Trivia: The glitter in each of the seals is unique as the glitter position is random during manufacture and no two are the same. For high security tamper evidence, you can take a photo of the seal and verify that the glitter is identical as the serial can easily be duplicated. Some agencies also used glitter nail polish as a security seal for the same reason: the glitter is deposited in a random fashion as you dab and cannot be duplicated, so you can take a photo and verify that the glitter particles are in exactly the same position.
I had an HP inkjet for a while. The cartridges did have a vacuum and were very hard to refill. All the red tape sounds like typical Royal Mail bureaucracy. As still reflected in their automated postal machines.
It is very much the same with the USPS. Postage is currency of a sort and all the postal agencies dearly want to protect it. The makers of these meters have to go to great lengths to receive permission to even lease out the machines, and a lot of financial risk if something goes sideways and free postage gets out on the streets. Nobody at any level has an reason to make it easier to work with.
at a power draw of 10 microwatts, I caclulate that the large yellow lithium carbon monofluoride battery has delivered a little more than 8.4 kilojoules of energy over the past 27 years of its life, and at a rated capacity of 1.2 Ah, or about 13 kilojoules total, it likely still retained about a third of its original capacity. Suggesting that all else being equal, it could have potentially made it to the mid 2030s before dying. I find this pleasing.
These machines aren't LIKE printing money. They ARE printing money. In many countries postage is legal tender. It can be spent like cash. I did some security work on the module that authorizes and tracks printing. (Not Neopost. A rival.) These modules are SERIOUS business. Boards and chips designed to self-destruct, dissolve, or change. Different epoxies with anti-tamper/scan properties. Pyrolytic layers that heat up when exposed to air/water. False boards/chips on the off chance you do somehow defeat some layers. We froze them in liquid nitrogen. Etched them in various solvents. X-ray, MRI, differing kinds of tomography. Ultrasound, infrasound, radar, etc. It was kind of crazy actually. But some of these machines printed $100,000-$200,000 a day so it was a pretty big target for tampering.
This one seems surprisingly "mild" in that respect - only surprises were the thermal fuse, and the CPU not having any obvious security/crypto features. Of course nowadays the security can be pushed back to the Post Office's systems using the QR coded labels. Maybe I should get hold of some others to compare...
@@mikeselectricstuff I'm not sure it's actually legal to have one of these. I was involved on the US side of things, and it definitely would not be for one of those machines. Most stuff was Two-Person-Integrity back when I worked with them. They even had to launch investigations with FBI and Postal Service oversite to handle lost, stolen, or destroyed equipment (Ex. by fire). I was part of a destruction crew over a summer too, and it was taken pretty seriously. Each device had to have multiple people signing for it at various steps. And when we were done, all electronics went through a shredder until the parts were small enough to fit through a screen (~1mm). Mechanical parts were saved to service other machines. Plastic was shredded and recycled (or burned...this was the 90s...) But I worked on stuff for the "big" machines mostly. The ones that were 3-4ft high and 10-15ft long. These printed hundreds of thousand, or even millions of dollars worth of postage every month.
@@Prophes0r In the UK you can definitely purchase these machines outright. This probably varies by country - e.g. someone commented that Ebay Italy doesn't allow them to be sold
@@mikeselectricstuff The meter: you do not own it, you only rent it and you were supposed to return it when you close the account. They would charge you $1000 US for a lost meter! And anyway, the meter is associated to you postal account, and that is where the funds come from.
I used to watch someone else using a franking machine. The mail had to go into different coloured bags depending on whether it was first or second class, then a man came and collected them at a set time every afternoon and gave us new, empty bags to use the following day. I think you could bring the bags to them a bit later in the day, if you weren't ready when he arrived, but they didn't like you doing that very often and you risked missing the deadline and having to send everything the following day instead. You would also get penalised if they found you had put second class mail in a first class bag. I suppose the bags might have identified the business that was sending the mail, possibly with some kind of security seal, but I can't remember. I suppose one reason to be strict about the franked date being the actual date of postage is to avoid making it look like the item has been delayed in the postal system. An apparent delay might cause the mail to get unfairly prioritised in the system, or could make it seem to have been delivered late, damaging the reputation of the postal service or opening them up to claims of compensation. And depending on what you're posting, the official date of postage might carry quite a lot of legal weight and ought not to be falsified.
The burocracy around the stamped date is important, because the date on a postal stamp (used to be?) a huge deal, because official paperwork took into account the date it was posted (and hence stamped), instead of the date it was received.
Yeah, this, especially for stuff like legal paperwork and the like, "you must return this within 28 days" was based on the date it was actually sent which should be the date that's printed on the envelope.
Also for the post office themselves the date of posting along with the letter being 1st or 2nd class gave the target delivery date. if you used and earlier date you could get 1st class service for 2nd class postage.
You are right, they had to be carried to a specific post office that you had to choose upon getting this set up. The post office then counted the number of letters and checked if that matched up with your credit. I did this clerk stuff as a student for a couple of months. The letters needed to be sorted into special yellow (for German Post) stackable plastic bins so they were able to relate the to a specific customer.
Worked at Pitney Bowes in Harlow from 1997 to 2006. I worked on the B900 series which is similar to the mechanical machine you had and the B700 which was their first digital meter that used thermal transfer. Recharges were done using a system called RMRS (postage by phone) where you dialled a number and got a code that would add a preset amount of credit. They had a mechanical version of this on their 5300 series meters (70s/80s) that used a metal punched tape to store the codes.
OOH, the B700. I still remember them. Had loads still out when I started doing servicing on these machine, but mainly worked on all their newer stuff. Still have some I deal with although Pitney Bowes in Norway sold out and has been bought up by a french (I think) manucacturer so no longer import the PB machines. Was always a challenge when customer's IT people moved a company to IP telephony, as none of the modems in these machines liked IP lines.
@@stuinNorway I would have done internationalisation programming for the Norway model and also worked on a production line modem programmer that did country specific setup for the modem. These were pretty basic analogue modems though, so I can understand the issues with IP telephony.
@@pradolover Do you want to claim some of the translation errors on the envelope packing machines too ? (Actually I know the guy over here that helped with that, and he's been annoyed evert since that they changed some of his text) For IP phones I dropped to the suggestions for Western Samoa... which was (from memory) a 2400 baud setting. Great fun in January for price/software updates... almost never downloaded first, or second time.
@@stuinNorway was that the F350? I worked with those guys but had quite limited involvement with this only working on some internal test applications. If it was one of the big series machines that took up whole rooms you can blame the Americans!
@@pradolover Some on the Di380 and 425 that came after the 350, also the Di600. I have to say I am glad to now work on them now, too many issues in the last few yers with envelope makers cutting costs meaning machines can no longer run them reliably.
I love these videos, not only finding out about very obscure job specific equipment most people are unlikely to ever encounter, but also taking the thing to bits and seeing how it works. I could watch you do this all day.
I used to work as a service tech on those old neopost 20 years ago, this brings back memories :D the mechanics on those old franking machines worked like a tank, could frank thousands of letters a day no problem, the main problem was that the rubber rollers would wear out and needed replacing.
Hi, that takes me back i bit. I worked for the company for 27 years in the R&D department. They were based at RONEO corner in Romford Essex. They made and sold other office equipment over a long period under RONEO and various other names, Roneo Vickers, Roneo Alcatel, Alcatel Business Systems, and NEOPOST. The port in the side was used to recredit the meter via a Credipac module or via a modem link which was called Credifon.
I worked in a post room for a while in the early 90's. The franking machine we had was quite basic, you had to physically take it to the main post office to get it topped up. We also had to take the franked mail in the 1st and 2nd class bags to the sorting office as well, nobody ever came to collect it.
That hidden ink cartridge is obviously the same as as a regular 45 consumer cartridge which has been around since the late 90s. Specialty applications like this might be why HP still sells this cartridge even though they have discontinued much newer types. The HP specialty printing solutions website is filled with 45 variants like this, it's not even hidden in a legacy products section.
When asking any of the questions you asked, the answer is almost always "security". These would absolutely NOT be field upgradeable. There is no need for access because anything other than printing would be a breach. There shouldn't be any going to liquidation either, because they required weekly check-ins at a post office. If they didn't check-in, someone would go out and find the units. These really do print money. The security around them was extensive. The older machine was probably from the 80s though. By the 90s they had much more sophisticated anti-tampering systems. They stayed in service forever though. They would come off-lease, get brought in for service/upgrades, then go out to a different market for another decade.
@@mikeselectricstuff As far as I know, the only field techs we had were for the mechanical parts. 100% of the electronic service/repair/upgrades were done in 1-2 facilities. The electronic parts were always transferred using two-person air-courier, private flights, or armored cars. But again, I worked with the big machines that handled millions of dollars. It's kind of wild to think back on that stuff. It's crazy to think about an 18y/o getting handed a plane ticket and a satellite phone to help courier stuff when someone got sick. (Second person in a 2-man team) The reality though, much like working with classified information, is SUPER boring. It's all "Sit here and wait for this", "Okay now sign this.", and then several hours sitting in a car/plane. Or worse, "Here are 400 pages to audit. Make sure all the right boxes are checked and initial every page." and/or "Go through these 20 filing cabinets and take out everything that needs to be shredded. Then shred it and fill out the destruction paperwork and file it in the other cabinets."
Yeah, the novel “Going Postal” by Pratchett really rams home how stamps were money. Having something like this that can just print postage that the postal system HAS to honour means you’d have a heap of controls and processes to minimise abuse.
@@mikeselectricstuff Certainly the electronic versions when a customer retires the machine, they want the remaining money back from it. So they need their supplier or tech rep to confirm all the counters in the machine, and send in that info, to then allow them to upload the remaining money back to the server. At that point the machine locks itself and cannot be used. They CAN be reactivated, but only once a sizeable fee is paid, and it is allowed to connect to the server again to collect it's "new" account number for us. (A company changing their registration info or name can also trigger this process with the machine being deactivated when one legal entity ceases and is transferred to a new firm, with a new set of details) I know the Pitney Bowes machines (smaller ones at least) must call home monthly, and if 3 days after the month end it's not done so, they lock themselves until done. (Great fun in the days of phone connectinos when Easter fell over 1st April and every single company in Norway with one came back to a locked machine, which then triggered overload at the other end when all machines try to call home at 8am on the first business day after Easter)
My uncle ran an auction business in the 80's and had a Pitney Bowes franking machine for the monthly catalogue mailing. He absolutely hated the machine - and the company, he would often be heard ranting about them and their exorbitant fees and terrible service. It frequently went wrong, jamming, chewing up envelopes etc., it drove him nuts.
The 6 layer board might contain a further security mesh to protect against drilling attacks and the lengths they went to on the security module suggests the lack of electronic tamper detection on the main unit wasn't an oversight, it just simply wasn't necessary but then that leads to the question of why was the physical seal needed? Maybe just a decoy/deterrent against people having a go.
My guess is the seal is required by the standards they have to meet for approval, likely not updated since the more mechanical products. May also be that the seals are issued by the Post Office to the manufacturer to create an audit trail of machines.
When I worked at a medical office for 11 years, we weren't allowed to have one of those because we had a massive university mail system where we just put a code on the return address sticker. But there were some circumstances where using that was inappropriate (as in REALLY inappropriate No NO) and the higher-ups would complain to my boss about it at least once a year. Trust me, it was funny.... they didn't know what to do cause they refused to pay! LOL The return address number was known as a franking number, the university mail dept had real Pitney Bowes machines, and I think several people got talked to for taking stickers from the forbidden pre-printed sticker pile only I was supposed to use! We had two different franking numbers and some medical higher ups refused to figure out which number they should be using. It is only a 3 digit code there!
Hey, nice to see you again! I've been missing you. Another lovely professional electronics teardown; always good to see devices I never knew even to exist. It's so lovelily over-engineered in its mechanical part. Looooooooots of joy for all thodr die-cast alumin(i)um afficionados :) The rotating core seals are used here for electricity meters - they seem to have completely replaced the old lead or alumin(i)um seals, and offer a possibility of having a bar code on them. I like the shielding foil clips - wondering if they're the same size as clips found on ESD protection mats and bracelets. I absolutely love the rack and pinion mechanisms! Fantastic in their complexity and simplicity at the same time. And of course, the beautifully laced wire harness. A never-ending source of joy. Nice security module discombobulation! It really looked like defusing a bomb. I've never seen a flex PCB mesh covering the whole board.
We supplied the motors up to the early 2000's for the older model - they were built to Neopost specification, who were a very secretive and reticent client.
RS232/RS485 transceivers are often a convenient way to provide ESD and EFT protection - some of the nicer chips incorporate these. This can be a more compact protection option in products where cost isn't important.
The hp cartridge is a standard ink cartridge used in nearly all industrial markers even today. Every printer manufacturer sell them with their own label on it (and an outrageous mark up), but they are always the same. I've personally used the Markoprint X1HP and seen basically the identical one in a lot of industrial machinery.
The one on the right is obsolete (well over 20 plus years) in the states. The one on the left is an IS/IM-280 I think. The IS/IM series are now obsolete. The next IH/IN series are also obsolete. The current valid version is IX series. What your 280 is trying to do, is make a service call (just checking in, after being off for a while) and will be in in a “PSD-Lock Out”. A funding transition or “Postal Inspection” needs to be performed reset the 90-day time out. Much more, but that beyond this comment.
Occasionally a mail carrier would come in with a package with fees due and we'd just roll off a "stamp" to pay it. Even for hundreds of dollars. This was a couple decades ago and we had the older mechanical style unit.
I worked in a school that had one of these in the nineties. They'd frank everything and a postman would collect a sack full of thousand or so letters. If they didnt collect them they had to be re franked.
When there is a bad letter jam, those machines do turn into letter shredders, you can believe me 😅Old bank checks printing machines may be worth taking apart too.
Thanks for the video Mike, I took apart several of these old devices on idle days at the office, the scales in the newer model should have a very nice load cell hidden inside which are ideal for the parts box(es).
The spring inside the ink cartridge is to make sure the ink doesn't drip out. Only when the heating elements in the head evaporate the ink it sprays out.
Panasonic and Renata batteries are pretty much the best for primary lithium cells (closely followed by FDK). I've done a lot of life testing across the brands and they always outperform the others by a significant margin and have particularly good ageing characteristics.
The engineering in this seems to rival that of the _”Juicero”_ subscription juicer producer…. the key difference being that this thing *is actually needed* 😂
I used a Pitney Bowes franking machine at an office job I briefly had in the 00s doing mass mailings for a cancer charity. I think the machine dialed into Pitney Bowes through a phone line to add credit. The main thing I remember about it was it had lots of inscrutable functions that had to be accessed on a single line LCD display, and if you were doing oversize or international mailing you really had to make sure it was set up right. I don't remember any restrictions on when or where the mail could actually be sent (IIRC it just got dumped in a mailbox near the office every day), but by then the franked postage incorporated barcodes so I guess Canada Post had a way of knowing if the postage was legitimate. Since the dies in the older machine are individually numbered, I guess something gets flagged there's a discrepancy between the number mail pieces franked and the number of mail pieces being actually sent with that number.
The one on the right hand side is very similar to a device I spent many hours labouring over in the early to mid 2000s. Ours used to be topped up via a modem.
Quadient has sold neopost last year. Its called sparck now. Did my final internship at them. They make really cool custom sized box machines for webshops now!
I used to use one similar to the older machine here when I worked in the post room at one of the British Rail office buildings in Birmingham (Stanier House, if anyone remembers it, it has now sadly been demolished). We had to take it to the main post office up the road every so often to add more credit to it. I used to quite like using that machine, it was strangely therapeutic..!
I needed to reconfigure the network settings on one of those modern ones a few years ago but needed the PIN. I watched the demo video the NeoPost website and the demo PIN worked :)
I work on these for several years. The "secure" supervisor code is hard coded the same on all of them. I think some of the manuals even call out the pin number.
I've used those seals at work, the tool for using them is essentially a nut driver with a pin press down the center. after feeding the wires back round and through, you crank the handle to tighten the seal, and then squeeze the tool to push the center wheel of the seal into the splines inside the seal case, locking it in place. while they're better than the crimped metal seals, I much prefer the tool-less style you can twist by hand and snap the plastic handle off of when you're done.
Hi, I used to work in the R&D department when they had their factory and office site in Romford Essex. The were located at RONEO corner Romford Essex. Worked there for 27 years when they also manufactured and sold many types of office equipment, Stencil Duplicators, Lithographic and spirit duplicator, Letter openers, Stencil Cutters, etc they even made their own inks for the duplicating machines.
30:11 HP has been using cartridges that shape for a long time. Like the HP 40 / 45 used in the Deskjet 1600C (circa 1996, but could've been used even earlier?). My last job had a large postage printing machine (like over a meter wide) and it also took these cartridges - but they were easily replaceable. Think it was a Pitney Bowes.
I used to use a simular one to the old one it came with a carying case to got to the post office to charge it up with credit. Here(belgium) we had to put the all the letters that where stamped with a machine like that in a huge red envelope wich had the NR of our machine on it as an extra mesure of security against tampering. Those envlopes also cost a lot of money a piece. Later on we got a newer machine wich we coudn't use because the network security was to strict to let the machine connect to the server to charge up credit so I had to take it home to charge up.
kind of like when someone is serving tea, and says "I'll play Mother", when A business has one of these machines , and someone is tasked with marking the post , they can say "I'll Play Frank" 😄
I think people generally dont mess around with them both because theres not a huge amount of profit to be made, and at least in the US, the USPIS has exactly zero chill and will absolutely destroy you.
Literally. Look at the Horizon Post Office scandal in the UK. People went to prison, lost their homes and even committed suicide. All because of dodgy software. Thanks Fujitsu.
I did work experience in a post office in the 90s. I used one of these machines to frank post office survey letters to people in the area. They'd just pop in, type a pin number and add credit on the key pad whenever I ran out. Lots of fun upping the amount to £99. Wonder if anyone noticed?
i used to use one of these at work, it was almost strong enough to tear envelopes in half when it snatched them from you :) i think they all had to go in a cloth bag marked with sender name, i think the bags just went in the post box, but i don't remember, it was many years ago
i think we posted them in the post box near the office, so guessing they would spot them coming from the wrong place fairly quickly if they appear somewhere else.
Well damn, that's hardcore lol. Very cool teardown. I've used these a lot in Canada when I was a shipper/receiver years ago. Ours was connected to a network and I think it billed per use automatically. ... If I remember correctly that is
It might not work again when the grid is put back together. Some of this technology monitors the impedance/frequency response of the grid. At leas when the device is powered on again.
Looking at the mesh pattern it looks like they may have done it to have equal resistance on 2 tracks, so they may be comparing that. I should have thought to put a scope on it while it was still intact!
When used to send out mail using one of these machines, it was picked up Royal Mail everyday. Any letters / parcels being sent with normal stamps had to be taken to the post office.
The ink cartridge uses that slight back pressure to keep the ink from NOT flowing. So, imagine when that thin film fails. Yep. Leaks ALL OVER. Ugh. So much INK!
The newer machine can have a wireless connection - to program it you visit a webpage and type your network name and password in and hold the box up to your phone screen and it flashes to program the wireless details 😎
Possibly - no obvious glow with a UV LED lamp but ISTR UK stamps have/had an invisible ink pattern that only fluoresced under the shortwave UV of an eprom eraser
Many years ago I did some voluntary work for my local Federal MP, she had one of these in her office, I think she had another machine that would, I think, load letters into envelopes. I remember using the machine to print out stamps.
HP sells the regular 45 cartridge for $66.99 retail. Neopost probably has a special deal where they get bulk pricing (and other colors) but then they add their own case and obviously add their own markup. I'd guess current price would be $60-$100.
All designed with a group of individuals sitting on a high stool over a Drawing Table with slide rules squares and possibly a rotring pencils and pens.
The MAC address on the board is assigned to "Neopost Technologies". 00:1B:00 is all theirs! If they didn't develop the board then whoever did, used the customer's MAC address.
A few minutes in and I was having the same thought as you: how much expense and effort was wrapped up in this thing and how in the world could it possible be “worth it”? Seems almost impossible that this didn’t end up costing companies tens of thousands over the long run… hope the convenience was worth it
All for a nickel savings on 1st rate postage, and not having to go to the post office for stamps! Great when you are running 10k a month in postage at 260 envelopes per second.
This is almost correct. While the post office did use the date to measure delivery times for reporting purposes the printed date on the frank was the only information available to prioritise processing throughout the delivery process at incoming and outgoing sorting offices and in the delivery office itself. if the date was out you could effectively get first class delivery service for the second class price.
The priority mail in the US has you select the mailing date as well. If it isn’t shipped on that date I’m not sure if it’s valid or what. But yeah that would be my guess, just easier to keep track of things when you have a known date.
For the double redundant batteries on the first machine I expect its less for security and more so you don't ever run into the situation where your customer loses thousands of dollars of credit. Imagine the paperwork.
Some gambling machnies I did a little work on appear to have a low battery detector (2.9 volts was mentioned in one manual) which disables normal functionality. This gives plenty of time to retrieve accounting information before the SRAM is lost. I'd imagine these are similar.
Looks like a forgiving sort of resin, not like that probably quartz or aluminium oxide filled material i recently had to try to remove. It was absolutely rock hard, would destroy steel and dull carbide tipped drills and even fought an angle grinder quite hard. Heat caused it to stink to high heavens bit didnt soften much. No way to get anything out undamaged... Took about as much effort as granite to chisel (w/hilti) it, obviously breaking everything inside. I really wonder where to get that kind of resin...
Lo usano i marmisti e i carrozzieri, io come artigiano lo conosco molto bene, se prima di mescolarlo al catalizzatore aggiungi della polvere di granito diventa appunto,duro come il granito e i dischi della smerigliatrice si consumano in fretta, meglio usare dischi diamantati 😄
We have or used to have the left one at work, and they come and collect the mail with a van of the postal services. the right one looks really "antique", like several decades old. edit: ah yes 1996...
A mirical, an inkjet printer cartridge that actually has ink in it. Shame you did not test the fuse to see if it did pop from your heat attack. The heat method has worked on all the epoxy's I have tryed.
The fuse had definitely melted- only 85 degree trip. I think you'd probably need to use mechanical means and/or solvents to get far enough into be able to bypass this fuse.
👍Interesting teardown. Mechanics of the older unit are wild! I suspect they copied the mechanics of a similar high volume machine used internally at the post office.
We used to have a Pitney Bowes machine before we outsourced printing invoices and everybody in the office hated the damn thing. If it wasn't mechanically broken, the thing wouldn't dial up properly to download the credit updates for more postage into the machine. It did get *slightly* better for a while until they switched to these absolute crap Android tablet based ones which are significantly worse.
oh...i always thought it was a barcode just telling the post office the company and then the PO will then charge for each processed letter. Having hte machine keep count seems odd
I imagine for particularly large accounts you probably can do that. I would expect this is more for the small and midsize businesses. The risk of a static barcode is before a lot of modern crypto it would have been far too easy to do a replay attack. Just copy the barcode and print it on thousands of letters. Bankrupting your target. The first sorts of these machines would have probably been before the easy networking we have today.
I'd assume the mailing the same day thing is because they wouldn't add another postage stamp over this one, which may cause trouble when trying to prove when a letter has been sent
In the states, if you don't manage to mail on the date stamped, you run a 0.00 postage on the back. You can also put the date of deposit or scheduled pickup, if you use a dropbox.
I'm quite surprised they used an ARM926 in the security module. Quite an overkill for something not connected to the internet or handling multimedia. Or is it handling some part of the printing process and the display processor is just a dumb gateway to the outside world and user?
It is connected indirectly via the LAN port on the base unit. Pretty sure the base unit handled all the printing and the meter unit was just for security.
These are pretty pointless these days, with the added cost of hiring, and supplies. it’s cheaper to go directly to Royal Mail and PPI as there is no cost involved and you can send as little as 1 letter via this service, and receive similar discounts as franking, and even bigger ones for higher volume, and pre-sorting, does have a little daily admin work as you have to tell Royal Mail what your posting everyday.
@@mikeselectricstuff makes a bloody change.. whenever ive ended up covered in printer ink, the stuff has never wanted to come off unless i threaten it with something nasty like acetone or swarfega!
My handheld inkjet printer uses the same style of hp ink cartridge but it has no brand name on it I was wondering how hard it would be to refill if I could figure out a way of getting ink Those cartridges cost 80$ on ebay I bet it is the same ink thats in markers
Email will be eavesdropped 100% unless the parties use a one time keypad to encrypt very short segments (one character) of data. Anything longer can have the keys compromised or the the message decoded with brute force frequency and dictionary attacks on the data. Paper post is too expensive to and often much better protected by law from eavesdropping. Soon the only options to the resistance are what cells have been using. Face to face meetings and physical media.
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Trivia: The glitter in each of the seals is unique as the glitter position is random during manufacture and no two are the same. For high security tamper evidence, you can take a photo of the seal and verify that the glitter is identical as the serial can easily be duplicated. Some agencies also used glitter nail polish as a security seal for the same reason: the glitter is deposited in a random fashion as you dab and cannot be duplicated, so you can take a photo and verify that the glitter particles are in exactly the same position.
Now that is really clever
I had an HP inkjet for a while. The cartridges did have a vacuum and were very hard to refill. All the red tape sounds like typical Royal Mail bureaucracy. As still reflected in their automated postal machines.
It is very much the same with the USPS. Postage is currency of a sort and all the postal agencies dearly want to protect it. The makers of these meters have to go to great lengths to receive permission to even lease out the machines, and a lot of financial risk if something goes sideways and free postage gets out on the streets. Nobody at any level has an reason to make it easier to work with.
at a power draw of 10 microwatts, I caclulate that the large yellow lithium carbon monofluoride battery has delivered a little more than 8.4 kilojoules of energy over the past 27 years of its life, and at a rated capacity of 1.2 Ah, or about 13 kilojoules total, it likely still retained about a third of its original capacity. Suggesting that all else being equal, it could have potentially made it to the mid 2030s before dying. I find this pleasing.
These machines aren't LIKE printing money.
They ARE printing money.
In many countries postage is legal tender. It can be spent like cash.
I did some security work on the module that authorizes and tracks printing. (Not Neopost. A rival.)
These modules are SERIOUS business.
Boards and chips designed to self-destruct, dissolve, or change.
Different epoxies with anti-tamper/scan properties.
Pyrolytic layers that heat up when exposed to air/water.
False boards/chips on the off chance you do somehow defeat some layers.
We froze them in liquid nitrogen. Etched them in various solvents.
X-ray, MRI, differing kinds of tomography. Ultrasound, infrasound, radar, etc.
It was kind of crazy actually.
But some of these machines printed $100,000-$200,000 a day so it was a pretty big target for tampering.
This one seems surprisingly "mild" in that respect - only surprises were the thermal fuse, and the CPU not having any obvious security/crypto features. Of course nowadays the security can be pushed back to the Post Office's systems using the QR coded labels.
Maybe I should get hold of some others to compare...
@@mikeselectricstuff I'm not sure it's actually legal to have one of these.
I was involved on the US side of things, and it definitely would not be for one of those machines.
Most stuff was Two-Person-Integrity back when I worked with them.
They even had to launch investigations with FBI and Postal Service oversite to handle lost, stolen, or destroyed equipment (Ex. by fire).
I was part of a destruction crew over a summer too, and it was taken pretty seriously.
Each device had to have multiple people signing for it at various steps.
And when we were done, all electronics went through a shredder until the parts were small enough to fit through a screen (~1mm).
Mechanical parts were saved to service other machines.
Plastic was shredded and recycled (or burned...this was the 90s...)
But I worked on stuff for the "big" machines mostly. The ones that were 3-4ft high and 10-15ft long.
These printed hundreds of thousand, or even millions of dollars worth of postage every month.
@@mikeselectricstuff Yes, please! :D :D :D
@@Prophes0r In the UK you can definitely purchase these machines outright. This probably varies by country - e.g. someone commented that Ebay Italy doesn't allow them to be sold
@@mikeselectricstuff The meter: you do not own it, you only rent it and you were supposed to return it when you close the account. They would charge you $1000 US for a lost meter! And anyway, the meter is associated to you postal account, and that is where the funds come from.
I used to watch someone else using a franking machine. The mail had to go into different coloured bags depending on whether it was first or second class, then a man came and collected them at a set time every afternoon and gave us new, empty bags to use the following day. I think you could bring the bags to them a bit later in the day, if you weren't ready when he arrived, but they didn't like you doing that very often and you risked missing the deadline and having to send everything the following day instead. You would also get penalised if they found you had put second class mail in a first class bag. I suppose the bags might have identified the business that was sending the mail, possibly with some kind of security seal, but I can't remember.
I suppose one reason to be strict about the franked date being the actual date of postage is to avoid making it look like the item has been delayed in the postal system. An apparent delay might cause the mail to get unfairly prioritised in the system, or could make it seem to have been delivered late, damaging the reputation of the postal service or opening them up to claims of compensation. And depending on what you're posting, the official date of postage might carry quite a lot of legal weight and ought not to be falsified.
The burocracy around the stamped date is important, because the date on a postal stamp (used to be?) a huge deal, because official paperwork took into account the date it was posted (and hence stamped), instead of the date it was received.
Yeah, this, especially for stuff like legal paperwork and the like, "you must return this within 28 days" was based on the date it was actually sent which should be the date that's printed on the envelope.
Also for the post office themselves the date of posting along with the letter being 1st or 2nd class gave the target delivery date. if you used and earlier date you could get 1st class service for 2nd class postage.
You are right, they had to be carried to a specific post office that you had to choose upon getting this set up. The post office then counted the number of letters and checked if that matched up with your credit. I did this clerk stuff as a student for a couple of months. The letters needed to be sorted into special yellow (for German Post) stackable plastic bins so they were able to relate the to a specific customer.
Worked at Pitney Bowes in Harlow from 1997 to 2006. I worked on the B900 series which is similar to the mechanical machine you had and the B700 which was their first digital meter that used thermal transfer. Recharges were done using a system called RMRS (postage by phone) where you dialled a number and got a code that would add a preset amount of credit. They had a mechanical version of this on their 5300 series meters (70s/80s) that used a metal punched tape to store the codes.
OOH, the B700. I still remember them. Had loads still out when I started doing servicing on these machine, but mainly worked on all their newer stuff. Still have some I deal with although Pitney Bowes in Norway sold out and has been bought up by a french (I think) manucacturer so no longer import the PB machines.
Was always a challenge when customer's IT people moved a company to IP telephony, as none of the modems in these machines liked IP lines.
@@stuinNorway I would have done internationalisation programming for the Norway model and also worked on a production line modem programmer that did country specific setup for the modem. These were pretty basic analogue modems though, so I can understand the issues with IP telephony.
@@pradolover Do you want to claim some of the translation errors on the envelope packing machines too ? (Actually I know the guy over here that helped with that, and he's been annoyed evert since that they changed some of his text)
For IP phones I dropped to the suggestions for Western Samoa... which was (from memory) a 2400 baud setting. Great fun in January for price/software updates... almost never downloaded first, or second time.
@@stuinNorway was that the F350? I worked with those guys but had quite limited involvement with this only working on some internal test applications. If it was one of the big series machines that took up whole rooms you can blame the Americans!
@@pradolover Some on the Di380 and 425 that came after the 350, also the Di600.
I have to say I am glad to now work on them now, too many issues in the last few yers with envelope makers cutting costs meaning machines can no longer run them reliably.
I love these videos, not only finding out about very obscure job specific equipment most people are unlikely to ever encounter, but also taking the thing to bits and seeing how it works. I could watch you do this all day.
I used to work as a service tech on those old neopost 20 years ago, this brings back memories :D the mechanics on those old franking machines worked like a tank, could frank thousands of letters a day no problem, the main problem was that the rubber rollers would wear out and needed replacing.
Hi, that takes me back i bit. I worked for the company for 27 years in the R&D department. They were based at RONEO corner in Romford Essex. They made and sold other office equipment over a long period under RONEO and various other names, Roneo Vickers, Roneo Alcatel, Alcatel Business Systems, and NEOPOST. The port in the side was used to recredit the meter via a Credipac module or via a modem link which was called Credifon.
I worked in a post room for a while in the early 90's. The franking machine we had was quite basic, you had to physically take it to the main post office to get it topped up. We also had to take the franked mail in the 1st and 2nd class bags to the sorting office as well, nobody ever came to collect it.
That hidden ink cartridge is obviously the same as as a regular 45 consumer cartridge which has been around since the late 90s. Specialty applications like this might be why HP still sells this cartridge even though they have discontinued much newer types. The HP specialty printing solutions website is filled with 45 variants like this, it's not even hidden in a legacy products section.
When asking any of the questions you asked, the answer is almost always "security".
These would absolutely NOT be field upgradeable. There is no need for access because anything other than printing would be a breach.
There shouldn't be any going to liquidation either, because they required weekly check-ins at a post office.
If they didn't check-in, someone would go out and find the units.
These really do print money. The security around them was extensive.
The older machine was probably from the 80s though. By the 90s they had much more sophisticated anti-tampering systems.
They stayed in service forever though. They would come off-lease, get brought in for service/upgrades, then go out to a different market for another decade.
By "field" I was thinking more like authorised service techs than end-users
@@mikeselectricstuff As far as I know, the only field techs we had were for the mechanical parts.
100% of the electronic service/repair/upgrades were done in 1-2 facilities.
The electronic parts were always transferred using two-person air-courier, private flights, or armored cars.
But again, I worked with the big machines that handled millions of dollars.
It's kind of wild to think back on that stuff.
It's crazy to think about an 18y/o getting handed a plane ticket and a satellite phone to help courier stuff when someone got sick. (Second person in a 2-man team)
The reality though, much like working with classified information, is SUPER boring.
It's all "Sit here and wait for this", "Okay now sign this.", and then several hours sitting in a car/plane.
Or worse, "Here are 400 pages to audit. Make sure all the right boxes are checked and initial every page." and/or "Go through these 20 filing cabinets and take out everything that needs to be shredded. Then shred it and fill out the destruction paperwork and file it in the other cabinets."
Yeah, the novel “Going Postal” by Pratchett really rams home how stamps were money. Having something like this that can just print postage that the postal system HAS to honour means you’d have a heap of controls and processes to minimise abuse.
EBay in Italy forbids sale of such machines apparently. Even obsolete ones are scrapped
I wouldn't be surprised if in some countries the machines (or at least the meters/dies) are owned by the post office & only rented to users.
@@mikeselectricstuff Certainly the electronic versions when a customer retires the machine, they want the remaining money back from it. So they need their supplier or tech rep to confirm all the counters in the machine, and send in that info, to then allow them to upload the remaining money back to the server. At that point the machine locks itself and cannot be used.
They CAN be reactivated, but only once a sizeable fee is paid, and it is allowed to connect to the server again to collect it's "new" account number for us. (A company changing their registration info or name can also trigger this process with the machine being deactivated when one legal entity ceases and is transferred to a new firm, with a new set of details)
I know the Pitney Bowes machines (smaller ones at least) must call home monthly, and if 3 days after the month end it's not done so, they lock themselves until done. (Great fun in the days of phone connectinos when Easter fell over 1st April and every single company in Norway with one came back to a locked machine, which then triggered overload at the other end when all machines try to call home at 8am on the first business day after Easter)
My uncle ran an auction business in the 80's and had a Pitney Bowes franking machine for the monthly catalogue mailing. He absolutely hated the machine - and the company, he would often be heard ranting about them and their exorbitant fees and terrible service. It frequently went wrong, jamming, chewing up envelopes etc., it drove him nuts.
Go Quadient
The 6 layer board might contain a further security mesh to protect against drilling attacks and the lengths they went to on the security module suggests the lack of electronic tamper detection on the main unit wasn't an oversight, it just simply wasn't necessary but then that leads to the question of why was the physical seal needed? Maybe just a decoy/deterrent against people having a go.
My guess is the seal is required by the standards they have to meet for approval, likely not updated since the more mechanical products. May also be that the seals are issued by the Post Office to the manufacturer to create an audit trail of machines.
@@mikeselectricstuff Yeah, that'd be my bet, redundancy/regulations not keeping up with technology
When I worked at a medical office for 11 years, we weren't allowed to have one of those because we had a massive university mail system where we just put a code on the return address sticker. But there were some circumstances where using that was inappropriate (as in REALLY inappropriate No NO) and the higher-ups would complain to my boss about it at least once a year. Trust me, it was funny.... they didn't know what to do cause they refused to pay! LOL The return address number was known as a franking number, the university mail dept had real Pitney Bowes machines, and I think several people got talked to for taking stickers from the forbidden pre-printed sticker pile only I was supposed to use! We had two different franking numbers and some medical higher ups refused to figure out which number they should be using. It is only a 3 digit code there!
Whenever my boss wanted some spending money, he'd 'accidentally' print off £100 frank and get a refund check from the PO.
Hey, nice to see you again! I've been missing you.
Another lovely professional electronics teardown; always good to see devices I never knew even to exist. It's so lovelily over-engineered in its mechanical part. Looooooooots of joy for all thodr die-cast alumin(i)um afficionados :)
The rotating core seals are used here for electricity meters - they seem to have completely replaced the old lead or alumin(i)um seals, and offer a possibility of having a bar code on them.
I like the shielding foil clips - wondering if they're the same size as clips found on ESD protection mats and bracelets.
I absolutely love the rack and pinion mechanisms! Fantastic in their complexity and simplicity at the same time.
And of course, the beautifully laced wire harness. A never-ending source of joy.
Nice security module discombobulation! It really looked like defusing a bomb. I've never seen a flex PCB mesh covering the whole board.
We supplied the motors up to the early 2000's for the older model - they were built to Neopost specification, who were a very secretive and reticent client.
Fascinating, as always Mike. I love seeing what designers have done to prevent tampering. Over-engineered mechanics seem to be the order of the day.
RS232/RS485 transceivers are often a convenient way to provide ESD and EFT protection - some of the nicer chips incorporate these. This can be a more compact protection option in products where cost isn't important.
The hp cartridge is a standard ink cartridge used in nearly all industrial markers even today. Every printer manufacturer sell them with their own label on it (and an outrageous mark up), but they are always the same. I've personally used the Markoprint X1HP and seen basically the identical one in a lot of industrial machinery.
The one on the right is obsolete (well over 20 plus years) in the states. The one on the left is an IS/IM-280 I think. The IS/IM series are now obsolete. The next IH/IN series are also obsolete. The current valid version is IX series. What your 280 is trying to do, is make a service call (just checking in, after being off for a while) and will be in in a “PSD-Lock Out”. A funding transition or “Postal Inspection” needs to be performed reset the 90-day time out. Much more, but that beyond this comment.
Occasionally a mail carrier would come in with a package with fees due and we'd just roll off a "stamp" to pay it. Even for hundreds of dollars. This was a couple decades ago and we had the older mechanical style unit.
I worked in a school that had one of these in the nineties. They'd frank everything and a postman would collect a sack full of thousand or so letters. If they didnt collect them they had to be re franked.
I never really paid these machines much mind although I come across them fairly frequently. Never knew they would be so interesting!
When there is a bad letter jam, those machines do turn into letter shredders, you can believe me 😅Old bank checks printing machines may be worth taking apart too.
Thanks for the video Mike, I took apart several of these old devices on idle days at the office, the scales in the newer model should have a very nice load cell hidden inside which are ideal for the parts box(es).
The hardcoded IP the inkjet machine was trying to connect is in France, and IP from at least 2004-04-01. Maybe there is more into a French origin.
The spring inside the ink cartridge is to make sure the ink doesn't drip out. Only when the heating elements in the head evaporate the ink it sprays out.
Panasonic and Renata batteries are pretty much the best for primary lithium cells (closely followed by FDK). I've done a lot of life testing across the brands and they always outperform the others by a significant margin and have particularly good ageing characteristics.
The engineering in this seems to rival that of the _”Juicero”_ subscription juicer producer…. the key difference being that this thing *is actually needed* 😂
I used a Pitney Bowes franking machine at an office job I briefly had in the 00s doing mass mailings for a cancer charity. I think the machine dialed into Pitney Bowes through a phone line to add credit. The main thing I remember about it was it had lots of inscrutable functions that had to be accessed on a single line LCD display, and if you were doing oversize or international mailing you really had to make sure it was set up right. I don't remember any restrictions on when or where the mail could actually be sent (IIRC it just got dumped in a mailbox near the office every day), but by then the franked postage incorporated barcodes so I guess Canada Post had a way of knowing if the postage was legitimate.
Since the dies in the older machine are individually numbered, I guess something gets flagged there's a discrepancy between the number mail pieces franked and the number of mail pieces being actually sent with that number.
The one on the right hand side is very similar to a device I spent many hours labouring over in the early to mid 2000s. Ours used to be topped up via a modem.
Quadient has sold neopost last year. Its called sparck now. Did my final internship at them. They make really cool custom sized box machines for webshops now!
Sparck sounds like a budget Spock
I used to use one similar to the older machine here when I worked in the post room at one of the British Rail office buildings in Birmingham (Stanier House, if anyone remembers it, it has now sadly been demolished). We had to take it to the main post office up the road every so often to add more credit to it. I used to quite like using that machine, it was strangely therapeutic..!
Further evidence of a french manufacturer for the newer machine's PCB: the SMD LED has the french label "DEL" for "diode électroluminescente".
But do they pronounce it "DELL" or "De. E. El"?
@@mikeselectricstuff I would guess LED, like ... the bloody rest of the world.
@@Sine1040 You clearly don't know the French :-)
I needed to reconfigure the network settings on one of those modern ones a few years ago but needed the PIN. I watched the demo video the NeoPost website and the demo PIN worked :)
What was it?
I work on these for several years. The "secure" supervisor code is hard coded the same on all of them. I think some of the manuals even call out the pin number.
I've used those seals at work, the tool for using them is essentially a nut driver with a pin press down the center. after feeding the wires back round and through, you crank the handle to tighten the seal, and then squeeze the tool to push the center wheel of the seal into the splines inside the seal case, locking it in place. while they're better than the crimped metal seals, I much prefer the tool-less style you can twist by hand and snap the plastic handle off of when you're done.
Nice to see the old Neopost logo once again. I think a location of this company is located down the street from me.
They (now Quadient) also have a factory close to me.
Hi, I used to work in the R&D department when they had their factory and office site in Romford Essex. The were located at RONEO corner Romford Essex. Worked there for 27 years when they also manufactured and sold many types of office equipment, Stencil Duplicators, Lithographic and spirit duplicator, Letter openers, Stencil Cutters, etc they even made their own inks for the duplicating machines.
30:11 HP has been using cartridges that shape for a long time. Like the HP 40 / 45 used in the Deskjet 1600C (circa 1996, but could've been used even earlier?). My last job had a large postage printing machine (like over a meter wide) and it also took these cartridges - but they were easily replaceable. Think it was a Pitney Bowes.
I used to use a simular one to the old one it came with a carying case to got to the post office to charge it up with credit. Here(belgium) we had to put the all the letters that where stamped with a machine like that in a huge red envelope wich had the NR of our machine on it as an extra mesure of security against tampering. Those envlopes also cost a lot of money a piece. Later on we got a newer machine wich we coudn't use because the network security was to strict to let the machine connect to the server to charge up credit so I had to take it home to charge up.
kind of like when someone is serving tea, and says "I'll play Mother",
when A business has one of these machines , and someone is tasked
with marking the post , they can say "I'll Play Frank" 😄
I think people generally dont mess around with them both because theres not a huge amount of profit to be made, and at least in the US, the USPIS has exactly zero chill and will absolutely destroy you.
Literally. Look at the Horizon Post Office scandal in the UK. People went to prison, lost their homes and even committed suicide. All because of dodgy software. Thanks Fujitsu.
I did work experience in a post office in the 90s. I used one of these machines to frank post office survey letters to people in the area. They'd just pop in, type a pin number and add credit on the key pad whenever I ran out.
Lots of fun upping the amount to £99. Wonder if anyone noticed?
i used to use one of these at work, it was almost strong enough to tear envelopes in half when it snatched them from you :)
i think they all had to go in a cloth bag marked with sender name, i think the bags just went in the post box, but i don't remember, it was many years ago
i think we posted them in the post box near the office, so guessing they would spot them coming from the wrong place fairly quickly if they appear somewhere else.
Breaking the pcb connector would make the removal of the flexible pcb easier.
yeah but maybe the tamper loop runs on inner layers of the PCB there..
Well damn, that's hardcore lol. Very cool teardown. I've used these a lot in Canada when I was a shipper/receiver years ago. Ours was connected to a network and I think it billed per use automatically. ... If I remember correctly that is
It might not work again when the grid is put back together. Some of this technology monitors the impedance/frequency response of the grid. At leas when the device is powered on again.
Looking at the mesh pattern it looks like they may have done it to have equal resistance on 2 tracks, so they may be comparing that. I should have thought to put a scope on it while it was still intact!
When used to send out mail using one of these machines, it was picked up Royal Mail everyday. Any letters / parcels being sent with normal stamps had to be taken to the post office.
Imagine if the meter had some kind of anti X-ray thing inside I couldn’t even imagine what that could be
The ink cartridge uses that slight back pressure to keep the ink from NOT flowing. So, imagine when that thin film fails. Yep. Leaks ALL OVER. Ugh. So much INK!
The newer machine can have a wireless connection - to program it you visit a webpage and type your network name and password in and hold the box up to your phone screen and it flashes to program the wireless details 😎
fascinating bits of hardware, in a life long ago i used to use one... ISTR the ink was special too, maybe UV florescent? I can't remember.
Possibly - no obvious glow with a UV LED lamp but ISTR UK stamps have/had an invisible ink pattern that only fluoresced under the shortwave UV of an eprom eraser
Many years ago I did some voluntary work for my local Federal MP, she had one of these in her office, I think she had another machine that would, I think, load letters into envelopes. I remember using the machine to print out stamps.
STM-5 is not logo, but some sort of certification for PCB, like 94V-0.
Makes me wonder if they charge $250,000.00 for that ink jet cartridge, or thereabouts.
$175,000 with mail-in rebate.
HP sells the regular 45 cartridge for $66.99 retail. Neopost probably has a special deal where they get bulk pricing (and other colors) but then they add their own case and obviously add their own markup. I'd guess current price would be $60-$100.
All designed with a group of individuals sitting on a high stool over a Drawing Table with slide rules squares and possibly a rotring pencils and pens.
The MAC address on the board is assigned to "Neopost Technologies". 00:1B:00 is all theirs! If they didn't develop the board then whoever did, used the customer's MAC address.
Thank you. Fascinating research as always.
A few minutes in and I was having the same thought as you: how much expense and effort was wrapped up in this thing and how in the world could it possible be “worth it”? Seems almost impossible that this didn’t end up costing companies tens of thousands over the long run… hope the convenience was worth it
All for a nickel savings on 1st rate postage, and not having to go to the post office for stamps! Great when you are running 10k a month in postage at 260 envelopes per second.
Maybe you have to mail the same day so the date is correct. Wouldn't want to blame the post office for slow delivery...
This is almost correct. While the post office did use the date to measure delivery times for reporting purposes the printed date on the frank was the only information available to prioritise processing throughout the delivery process at incoming and outgoing sorting offices and in the delivery office itself. if the date was out you could effectively get first class delivery service for the second class price.
The priority mail in the US has you select the mailing date as well. If it isn’t shipped on that date I’m not sure if it’s valid or what.
But yeah that would be my guess, just easier to keep track of things when you have a known date.
For the double redundant batteries on the first machine I expect its less for security and more so you don't ever run into the situation where your customer loses thousands of dollars of credit. Imagine the paperwork.
Some gambling machnies I did a little work on appear to have a low battery detector (2.9 volts was mentioned in one manual) which disables normal functionality. This gives plenty of time to retrieve accounting information before the SRAM is lost. I'd imagine these are similar.
Looks like a forgiving sort of resin, not like that probably quartz or aluminium oxide filled material i recently had to try to remove. It was absolutely rock hard, would destroy steel and dull carbide tipped drills and even fought an angle grinder quite hard. Heat caused it to stink to high heavens bit didnt soften much. No way to get anything out undamaged... Took about as much effort as granite to chisel (w/hilti) it, obviously breaking everything inside. I really wonder where to get that kind of resin...
It was normal black epoxy potting compound.
Lo usano i marmisti e i carrozzieri, io come artigiano lo conosco molto bene, se prima di mescolarlo al catalizzatore aggiungi della polvere di granito diventa appunto,duro come il granito e i dischi della smerigliatrice si consumano in fretta, meglio usare dischi diamantati 😄
Do they address ALL the envelopes to Frank ?
We have or used to have the left one at work, and they come and collect the mail with a van of the postal services. the right one looks really "antique", like several decades old. edit: ah yes 1996...
Had the thermal fuse blown?
Yes
Oem big Clive safety pie dish 😅
Is the 555 something to do with the security mesh, maybe they use it as a latch or a square wave generator.
The stamp date is important for legal reasons.
A mirical, an inkjet printer cartridge that actually has ink in it.
Shame you did not test the fuse to see if it did pop from your heat attack. The heat method has worked on all the epoxy's I have tryed.
The fuse had definitely melted- only 85 degree trip. I think you'd probably need to use mechanical means and/or solvents to get far enough into be able to bypass this fuse.
Timed nicely to go with the big jump in Royal Mail 1st Class letter price to £1.25!
We had an older one where a man had to come out to add credit to it mechanically and reseal it.
👍Interesting teardown. Mechanics of the older unit are wild! I suspect they copied the mechanics of a similar high volume machine used internally at the post office.
The inkjet pump mechanism has enough suction to pull the ink from the reservoir.
We used to have a Pitney Bowes machine before we outsourced printing invoices and everybody in the office hated the damn thing. If it wasn't mechanically broken, the thing wouldn't dial up properly to download the credit updates for more postage into the machine. It did get *slightly* better for a while until they switched to these absolute crap Android tablet based ones which are significantly worse.
Android is annoying OS too may programs not responding lol
I agree with Mike rs232 chips are overused in many applications
Gosh stamps are always this weird aspect of society that we, somehow, manage to have a billion ways of how to do something.
the original version of the security module was posted on hackaday and the comments were all "meh, should have used a 555"
but comments on hackaday are ALWAYS "meh, should have used a 555"
oh...i always thought it was a barcode just telling the post office the company and then the PO will then charge for each processed letter. Having hte machine keep count seems odd
I imagine for particularly large accounts you probably can do that. I would expect this is more for the small and midsize businesses. The risk of a static barcode is before a lot of modern crypto it would have been far too easy to do a replay attack. Just copy the barcode and print it on thousands of letters. Bankrupting your target. The first sorts of these machines would have probably been before the easy networking we have today.
I'd assume the mailing the same day thing is because they wouldn't add another postage stamp over this one, which may cause trouble when trying to prove when a letter has been sent
In the states, if you don't manage to mail on the date stamped, you run a 0.00 postage on the back.
You can also put the date of deposit or scheduled pickup, if you use a dropbox.
"Bare in mind there is a lithium battery in here that could get a bit unfortunate in combination with hot air" 😂 Mike 2023
I'm quite surprised they used an ARM926 in the security module. Quite an overkill for something not connected to the internet or handling multimedia.
Or is it handling some part of the printing process and the display processor is just a dumb gateway to the outside world and user?
It is connected indirectly via the LAN port on the base unit. Pretty sure the base unit handled all the printing and the meter unit was just for security.
Because ST232 is much cheaper than ICL7660.
Have you taken the secure module out of a credit card reader ? It would be interesting to compare the antitamper features
Think he did a chip and pin machine years ago.
the ip address resolves to waycom in france.
"Sacré bleu! 😀
Maybe it prints nuclear launch codes.
Was the red ink also serving as a lubricant ?
Welcome back!
So good I watched it twice
These are pretty pointless these days, with the added cost of hiring, and supplies. it’s cheaper to go directly to Royal Mail and PPI as there is no cost involved and you can send as little as 1 letter via this service, and receive similar discounts as franking, and even bigger ones for higher volume, and pre-sorting, does have a little daily admin work as you have to tell Royal Mail what your posting everyday.
"I just blue myself"
Your hands are gonna be blue for weeks! unless you've got a bottle of swarfega stashed away :)
Actually it just washes off with soap & water
@@mikeselectricstuff makes a bloody change.. whenever ive ended up covered in printer ink, the stuff has never wanted to come off unless i threaten it with something nasty like acetone or swarfega!
My handheld inkjet printer uses the same style of hp ink cartridge but it has no brand name on it I was wondering how hard it would be to refill if I could figure out a way of getting ink Those cartridges cost 80$ on ebay I bet it is the same ink thats in markers
I tried reading "MIDDX" as Roman numerals until he said Middlesex and that made no sense
Interesting. Didn't even know these devices existed!
Hi!
Email will be eavesdropped 100% unless the parties use a one time keypad to encrypt very short segments (one character) of data. Anything longer can have the keys compromised or the the message decoded with brute force frequency and dictionary attacks on the data.
Paper post is too expensive to and often much better protected by law from eavesdropping.
Soon the only options to the resistance are what cells have been using. Face to face meetings and physical media.