[TriEmbed] Arduinos and the TSA

[Rodney Radford]

I would not recommend taking the items on the plane as luggage, but as long
as you are checking it under, you should have no problems.  I have carried
Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, other development boards, keyboards, mice, hubs,
power supplies, etc on trips and have never had a problem.

The only 'ussue' I have ever had was a bit funny and was pre-TSA.  I
carried a full set of tools on the plane, including knives, pliers,
screwdrivers, along with a robot that I had built.  Again, this was
pre-9/11 and pre-TSA and the thought of it being a problem never crossed my
mind (naive).

At the baggage Xray, they ran my bags through, stopped, backed them up and
ran them through again.  They then called over someone else to look at it
and ran it through a second time.  I tried to explain what it was, but they
did not want to hear my story. On the third run, they pulled my tools and
my robot off the conveyor belt, leaving on my 11 year old daughter's bag on
the conveyor for the 3rd run. They then pulled it off the conveyor, opened
it up, talked and finally realized what the issue was and ran just one item
from her baggage through before putting it back in the bag and waiving us
on.

So with all my tools, robot, etc - what was the ONE item that concerned
them?  A hair brush... not sure why, but it was being flagged as an issue
until they examined carefully.

So I can't promise you will have smooth sailing if something as simple as a
brush can alert security, but I can say I have flown several times since
then, post TSA, with no further problems.



On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Lauren Putvin <lewoods at ncsu.edu> wrote:

>  Hello all,
>
>
>
> I’m a grad student and using an Arduino with some sensors attached as part
> of my grad school project.  I’d like to take it with me on vacation to work
> on it some and was hoping some of you had experience in this area.  I don’t
> think they are specifically disallowed by the TSA, but do you get the back
> room special treatment for taking a microcontroller with you as a carry on
> or in your luggage?  I’d like to minimize the pain since I will have to
> make connections and don’t want to miss those because of hours of security
> BS.
>
>
>
> Lauren Putvin
>
> Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student
>
> Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines http://www.crim.ncsu.edu/
>
> North Carolina State University
>
> 919-599-1727 (mobile)
>
> 919-515-7016 (lab)
>
>
>
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>
>
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