[cell phone detector]

Hello everyone!

I was hoping you could help me identifying the materials/substances that are common for all cell phones.

I am going to train my dog to locate cell phones and offer my services to correctional facilities and law enforcement.

In order to train my dog to find cell phones only, I need to know what materials/substances that are unike to cell phones and found in all cell phones.

Is there a material only used in cell phone antennas, batteries, circuts, screens etc?

For instance: I have been thinking of training him to locate ethylene carbonate, if in fact this is used as an organic solvent in all li-ion batteries. Am I far off?

I'm thankful for all help.

Andreas

[Stepan]

Can you use a box of used cellphones and a box of let say laundry and see if the dog can distinguish the smell? We can only guess what smell is important for dog, and what is not.

[cell phone detector]

I'm afraid its not that simple. The best method for teaching a dog to search for a spesific item is to find an odour that is unike for that item and teach the dog that this scent means reward.

If I were to reward the dog for just smelling a cell phone, I could never know which of the thousands of odors the dog is focusing on. If the dog thinks he is rewarded for smelling the human odor on the phone, he would in fact be trained to find anything humans has ever touched - not very useful..

Lets say I would want to train you to enter a sweater shop (selling plain-colored sweaters) full of racks and point out the one rack that has blue, green and black sweaters on it (The rack corresponds to the cellphone and the colors corresponds to the multiple odors). There are many other racks with all sorts of colors, including green and blue, but this is the only rack with black sweaters. To teach you to find this spesific rack, I go to my training room and present you with a rack that has blue, green and black sweaters and reward you everytime you point at the rack. I am thinking that you understand that pointing at a rack with these three colored sweaters will result in a reward. What I don't know is that you are actually pointing at the green sweaters every time, believing that you are being trained to find green sweaters.

So, when i send you in to the sweater shop to find the rack I have seemingly taught you to find, you will point at every rack with a green sweater on it.

I should have presented you with a black sweater, teacing you to find black sweaters. This way, I would be guaranteed that you would only point out the rack I wanted you to find..

My challenge is to find out what color sweaters that are unike for my rack. Thats why I have to find specific odors that are unike to cell phones and then extract these odors and train my dog to find them..

[Stepan]

This makes sense, but from the practical point. Let say if you need to train dog to find truffles (mushrooms), you use a mushroom as a training material. I thought the same can be done with cell phone?

In regards to your original question, I do not know if there any particular volatile compound which is specific to modern cell phones. Maybe something in Li batteries.

[rjb]

CPD,

I see the problem... A similar analogous problem I guess would be training a dog to detect currency, where I suspect that you would train using brand new non-circulating currency to ensure the dog isn't picking up on human odour or trace levels of cocaine etc. I don't suppose that wouldn't work with mobile phones which like many plastic items have a 'new, out of the box' smell which fades rapidly over time and is common to a number of other devices... hmmm.

You are right, the battery is the way to go I think... Ethylene carbonate and diethyl carbonate are both solvent components of virtually all types of Li Ion battery and both are relatively innocuous, so could work in the way you propose. Could you not train using unused untouched Li Ion batteries themselves though?

R

[cell phone detector]

I have also though of the battery. Li-ion batteries are the far most common battery used in cell phones today, and as far as i know ethylene carbonate is used as a solvent in all batteries. Diethyl carbonate is found in some, not all (I found a company that sells electrolytes for li-oin batteries, and all their products was ethylene carbonate mixed with other solvents such as diethyl carbonate) Ethylene carbonate is liquid at all relevant temperatures (this makes it easy to work with), it is supposed to have a sweet smell that even humans can pick up, it is not toxic (only in high conscentrations) and I believe it is fairly easy to get hold of.

If I were to present my dog with an brand new out-of-the-box battery, I could still not be sure of what odor the dog focuses on. Even a brand new battery has got plenty of different odors: The plastic/aluminum housing, metals, katode, anode, lithium salt, organic solvents, and even the little sticker on the outside! It would probably also be contaminated with all kinds of smells from people or machines that has handeled it before it was put in the box. To be absolutely shure of what odor I am training my dog to find, I must eliminate all possibilities for the dog to make the wrong choice - that means getting hold of pure ethylene carbonate, and use this in training.

A good example of failed K9 training is the mine detection dogs that were trained using almost intact mines. The dogs found all the mines during training, but when put into service, they would not locate real mines. The handlers had used tape on the training mines, and the dogs had in reality learned to find this tape odor. Real mines dont have tape, and were therefore not interesting.

Had the trainers extracted the explosive material, the dogs would not have had any problems locating mines - no matter the construction.

How about the antenna or circuit board - is there any unike materials used here?

[fledarmus]

Are you trying to find a way to distinguish a cell phone from all other electronic devices? Or are you just looking for electronic devices in general? Working with the batteries is great if all you're trying to do is find electronic devices, but almost all small rechargeable electronic devices (laptops, calculators, cameras, little radio-controlled helicopters) use very similar batteries now.

[enahs]

I am not sure of the business model.

Why pay you to keep coming back, and risk bring an outside contractor into a prison multiple times a year, when they could install an electronic device that will alert them to cellphone usage and its location?


Not sure about police either. If they already have a warrant to search, they can take their time and find whatever they need.

[cell phone detector]

I am trying to find the odors that distinguishes a cell phone from other electronics. You are right about the li-ion battery being used in lots of electronic devices, but inmates do not have their cells packed with electronic devices. They have small items like remote control for the TV, alarm clock etc, but these do not use li-ion batteries. However, the best solutiun would be to find materials that are unike for the antenna, screen technology or something else only used in cell phones.

As far as the business model: I am not concerned about the prison not letting me in because of security issues. I hope it's okay that I don't go further in detail about this online. The prison can install devices that locate cell phone signals, but these are not accurate enough to actually find the cell phone. Manual search still has to be performed.

Using a K9 to search is both significantly faster and more accurate than searching manually, so it will be much cheaper for the prison to hire a K9+handler to search than to use 5-10 officers for several hours. Residual scent will also enable the K9 to find previous hiding spots.

The same arguments goes for law enforcement: Faster, cheaper, more accurate search. Fonding a cell phone can provide investigators with essential information.