A former Nasa engineer has spent six months building a glitter bomb trap that tricks thieves after parcels were stolen from his doorstep.
The device is hidden in an Apple Homepod box and contains four smartphones, a circuit board and 1lb (453g) of glitter.
YouTuber, Mark Rober caught the original thieves on his home security camera.
Mark decided to take action after the police said that they were unable to investigate the case. He designed the elaborate bomb so that it would activate when the package was opened by thieves. The microphones and phone cameras would record the moment.
The device also featured an accelerometer to detect motion. When the parcel was jostled, the device would then check the GPS signal to see if it had been moved from its spot and If it had, then it would send a signal to activate the phones and start recording.
The glitter was kept in a cup that spun round on a motor when released when the box opens.
The device also caused a tube of strong-smelling fart spray to squirt every 30 seconds.
The parcel was left on Mr Rober’s porch with a label on it that said it had been sent by “Kevin McCallister” who is the boy played by Macaulay Culkin in the 1990 movie Home Alone.
The parcel was stolen on numerous occasions and was re-set to explode and capture the footage every time.
On every occasion, the thieves abandoned the package once it had been triggered and they or their property had been covered in glitter.
The YouTube video has more than six million views.
The former Nasa engineer said: “If anyone was going to make a revenge bait package and over-engineer the crap out of it, it was going to be me.”
Officers are currently planting dummy boxes fitted with GPS trackers, and hidden doorbell cameras outside homes in areas identified by mapping data of theft locations supplied by Amazon as well as local crime data. One of the parcels was stolen within three minutes.
