[ssl-3]

That'd be hilarious. Now I want one.

But actually: It's not that broad. It's still mostly one at a time, ish. Changing a lot of them would stand out if anyone were paying attention.

Although it could certainly be broadened...but an IR emitter that's skookum enough to reliably hit all of the shelf tags in an aisle at once would probably show up as an intensely-bright purple floodlight on the cameras. That would stand out quite a lot. :)

[jojobas]

Well it does need to read individual tag barcodes, so it is indeed one at a time, still you could make an automated camera+beam device, hide at chest level, walk through an aisle as if looking for something, then pick up something in the end of the aisle and go to checkout.

I don't think anyone is paying attention anywhere near enough to pick that up. Additionally, one could read some barcodes and make quite cheap battery-powered narrow beam emitters to be placed in store aimed at particular tags that would only power up once a day at a random time.

[ssl-3]

So it needs barcodes to be read?

If the lulz are the point, then: Just build hide the thing in the floor-cleaning robot. Include a decent camera (they're very cheap) to catch the barcodes.

If the comms last long enough as the machine passes by to program some tags every night, then some tags get programmed every night. Nobody will pay attention to the robot's new purple floodlight in the cameras.

[jojobas]

The code mentions composing an address from the barcode, yes.

Shop floor cleaning robots seem to be rather clean on the outside, hard to imagine tampering with one in the field and making it inconspicuous.