Biggest drawing in the world created with GPS

posted May 24th 2008 1:30pm by Eliot Phillips
filed under: daily, gps hacks

UPDATE: The text: “This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time” has been added to the bottom of the page since the original posting.

Artist [Erik Nordenankar] has created the Biggest Drawing In The World. At least that’s what his URL says. He used the movement of a GPS device to create a giant single line self portrait on the globe. His Pelican case containing four large batteries and the GPS data logger was handed off DHL with very specific travel instructions for its 55 day journey. It’s a pretty amazing feat, but we really wish the case had managed to make the trip without the close watch shown in the video.

[via Waxy]

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Comments [42]

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Ambitious, but rubbish.

Posted at 1:40 pm on May 24th, 2008 by mace

Hmmm. I’d say GPS does not work inside cargo aircraft. All that metal around should shield it pretty well. So most of the lines are probably just interpolated.

Posted at 2:06 pm on May 24th, 2008 by redguy

So you like, send a briefcase filled with active (as in switched on) electronics around the world (including a massive red capped toggle switch straight out of a James bond movie) around the world and you didnt freak out one airport security officer? makes this story hard to believe imho

Posted at 2:06 pm on May 24th, 2008 by Conan

If you watch the movie you see that he is not exactly flying commercial. It looks like he worked closely with DHL for this. At multiple points you see him either getting a tour of a DHL facility, hanging out with DHL employees, sitting in the cargo plans cockpit, sitting in the Co-Pilot seat with a GPS receiver, ect..

Since he is working so closely with DHL I would imagine they had a lot of prior notice as to what the case was, its not like he had to make it through the every day airport security checkpoints for this, and if he did then I am willing to bet DHL worked it out.

Also, that said, the “secure” case could also have just been a prop, in several clips you see him holding a hand-held GPS receiver.

From the movie I am unqualified to say if it is True / False, but nothing in the movie signaled to me that this is a set-up. He gets an interesting art project out of it, and DHL will get lots of free publicity. I would not be surprised if DHL makes an ad-campaign out of it somewhere.

Posted at 2:32 pm on May 24th, 2008 by Paul

So he sent it through DHL but he went along with it? Why did he send it through DHL then?
Who financed this insanity?

And why does he look like a hobo?

This all smells fishy

Posted at 2:39 pm on May 24th, 2008 by Hackius

It looks like a doodle, which is extremely easy to do using any GIS software.

Posted at 2:56 pm on May 24th, 2008 by BigD145

It’s plausible that all those DHL deliveries were made, but not in such circuitous fashion.

Posted at 3:02 pm on May 24th, 2008 by Wesley

This might just be a bad attempt at a viral video from DHL

Posted at 3:29 pm on May 24th, 2008 by mace

please don’t go downhill hackaday, is this really worthy of posting?

Posted at 3:43 pm on May 24th, 2008 by Tom

I’m 90% certain this is just a viral for DHL. I can’t see them agreeing to fly in loops just to draw some guy’s hair.

Posted at 3:57 pm on May 24th, 2008 by John

The handheld gps seems to be for navigating with, considering that he has a map at the same time. Though it is a bit suspicious that a plane seemingly full of 1000’s of other parcels should follow his exact (and very indirect) route choice.

Posted at 3:59 pm on May 24th, 2008 by chrizlax

I’m willing to bet it’s real, just for the publicity for DHL. They probably at least partially funded it.

That being said, yeah, the lines may be slightly embellished. Whatever. As far as Hackaday, this is cool, but needs more relevance to, well, hacks.

Posted at 4:06 pm on May 24th, 2008 by MrHappy

I did a whois lookup on the domain, but could really tell anything useful from the information

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=biggestdrawingintheworld.com

Posted at 4:12 pm on May 24th, 2008 by pferland

if you’d ask me, it’s just an artist who had a crazy idea. DHL definitely bought in on it and supported it because of the publicity it could have brought. If it is a viral marketing campaign, I don’t think it was intentional.

Otherwise, it was still a rather big undertaking (both on the artist and DHL’s part–logistics must have been insane), but personally I agree that it wasn’t really that exceptional.

Posted at 5:34 pm on May 24th, 2008 by threepointone

Am I the only one that thinks the picture looks like Jesus (including the crown o’ thorns)? See? Has his arms spread wide, like he wants to give the world a hug…

No, I’m not a religious person, quite the opposite.

Posted at 6:31 pm on May 24th, 2008 by Del

oh man, now i want to ship things with DHL so they can fly in circles over the ocean with my cargo..

Posted at 9:11 pm on May 24th, 2008 by mewse

What a load of crap…
I could try to come up with a reasonable cost estimate of this project, but it’s not even worth my time because there are so many other things that point this out as a fake…

Posted at 9:39 pm on May 24th, 2008 by alfiesauce

lol.

Posted at 9:47 pm on May 24th, 2008 by tjhow

Perhaps someone should calculate the amount of Jet A fuel wasted by this…

…the obvious answer is “all of it” but seeing the actual number would be interesting.

Posted at 9:55 pm on May 24th, 2008 by berfle

Why is there an led on inside which will never be seen and just draw 20mA of precious battery power. Very stupid.

Posted at 9:59 pm on May 24th, 2008 by blackman

w0w… im so using dhl now…

Posted at 10:29 pm on May 24th, 2008 by dinK3r

bravo! way to make a point.

by wasting an arseload of fuel and money.
i doubt they did all those ridiculous loops, this is such a hoax.

Posted at 10:57 pm on May 24th, 2008 by tjhow

Perhaps this isn’t the most practical thing you can do with a GPS, but it’s definitely an interesting concept. Even if it is just a viral video, I still think that the person who put this whole thing together deserves some credit.

Posted at 1:29 am on May 25th, 2008 by Mothflavour2

First. I personally know that a recreational gps wont’ work inside an airplane. 2 of mine didn’t.

but more importantly:
1. Why would dhl fly LARGE loops in the middle of the ocean and over land (some possibly over restricted airspace)?

2. the “artist” would have to have precise coordinates to tell all the pilots and drivers when to start the loops and how big to make the loops.

3. Who paid for this. Not only would he have to pay for the extra fuel being used but also an enormous amount of money for the inconvenience of making a courier who is supposed to be on time go out of their way for one guy.

It’s a hoax.

Posted at 2:43 am on May 25th, 2008 by Erik

Fake! It would never have survived DHL’s handling, the 2 items they carried for me were destroyed in transit!
DHL denied responsiblity of course.

Posted at 8:41 am on May 25th, 2008 by scruff

Also note how the the latitude doesn’t match when crossing the 180th meridian…
From this i would assume that the picture was generated from his freehand drawing, as opposed to the GPS log

Posted at 9:22 am on May 25th, 2008 by me

Dear Internet Morons,

Before labeling something as fake based on nothing but the ideas in your head, you should maybe consider that he has documentation on all of this. At a bare minimum he has all of the delivery destinations listed. Some points to consider:

1) Obviously he approached DHL with the idea and they agreed.
2) Not all of the lines are due to air flight, so some loops could be engineered through simple package routing over land.
3) Loops in the air can be attributed to a plane being forced to take off in the opposite direction they intended to go in (thus requiring them to loop around).
4) If you look at the finished drawing, you can see that it isn’t perfect and that some loops were probably unintentional.

Perhaps you should consider doing something constructive with your life instead of attempting to tear down what others create.

But you won’t.

Posted at 10:51 am on May 25th, 2008 by CrymeLord

Single largest “digital drawing” please. Just “drawing” would imply a physical medium.

Posted at 1:50 pm on May 25th, 2008 by TheBlunderbuss

I for one would chose a shipping carrier who flies more direct routes… seems as though those loops would add quite a delay to your shipment times.

Posted at 4:09 pm on May 25th, 2008 by beesknees

How much did DHL pay you to post this?

Posted at 7:38 pm on May 25th, 2008 by Javier

fake, fake, fake.

Que farza, farza, fake fake, y que para hacer los risos del cabello el aviÃ³n de DHL estuvo dando vueltas jajajajaja este pinche seudoartista pendejo solo quiere engaÃ±ar gente.

si el avion estuvo dando tantas vueltas en el oceano para los risos este tipo tendria que haber pagado una fortuna, pero pues todo es una farza, fake, fake, fake

Posted at 3:03 am on May 26th, 2008 by lamancha86

Surely…the flight path on each side of the map should exactly line up?
They’re not even close to each other…
Adobe Illustrator maybe?

Posted at 11:41 am on May 26th, 2008 by Jevans

He did some huge loops over open ocean. HOW?

Posted at 11:55 pm on May 26th, 2008 by IC BS

#17 Are you kidding me??? What an asinine question.

I’m sure DHL scheduled the use of their jets for the sole purpose of lugging this briefcase all over the world, instead of using existing routes.

C’mon!

Posted at 9:55 am on May 27th, 2008 by voice of reason

If this is real, I want to see the research he did to get this to show up correct on a mercator projection. Also lets see what his drawing looks like in other projections. My personal feeling on this is that he used his brief case to draw this walking around a field or park, then projected it on this map; but if it is real, lets see the math on the projection conversion.

Posted at 3:19 pm on May 27th, 2008 by CraigD

DidÂ´t anyone look at his homepage?
“This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time”
http://www.biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx

Posted at 7:06 pm on May 27th, 2008 by Andreas

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9953103-7.html

Posted at 8:41 pm on May 27th, 2008 by Crash

Don’t use DHL. Ever.

Posted at 5:46 am on May 28th, 2008 by Seth

I’m an avionics engineer, and GPS definitely wouldn’t normall work within a cargo bay of an aeroplane. HOWEVER, DHL could have easily specially set up a GPS repeater within the cargo bay, to relay the data from the external GPS antenna. It WOULD then work (with an error equivalent to the position of his GPS receiver relative to the position of the aircraft’s GPS antenna).
My hunch is that this guy works for DHL, hence was able to get the idea for this and implement it (if it is true of course).

Posted at 8:52 am on May 30th, 2008 by simmo

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/28/surprise-biggest-drawing-now-biggest-gps-hoax-in-the-world/

Confirmed fake, it was a hoax.

Posted at 12:55 am on Jun 2nd, 2008 by Claan22

If one was a bad person conveying a Big Bag of Stuff from A->B, then having a PDA in there broadcasting GPS coords could be quite useful. It could be used to analyse whether the package had lingered in any customs sheds or been passed through unopened.

Posted at 10:17 pm on Jul 8th, 2008 by Rich

Very dubious claim to say the least. I would like to humbly claim that my own attempt was the first to use a cellphone as pen, and a city as paper. I did not draw anything, but used my walking path as a way to write and send a message in English. A bit like Morse Code. I wrote the code in Python for Nokia N70.

This is from one year ago in Bombay, India…

http://algomantra.blogspot.com/2007/07/cellphabet-10-how-i-can-walk-in-english.html

Posted at 12:20 am on Aug 18th, 2008 by DJ Fadereu

Biggest drawing in the world created with GPS

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