[kaivi]

I've had the same thought when I first saw it. Some suspicious things: thieves talking to themselves, that lady throwing the box into her own garbage bin, zero attempt at disassembly or closer inspection of the box, no police involved.

Also GPS is just not that good for locating anything of that size in given circumstances, and it would not have worked in the parking garage.

Too many things could have gone wrong here, but they did not. The design is subpar in my opinion, for somebody who worked on a Mars rover. Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?

[dageshi]

> Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?

Why wouldn't you use this? Seems like if you want to push video data over the cell phone network then using some cheapo android phones with data sims is by far and away the simplest and most robust solution? Anything you build yourself to do that job is gonna be way more prone to error?

[ocdtrekkie]

A lot of people talk to themselves. Most small-time thieves are not known for incredible intelligence. If you look close enough to realize it has cameras, you might realize you are on video and should get rid of it quickly. Consumer products are far more reliable than rolling your own solution nine times out of ten. Had he failed to recover the device, the video still would've been pretty cool.

If it's traceable, throwing it in your own trash isn't much worse than throwing it elsewhere, since it already has the coordinates of your house anyways. GPS works fine on small packages and a lot of businesses/products exist specifically to take advantage of this. Also note that as full-featured smartphones, he's likely got the full power of Google Location Services in play, which can identify what floor of a building (or parking garage) you're on, and of course, even if it failed to get signal in the parking garage would surely show location up to the parking garage. Inside a parking garage, a bright white box is not hard to find. Also, he has four GPS devices facing different directions, so he's got a lot of backup for failure here.

[aqme28]

>Too many things could have gone wrong here, but they did not. The design is subpar in my opinion, for somebody who worked on a Mars rover. Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?

What would you propose? The best design is often the easiest/cheapest one, and this looks like pretty simple.

[AstralStorm]

Those are very much not cheapest unless he had them lying around.

There are ready made cheap boards with identical functionality to a cellphone, few dollars a pop. And yes, they run Android.

That said, this way he can claim it had something valuable inside in case it is still taken.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

What hardware hacker doesn't? I have at least 2 Android phones and one Windows phone lying around my house in various states of functionality. Hell, I've got $200 Peltier coolers and $400 peristaltic pumps in boxes somewhere sitting unused.

I don't even know what this Mark person did, but going by comments here, if I wanted to build something similar, the only thing I'd have to go out and buy would be the glitter stuff.

Don't discount the stuff us weirdos have in our basements :-)

[ryanmercer]

>I don't even know what this Mark person did, but going by comments here,

Oh man, watch the video on his YouTube. It's pure comedic gold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxhDk-hwuo

[raverbashing]

> made cheap boards with identical functionality to a cellphone, few dollars a pop. And yes, they run Android.

With a camera, battery and 3G modem? Got any links?

[derefr]

I guess technically, you only need one cellphone (one camera + battery + 3G modem), and the other three sides could have been implemented as action cams connected to the phone over a USB hub.

One phone (or one phone’s SD card) may not have had the IO bandwidth to receive video from four cameras at once, though.

[t0mbstone]

GPS and phone location (via wifi triangulation) would have easily led him to the parking garage. After that, it's just a matter of driving around in the parking garage until you see the box that got thrown out of the car.

[bsamuels]

> The design is subpar in my opinion

Are you a mechanical/electrical engineer? Not trying to be hostile, but what would you have improved?

[jki275]

GPS works quite well for that kind of location -- even in a parking garage, as long as it's not underground it's not hard to get a signal.

His design is just about right -- it's not overly complex and manages to do what it needs to do for a relatively low cost.

[nandou]

GPS is just there to give an approximation of the location. He has videos of where the box was thrown.. We even see the lady throw it in the garbage..

[jstewartmobile]

That HN is downvoting you this hard is near-conclusive proof that the whole thing will be revealed as a hoax within a few weeks.

[kaivi]

Well shit, I was just writing up a huge post exposing the guy on Reddit, and I've noticed that the scenes and timings in the video did not match with what I have downloaded.

Turns out, Mark himself has already admitted that 2 scenes were staged, supposedly all because of a dishonest "friend" whom he paid to place the box on his porch.

[jstewartmobile]

Vindicated ahead of schedule!

[subcosmos]

Let's be clear, it's most definitely not GPS. Most phones these days use Wi-Fi location tracking for the fine-precision it offers.

[berdon]

It most definitely is GPS _and_ Wi-Fi SSN triangulation.

[visarga]

> and it would not have worked in the parking garage

What if the phones picked up WiFi networks around the garage?

[ryanmercer]

> zero attempt at disassembly

Uh one guy very much starts manipulating the dispenser and trying to take it apart.