letter E in the previous picture). What is this thing? How does it work? Could I build it? Could I make it better? It Was A Briefcase Filled With Wires! Professionals call it “Reverse Engineering.” Some call it “hacking.” It doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s a common behavior of every curious person I know. That said, taking stuff apart and putting it back together and goofing around with it is key to understanding how stuff works. I – Printed circuit board (commercial part – not much hand soldering here – so not much hacking done) H – Ribbon connector (commercial part – pretty hard to find) I’ve created a composite picture in Photoshop – see my letter key below:ī – Four switches (Hour, Minute, Time, Alarm) The large LED segmented display and the location of the buttons on are my basic clues. Looking at the picture, I think this is the guts of a 1980’s vintage Micronta 63-765A. And if the English teacher who freaked out on the kid really didn’t know what she was looking at, surely the law enforcement officers should have instantly known the device did not contain explosives. Certainly any science, math or engineering teacher should be able to tell the difference at a glance. With the smallest amount of training (or common sense), you could tell the difference, too. In practice, most of the people I work with could easily tell a homebrew digital clock from an improvised explosive device (IED). Don’t they have science fairs in Texas? Context If you attend a maker faire or a science fair or just hang out with a few geeky kids, you are going to find all kinds of homebrew and hacked electronics. Is it possible that he’s the only kid in Irving, Texas, who knows how to build an electronic device? And, more importantly, when Ahmed said it was a clock, how is it possible that no teacher, law enforcement officer or just plain adult knew what they were looking at? I don’t know if Ahmed Mohammed, the 14-year-old arrested for bringing a homemade digital alarm clock to school in Texas, is a “Maker” (the maker culture is a technology-based extension of DIY culture) or just a geeky kid who likes to solder. So could you tell the difference between the two devices? Could you tell a clock from a bomb? The Maker Movement That said, a time bomb needs a timer, and a homemade digital clock would do that job nicely. As a rule, homemade digital clocks do not contain detonators or explosives. There are, however, some nontrivial differences. Both devices might include a timing circuit, a display, a power supply, some switches, a radio (WiFi, Bluetooth or RF), a bunch of wires and some kind of housing or case. All rights reserved.A homemade digital clock and a homemade bomb might share several component parts. The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2015 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. Someone should get them a nice big clock. Hey, you’d be exhausted too, trying to schedule visits to just about everyone from the White House to Silicon Valley.Īnd speaking of exhausting, who’s gonna have to read through and verify all those signatures? Sounds pretty time-consuming too. He wasn’t available to local media all day Friday. His suspension for bringing his homemade clock to school on Monday is over, but he told NewsFix Thursday that he wouldn’t be going back to MacArthur High. It also doesn’t sound like Ahmed will ever be an Irving ISD student again, either. They hadn’t had a chance to review the petition, but reminded reporters that the teacher followed proper procedure and had responded to the device, not the student. The message is simple, “Reverse Ahmed Mohamed’s suspension, publicly apologize to the Mohamed family, and reevaluate your disciplinary policies.”īut it doesn’t sound like the district is going to be apologizing. That’s how many online signatures are on a petition delivered to Irving ISD Friday. Here’s another example - 15,000 names deep. WASHINGTON - (CNN) So, we all know how popular Ahmed Mohamed has been this week.
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