Some considerations: these packages have a very strong adhesive on the back which is hard to remove without damaging the package or surface; they have unique serial numbers (barcoded on newer versions under the bubble packaging) so that they can’t be easily replaced; and the balls are glass, not metal, so they can’t be pushed around by a magnet. It’s overall a pretty ingenious system.

Another one is the Tip’n’tell system, which uses fine coloured sand and clear tape to detect tipping in one direction. I once saw one of these affixed to the side of a large autoclave which had been shipped to our university. There’s a whole series of these shipping indicators, for detecting acceleration (shock), temperature (too hot/too cold), and pressure.

I am always amazed at the lengths distribution warehouse workers will go to tamper with these vs. just not tipping the shipment. I've actually seen boxes of replacement stickers on the back of a forklift during a tour. I once had a shipment come in with TiltWatches on it and someone had slid pins through the plastic right above the balls to hold them in place. I now check for holes on these.

IF you are shipping something that really needs to be rejected if tipped, cover the stickers with a panel, shipping manifest, etc. Make sure the receiver knows to remove the covering and check before signing for the package.

Those Tip'n'tells double as great makeshift earthquake sensors. https://i.imgur.com/v83aNzV.jpg

Absolutely. Receiver popping a panel to show the other set of tip'n'tells can get some great expressions.

But if the shippers are serious, and use to moving 6-7 figure equipment around, they'll expect it.

But how do you prove these indicators weren't triggered before shipping?

I usually do a walk around with a camera in the back of the truck before we button everything up.

> I've actually seen boxes of replacement stickers on the back of a forklift during a tour.

Great, now they elevated a simple case of negligence (at best) to fraud.

If you want to prevent tampering, think inside the box. By which I mean also put these indicators on the inside of the box.

We used them on the crates we built around fab equipment when I helped dismantle a Zilog fab in Idaho. Quite a fun job for a young man. Those things were quite important to the buyers and the middle men though truth be told that sensitive equipment wasn't always handled with kids gloves.

> Another one is the Tip’n’tell system, which uses fine coloured sand and clear tape to detect tipping in one direction.

I imagine you'd have to ship these really carefully. :P

(Yeah I know you'd probably add the sand after attaching it to the package. :P )

No, they're stuck on and a piece of blocking plastic is removed once applied to "arm" them.

What's stopping them from using a plastic ball? Would it be too light?

I’d guess. High friction low weight and it might produce too many false negatives.

maybe you could push a plastic ball around with static

I wonder if static electricity could be used to move the ball and bypass the "no magnets" feature.

Doubtful, the static would traverse the plastic packaging and never touch the balls

Please don't do this here.

I’d go for something like a powerful vibrator like used in concrete settling.

Or exert some pressure onto the window, that will keep the ball from moving.

For those who didn't quite get this on the first glance:

This isn't a low-fi analog sensor used for taking novel measurements of things. It's meant to be affixed to packages to determine if they were mishandled during shipment. If a package was dropped or overturned, the ball bearings will fall out of place and (presumably) be almost impossible to return to their original positions.

Pretty cool.

On the example shown, it's virtually impossible to reset all the indicators just by rotating/shaking it. Turning it over to reset the angle indicator would trip the "180 degree" indicator. You cannot fix both.

(Though if the ball is metallic, you can use a magnet. This kind of tampering can be detected by putting one on the inside of your package.)

The balls are made of glass to prevent use of such witchcraft.

I kinda want to try static electricity on one..

It's an ingenious system, because the sort of package handler who would handle a package roughly isn't the sort to carefully figure out how to reset them, and vice versa.

This is only because the sort of person who would rough up a package and only then figure out how to 'fix' it, becomes a computer programmer instead.

Sadly, most programmers are known for being bad at package management.

npm install -g babel-cli

npm ERR! code ENOENT

npm ERR! errno 66

npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in ...

npm ERR! ... eh, who are we kidding. Don't quit your day job.

And the sort of person who would try to figure out to fix it before even touching the package goes into ops/ops-sec instead.

A long needle with a dab of super glue would probably work. It's brittle when it dries, so breaking the bond is pretty easy. Would leave 1 or 2 telltale holes, but you could be careful about where they are.

Nope. Super glue in a confined space causes a very visible white fog as it sets.

The receiver could always test it after the fact. If it didn’t work then I’m sure they would look closely for tampering and would have pretty good evidence that someone tried to defraud them. Seems risky.

> and (presumably) be almost impossible to return to their original positions

You'd want the widget to have a tracking number on it though, because otherwise they could just rip the whole widget off and slap on a fresh one.

I'm hoping that's what the purpose of the number along the right edge is.

Exactly. https://www.uline.ca/Product/Detail/S-5571/Damage-Indicators...

Yeah I had no clue what I was looking at. Thanks for the explanation.

> and (presumably) be almost impossible to return to their original positions

Unless they have fixed them, the bearings are metallic and can be reset with a magnet. (I had to do this a few times when I bumped the thing putting it on)

This is why you stick them on the inside of your package, as well as the outside.

These look like glass from the low res photo.

There's a pretty serious problem indicated in the first comment:

"These are a ripoff. I ordered an entire case of these and every single one of them was already used when they arrived in the mail."

I think that comment was intend to be funny, but it does point out a serious problem: how do you ship these things to the end-user without triggering them?

Addressed below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22469900

Thanks.

I think your comment was intended to be funny, but it does point out a serious problem: what to do with accidentally funny comments not meant to so be?

Laugh.

My last employer used these when shipping robots. I don't know which was better: being able to show mis-shipment, or the deterrent effect of these highly-visible stickers.

There was an article here a while back about a bike company having lots of trouble with damage during shipping. They changed their packaging so that it appeared that there was a TV in the box and not a bike and the damage claims dropped.

Found it: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/25/13048668/vanmoof-shipping...

I actually had this same phenomenon with a desk that was shipped to me recently! The top came in its own box with a huge picture of a TV on it. At first I was really confused, but then I realized that while the huge picture was a TV, the small text said it was the desk top I'd been waiting for.

That's funny! I had heard of this before, but I misremembered it as a TV company printing a bicycle on the box to deter theft. I sort of wonder if that would work now, come to think of it.

If a TV company put a bicycle on the box, there would be plenty of shipping damage. The only reason the opposite worked is because people naturally assume a TV is far more fragile than a bicycle.

Maybe a bicycle wouldn’t work, but could there be something else that would?

By work, I think they were referring to avoiding thefts, not shipping damage.

Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear but I meant that instead of thefts it will become shipping damage.

TVs and bikes are pretty comparable in value (both range from hundreds to thousands of dollars). Disguise a TV as a desk, though, and you might be onto something.

Good desks are also in the same price range as cheaper TVs.

I bet most porch pirates will have an easier time fencing a tv rather than a desk, and so would be more likely to take a TV box.

On the other hand, fencing a desk would draw less suspicion than fencing a TV.

We bought these and stuck them to some fairly expensive equipment crates when moving our lab. The movers got very annoyed and made us sign so many extra forms and take photographs. The entire move was insured as well,and I doubt they'd have agreed to take these crates otherwise

> movers got very annoyed

That speaks volumes.

Large expensive equipment (shipped in custom-built pallets) use this. About $3/each to ship a $100+K box. https://www.amazon.com/Tiltwatch-STWPLUS-Plus-Label-Pack/dp/...

How does one acquire these without triggering the tilt alert?

You can see that in each section, there is a small hole in the back where you can see the box through the hole. When you buy these, each hole has a pin in it, keeping the ball in the starting area. When you pull the indicator off the backing, the pins come with it. So you only have to keep it upright after you peel the backing off.

Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuLClpWRmQ8

You can see that each hole has a red colored pin in it, and you can see the pins come away with the backing (at about 0:21 in the video).

That means the pins could be replaced one at a time to reset the device back to its original "unperturbed" state.

To replace the pins, you'd need to tear the device off of the package. I assume that means cardboard is coming off with it, and the adhesive is ruined for re-application. So now you need to apply new adhesive, and do a good enough job that the recipient doesn't catch on to your shenanigans.

Or you could order your own batch of them and, right before handoff, rip off their sticker and then affix yours to cover the damage.

...which is presumably why these have unique serial numbers! They really did think of everything. (You have to make sure the shipper communicates the serial number to the recipient for that part to function, though.)

You ship them in a box with one sticker applied to the side, of course. #inception

There are little dots at the top of the place where the each ball starts. I expect there is something in those spots which prevents the balls from moving and you remove it before you apply the detector.

I believe those dots above the start area have something pulled out when you take the back of the sticker that stops it from rolling around until it gets applied to the correct thing

You don't, you just flip them all around and jiggle them to reset them. Then you hope nobody does that to your box...

If you don't know, don't guess.

The ones I used (20 years ago?) worked this way. It's not a guess, it's just outdated. Regardless, my apologies for the inaccuracy.

I guess those ones didn't have the 180° sensors on them? With these one it would be pretty much impossible to jiggle both balls into place.

Are you sure? There are holes in the yellow backing that look perfectly placed to have some sort of retaining pin inserted to hold the balls in place until use.

At first I thought they were meant to insert the ball, but the holes look too small.

Doesn't being mass-produced sort of defeat the purpose? Buy an identical label, replace the barcode, and you're done.

Until someone checks the serial number.

See the C097412 in the bottom-right corner? Your replacement will be C097413 or something, and won't match.

Yeah, but if you replace the barcode that's not a problem.

I suppose you could stick one on the inside and one on the outside, as paxys suggested. Then you'd have both deterrent and tamper-resistance.

As an extra bonus, if some schmuck tilts and replaces it, the deterrent will still be in force for the next guy down the line.

The serial number is--in theory--recorded by the sender specifically so that you can't just swap them out.

You put sticker #C097412 on the crate yourself, record the number, and the shipper takes it away. If things arrive damaged--and these are usually used on very expensive shipments--you can check the tilt indicator AND its number. I would bet it's much worse if indicator #D108523 arrives instead.

As an added impediment, they're often on the surface of the item but buried beneath a bunch of plastic wrap/padding/etc.

Yes, your shipping department records the barcode and signs, receiver gets the list of them by separate record. Receiver checks these of course.

You'll often also put a variety of them inside.

It's not just rough handling, but temperature and humidity too. You can audit this sort of thing by sending occasional fake packages with precise recording instruments in them, but for usual shipments just use a variety of indicators.

Yes, but I mean, what if you replace the sticker with the barcode and the serial number?

You have #C097412. You remove it, and put on #D108523. You then replace the barcode and serial number underneath with #D108523.

The vendor puts the tilt detectors onto the crate before the shipper collects it. The tag numbers are noted on the invoice/shipping notice/etc which says something like “Please verify tilt indicator C097412 before accepting the package. If the indicator is missing or reads 40+ degrees, DO NOT SIGN FOR THE PACKAGE; CALL US ASAP INSTEAD.” This is sent by email or (alas) fax directly from the vendor to the recipient.

At some point in transit, the package tips over (oops). You sneak in and swap the indicator for #D108523 while it’s awaiting a connection.

When it arrives, the recipient checks the crate against the invoice. She notices that the indicator numbers don’t match: the email says C097412, but the crate has D108532 on it. She won’t sign for it. She calls the vendor and says “There may be a problem with the very fragile, VERY EXPENSIVE microscope I ordered from you. Send me another one that’s demonstrably intact or get a service team out here NOW to check this one over. Legal says you’re not getting paid otherwise.”

Several other people are about to have bad days. The vendor checks their own logs and finds that the crate did indeed go out with C097412 on it. They proceed to ream out the shipping company. A lot of things might happen next, but after most of them, you get fired.

You might have gotten away with it if you could change that email, but how would you at the shipping company, have access to either parties’ email or records? And if you did have such access—-and wanted to use it for evil—-surely you could think of something more lucrative than fractionally increasing the number of possibly-damaged items received?

I, as the shipper, tell you (the receiver) out-of-band that you're getting a tilt indicator with serial #C097412. You check the received label against my out-of-band signal to ensure it matches.

And you did, but it's a forgery. It doesn't look like it has the fancy holo stickers or anything.

That might not exactly take a Tony Mendez-grade forger, but making a good one is probably not going to be within the skill set of random warehouse workers who enjoy agitating expensive shipments. They have to find a decent forger, get in contact, and arrange for the service. That wasn't going to be cheap to begin with, but the package is constantly in motion, so now someone else has to emplace the forged detector in a different location.

Assuming the warehouse worker can afford all that, someone offering anti-tamper-bypass-as-a-service is going to run headfirst into the FBI, SCA, and other well-resourced government organizations with which a sane individual would never consider fucking. That does not lead to rising property values in Tokyo.

And what’s the point of all this effort?

Tilting packages doesn’t seem particularly fun or lucrative. It’s not even a particularly effective form of sabotage: maybe you’ll increase the damaged-in-shipment claims by a bit, but maybe not.

If you’re already forging and breaking into wear houses, surely you could find something more enjoyable, profitable, or vicious to do than provide post-hoc cover to a rough shipper.

Usually?

You are a delivery worker. You will get fired if you aren't fast enough. You will also be fired if you trigger a tilt indicator.

You're on your final warning, and replacement tilt stickers cost $3 on ebay.

A delivery worker won't be hacking e-mails - but if they know hardly anyone checks the tilt sensor serial numbers anyway...

The solution is obviously to find a forger, put them on retainer, and swap out the indicators as needed so that you can keep a $15/hr warehouse job.

I have no idea how much such a service would cost (perhaps your life is much more exciting than mine), but I'd imagine skilled forgers don't come cheap, as they could easily find something more profitable to do than faking tilt indicators.

Not if it is stuck inside the box.

I imagine half the point (or more) is to be very visible to encourage anybody handling it during shipping to be careful.

That's why you do both. They are cheap (relatively).

This is not exactly new technology. I was involved in shipping large, expensive, delicate equipment overseas back in the 1990s and we used tilt indicators extensively. Not exactly the same as these, but very similar. Along with shock- and humidity indicators of course.

I guess these are only used for very special applications, since I can't think of any consumer product that wouldn't survive being shipped in any spatial orientation; it's also easier to design packaging that ensures that, rather than add these detectors and deal with the damages. Shock, on the other hand, is far more damaging and harder to protect against.

large flatscreen TVs are quite vulnerable when laid sideways (even in the original packaging). the internal components are not designed to support their own weight in this orientation and can damage the screen.

Unrelated, but this reminds me of John Birges’s self-made bomb, which would explode if tilted.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey%27s_Resort_Hotel_bombin...

Couldn't these be triggered by shock/vibrations that make the ball jump to the next slot? At first I thought they were filled with mineral oil or some viscous fluid to prevent this, but it looks like there are holes in the backing material so it's not fluid-tight.

Shock and vibration are bad too. You'll usually use tilt sensors with impact sensors: https://spotsee.io/impact

Assuming Z axis is "up", you'll need one of these for the X and the Y axis to catch all relevant tilts. It's probably not cost effective or practical to make a 2-dimensional detector, but I imagine you could.

I used these when we would ship servers off to edge sites. You end up putting 5 or 6 of them on the box... tilt sensors on two sides, impact sensors, and temperature/moisture to make sure they haven't been left out on tarmac/loading docks. $100 in stickers on a $xx,xxx shipment is an easy justification.

In practice they aren't hard for a motivated person to reset, but they do result in handlers along the way being a bit more careful with your stuff.

It’s all about raising the bar for mishandling. Sure, if an unethical handling company messes up your shipment they could go at it and try and reset the indicator(s), but they could also just get the job done right and not risk getting sued if the client does detect the tampering. On the other hand, without indicators there’s nothing stopping them from pretending they didn’t just throw your box around...

It also tends to make it rather obvious fraud.

While replacing a sticker is legal, doing so to trick someone into paying you is usually criminal fraud.

Criminal liability is a _far_ bigger leap than normal deceptive business practices.

Especially since these stickers (and those like them) have serial numbers, and the sender typically notes the serial numbers in an email or similar when the item is shipped. The effort required to reset one without it being noticed is pretty high.

There are two reasons why you would ever want to use something more complex: determining when the triggering happened (ie. who to blame) and ascertaining after the fact whether the trigger event was really meaningful for the package contents. You can build such an electronic sensor and it even can be cheap if reusable, but it mostly is not cost-effective.

On the other hand trying to build such an thing is good source of interesting stories, like sales reps of three different semiconductor manufacturers calling you at 4AM and wanting to know what the hell you are designing and whether it in fact is not missile guidance system or some other ITAR covered thing...

>In practice they aren't hard for a motivated person to reset but a person who mishandles boxes wouldn't seem to fit that description. Foolproof.

I just had a train of thought on how this would work with Tessaracts

Just curious if anyone knows the price of these? I wonder if an MPU6050 tied to an attiny micro would be cheaper.

Of course part of the value in the posted indicator is the resulting better (less rough) handling of a shipper that sees the monitoring device.

A good example of this phenomenon is the article posted on HN a few months back about bicycle companies shipping their bikes in TV boxes resulting in significantly less damage.

I wonder if the simplicity/analog nature works in its favour here (even if cost is marginally more). "How did the ball _possibly_ get there if you didn't mishandle it?" vs. "I dunno, I guess your sensor must be broken".

They’re about $5 each. An electronic solution would probably be similar cost at scale, but ultimately easier to tamper with by hacking it, etc. These have been used for decades and are pretty close to tamper proof.

The electronic one could measure some other things, though. Like how long it spent in a tipped-over state, or what time it was tipped over so you know which shipper to blame.

There are electronic versions in the market already. About 10 years ago we used some from MSR [1] to monitor shipments of some very special objects with replacement costs well into six figures.

And no, we didn't use just one... of anything.

[1] https://www.msr.ch/en/

I guess it was actually a few years ago..time flies!!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19008470

I remember having a toy like this where you had to put multiple balls to different holes by tilting and shaking.

It's a similar idea, where the balls start in the 'finished' position, and very little tolerance to being disturbed. Recreating that state would be more trouble than it's worth.

In my experience, the blue/red "Tip-N-Tell" indicator arrow is more common -- and also cheaper.

Or just put a glass of water in the box. If the box is wet upon arrival (or looks as if it has been wet), don't accept it.

This is better because with the tilt detection system you will not measure large vertical accelerations, which I suppose in most cases will also spoil the shipped product.

I would have to be ink, so you can't just dry the box. But even then they could siphon the ink out and put it back in shortly before delivery.

Perhaps add a transparent window over the cardboard?

The biggest issue with that is that it could damage/mark other items, so a shipper has a good reason not to agree to ship something protected that way.

Can't you just flip the box on its side, so that the label is horizontal, then use static friction and tap it with little inclination like you would do with those maze-ball children games.

To prevent this attack you could use two labels on two vertical orthogonal faces.

I love simple and ingenious stuff like this.

Low cost, simple, and effective low tech way to monitor a shipment.

Can’t you tamper it with acoustic tweezers [1]?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_tweezers

Ignoring the fact that delicate lab equipment is rarely found in warehouses....

Acoustic tweezers are usually meant to move much smaller particles (e.g., a cell), rather than big macroscopic things, though I think someone had a system that moved 1mm+ bits of foam.

There are also things similar to this which show if the shipment has been frozen, or un-frozen.

https://www.scigiene.com/TI0300

How are these shipped to folks who need to use them? Do they come with reset instructions? Looks like that 180-degree detector would be the worst to reset before applying the sticker.

See those holes in the sticker? I imagine the piece of paper you peel off holds pins into place in there, preventing triggering until after the sticker is applied.

I hadn’t realized those were holes. Makes sense.

See the video https://spotsee.io/tilt/tiltwatch-plus

Video of the device working: https://youtu.be/y0cohIWAbpA

tl;dr: it sticks to a package and has a tamper proof mechanisim to detect if it was inclined.

It is clever, yes, but also something that has been used in the shipping and logistics industry for decades. So more "standard" than "ingenious".

Ingenious means clever, and the fact that it's not a novelty doesn't make it any less ingenious.

They were ingenious when invented, and are still ingenious. I would still buy the inventor a beer today.

Unfortunately it's quite difficult to prove who tilted the devices in a court of law.

In the chain of custody that is shipment, though, it IS easy to check for violated detectors before accepting custody of the package, and refusing to accept responsibility for it.

Looks like to reset it you lay it flat and roll the balls to the small indentations.

More than one sticker in different planes.

What makes you think that being around for decades makes it impervious to being hacked? You're on hackernews.

Because trucking isn't Uber. The company that is shipping out million-dollar medical automation robots calls the same trucking company every day. If they ever found out that the sensors had been tampered with, and it would be obvious right away, then the robot people would never hire those truckers again. That's your reputation. In real life, that's how people do business. The real world is not a big puzzle.

Exactly this. Not to mention shippers often apply two sets of these, one on the outside for deterrent purposes and a second set inside the equipment that they'll verify before signing off that it was received.

I agree. But the situation you describe does not address possible weaknesses in the sticker design.

If the shipper doesn't want to have to deal with it, a pinhole with some cyanoacrylate will keep the ball in place, and will be very difficult to notice. Resetting it after a tilt will be much more challenging.

That's a dangerous game. Even if the receiver doesn't notice at inspection time, they might discover it after delivery. They could notice the balls don't move while breaking apart the box. Or, the expensive object they received might exhibit damage characteristic of being tilted. At that point it may be too late to prove the shipper did it, but they'll definitely re-inspect the tilt-detector.

If you're lucky, they'll never hire you again. If you're unlucky, they'll rehire you just to prove you defrauded them.

I imagine that you could bypass this system by resetting glass ball positions manually with the use of high-power acoustic grippers combined with additional manual tilting of the package.