Degausser available

[Simon Klyne]

anyone interested?

it's bulky and heavy and potentially very destructive - would it be useful?

[Monty]

I'd be interested in it

[Samuel Keating-Fry]

I have a stack of old hard drives I need to kill at the moment.
Any chance I could use it for an afternoon before monty takes it?

- S

[Simon]

I was more thinking about it being useful/fun for the space

Who would like to see this in the space?
Who would like to NOT see this in the space?

On Jun 28, 5:16 pm, Samuel Keating-Fry <mister.keat...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have a stack of old hard drives I need to kill at the moment.
> Any chance I could use it for an afternoon before monty takes it?
>
> - S
>

[Paddy Duncan]

I would like to see it in the space.

[Tim Reynolds]

+1 as long as it isn't HUGE. It'd be a really cool thing to have available to the community

[Nick Bradbeer]

I would like to not see it in the space, for the same reason as the plasma cutter - pacemaker. I may be erring heavily on the side of caution here, but it is wired into my heart. 

Also, this makes me wonder if I could be a bit more scientific about quantifying how dangerous/safe anything generating an EM field is likely to be. I can't find any guidance with actual numbers involved. Medtronic are obviously reluctant to give any guaranteed safe levels. Presumably it would be possible to measure the rate of change of flux around an object like a degausser or plasma cutter (using a magnetometer? It's been too long since I did anything electrical.) Obviously harder to decide what a safe level was, but at least if I knew an object was no higher than, say, a mobile phone, then I could wind back the paranoia a bit. Any suggestions, anyone?

Nick

[Simon Howes]

I think we should go further and ban all dangerous activities from the space.

[Mark Steward]

It would be nice to then cut the power if a warning light isn't previously turned on.  Can we get hold of a pacemaker to test?

Mark

[Adrian Godwin]

On Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Nick Bradbeer <nickbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to not see it in the space, for the same reason as the plasma
> cutter - pacemaker. I may be erring heavily on the side of caution here, but
> it is wired into my heart.

You're right to be careful, but I would rather doubt the field extends
very strongly more than a few cm. If it did, it would be unreasonably
inefficient.

A magnetometer is, I believe, only useful for measuring static fields,
not alternating ones. AC versions might also exist.

>
> Also, this makes me wonder if I could be a bit more scientific about
> quantifying how dangerous/safe anything generating an EM field is likely to
> be. I can't find any guidance with actual numbers involved. Medtronic are
> obviously reluctant to give any guaranteed safe levels. Presumably it would

That's absolutely disgusting. They must have data for the tests they
have performed, if not I would suspect they didn't perform any tests.
I wrote to my MP recently as a result of a campaign someone in the US
was having about the susceptibility of medical appliances and was
assured that the UK system was much more thorough (this was shortly
before the story about breast implants broke ..). Call them out on it,
and if they don't provide data, make a formal complaint.

Also,+1 on the demagnetiser, by all means with a requirement to
provide Nick with a warning if it is used. Useful not only for hard
drives but also demagnetising tools.

-adrian

[Adrian Godwin]

The manufacturers of the degausser recommend that person with
pacemakers should not be closer than 1m to the operating degausser.

http://www.veritysystems.co.uk/degaussers/healthandsafety.asp

-adrian

[Nick Bradbeer]

That's absolutely disgusting. They must have data for the tests they

have performed, if not I would suspect they didn't perform any tests.
I wrote to my MP recently as a result of a campaign someone in the US
was having about the susceptibility of medical appliances and was
assured that the UK system was much more thorough (this was shortly
before the story about breast implants broke ..). Call them out on it,
and if they don't provide data, make a formal complaint.

Actually, they've been incredibly helpful in the past whenever I've had questions. When I wanted to learn welding they sent a technician out with a diagnostic computer to test how the pacemaker responded, and whenever I've called their contact number with a question involving numbers they've put me through to engineers not customer service people.

They're required to do tests to ensure that their hardware can operate safely in some standard BS?) environmental conditions - the problem is that I keep wanting know how it will perform in unusual environments, like near welding gear, or under 4 atmospheres of pressure. In the latter case they'd done pot tests to a pressure greater than they were required to, and were able to advise me unofficially on what they suspected it would be okay to, but they'd have been taking on a hell of a liability if they'd given me a guarantee. I don't want to make them out to be bad guys here.

>>The manufacturers of the degausser recommend that person with
>>pacemakers should not be closer than 1m to the operating degausser.
>>http://www.veritysystems.co.uk/degaussers/healthandsafety.asp

Ahh, that's good enough for me. Cheers.

Nick

[Simon]

OK
the degausser is now in the space.
I have however removed the key for now until we can establish how it
can be used safely without destroying anything (like pacemakers,
laptops, oyster cards etc)

I won't have time for a while to sort out the documentation and
training but I will happily hand over the key to someone who wants to
look after this etc

[Akki]

How long before someone hacks it so it no longer needs the key? Place
your bets now! ;)

~Akki

[SamLR]

They shouldn't. Rule 2[1][2] exists for a reason and REALLY shouldn't be broken. If someone was caught doing this I'd consider it something that they should get a warning for. 

That being said, with the exception of an incidence about 6 months ago involving the 3-in-1 I can't think of any cases of people breaking rule 2

S

[1] http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Rules 

[2] "Don't defeat or hack safety features/equipment. This is for other people's safety as much as yours."

[Adrian Godwin]

No, but if it isn't labelled somebody might well 'fix' it by removing
the need for the apparently lost key, and think they've done the space
a favour.

-adrian

[SamLR]

Then can it have a label put on it making it clear what the situation is? 

I'm not at the space otherwise I'd do this myself...

[Simon]

it is labelled now

On Jun 30, 1:49 pm, SamLR <sam.lindenrat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Then can it have a label put on it making it clear what the situation is?
>
> I'm not at the space otherwise I'd do this myself...
>

> On 30 June 2012 13:37, Adrian Godwin <artgod...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > No, but if it isn't labelled somebody might well 'fix' it by removing
> > the need for the apparently lost key, and think they've done the space
> > a favour.
>
> > -adrian
>

> > On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 12:59 PM, SamLR <sam.lindenrat...@gmail.com>

> > wrote:
> > > They shouldn't. Rule 2[1][2] exists for a reason and REALLY shouldn't be
> > > broken. If someone was caught doing this I'd consider it something that
> > they
> > > should get a warning for.
>
> > > That being said, with the exception of an incidence about 6 months ago
> > > involving the 3-in-1 I can't think of any cases of people breaking rule 2
>
> > > S
>
> > > [1]http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Rules
> > > [2] "Don't defeat or hack safety features/equipment. This is for other
> > > people's safety as much as yours."
>

[cepm...@yahoo.co.uk]

The one hazard that we have not yet considered is that Sam G. might be
badly affected by this device.

Phil

--
" et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos. "

[David Murphy]

perhaps it might make sense to divide off an area for for some of the equipment which puts off a lot of interference and shield it with some metal caging for the sake of people with similar medical equipment and other nearby computer equipment.

Also a faraday cage might allow people to do some high voltage hacks which otherwise wouldn't be reasonable or safe.

[Simon]

De-Gaus'ed

On Monday, 2 July 2012 00:30:50 UTC+1, cepm...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

The one hazard that we have not yet considered is that Sam G. might be  
badly affected by this device.

Phil

--
" et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos. "

[samthetechie]

Fantastic photo. Had a chat with Simon earlier and have preliminarily
taken the keys, I am very happy to hand this over to someone with
more experience of electronics destroying magnetic fields (ahem Russ).
I have started making some notes here (please help out!):
http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/V91Degausser

On Jul 2, 5:08 pm, Simon <skl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> De-Gaus'ed
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, 2 July 2012 00:30:50 UTC+1, cepm...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>
> > The one hazard that we have not yet considered is that Sam G. might be
> > badly affected by this device.
>
> > Phil
>
> > --
> > " et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos. "
>

> > On Sat, 30 Jun 2012 01:44:40 +0100, Simon <sk...@gmail.com<skl...@gmail.com>>

> > wrote:
>
> > > OK
> > > the degausser is now in the space.
> > > I have however removed the key for now until we can establish how it
> > > can be used safely without destroying anything (like pacemakers,
> > > laptops, oyster cards etc)
>
>
>

>  Sam De-Gaus.jpg
> 208KViewDownload