Mark Rober, an American ex-NASA engineer-turned-YouTube personality, earns praises online for creating a glitter bomb that farts on Amazon package thieves.
According to a survey conducted by Xfinity Home, Comcast's home security service, 30 percent of Americans have fallen victims to the latest prolific crime in the United States: doorstep delivery theft.
Mark Rober Designs Glitter Bomb
In his video titled "Package Thief vs. Glitter Bomb Trap," Rober shares how he designed the glitter bomb. Rober's video, which was posted on his YouTube channel, has already gained almost 7 million views since it was published on Dec. 17.
Rober took six months to create the glitter bomb that is made up of a GPS tracking, cameras, fart spray, and glitter in a hilarious mechanism. It's his own funny way to take revenge at the thieves who had stolen an Amazon delivery right from his doorstep. Robert said that he felt the need to take a stand given his engineering expertise after the police had just dismissed reports of delivery theft.
"I felt like something needs to be done to take a stand against dishonest punks like this," Rober said. "If anyone was going to make a revenge ... package and over-engineer the crap out of it, it was going to be me."
The thieves, who are called "porch pirates," steal Amazon delivery packages right off one's doorstep. This issue is increasing, although, the authorities have shown a slow response on this matter. The FBI, meanwhile, does not keep statistics on this national issue.
How The Glitter Bomb Works
The ex-NASA engineer's glitter bomb trap is designed using four smartphones, a tube of fart spray, and a cup of glitter. Rober connected the phones to a GPS-connected circuit board inside an Apple box.
As the porch pirates steal the package, the geo-tracking gets activated, alerting Rober and the phones start to record and upload the footage to the cloud.
Opening the box would then set off a can of "fart spray" and the motor attached to a cup of glitter, which then draws amusing responses from the package pirates. Rober calls this prank his "masterpiece."'
The 38-year-old spent nine years working with NASA. He was part of the team who designed the U.S. space agency's rover, Curiosity.
Check out his video below:
