Man Uses Hidden Camera To Chronicle A Package's Journey

Ruben van der Vleuten is a self-described Industrial and Interaction designer who says he wants to improve lives with product development. One day he wondered what happens to mail once it leaves its owner's hands and goes off into parcel land: who handles it and what does it go through? To answer these pressing questions, he decided to see for himself first-hand using a carefully-taped box and hidden camera.

The process he used to do this was fairly simple for those technically-inclined, utilizing Arduino, the open-source platform/board often used by hobbyists. He created the hidden camera himself, using the Arduino board and a timer circuit. The end result is a fun look at a package's journey from his hands to the post office and back again, which you can watch in the video below.

While he didn't provide too many details about how be created the hardware, he did publish a few pictures of the setup, including the camera/circuit by itself, in the box, and finally the box all wrapped up and reinforced with duct tape. He doesn't mention how long the journey was, but we're guessing it was probably longer than a single day, which adds up to quite a bit of recording time.

To avoid hours on end of video, he created the timer circuit to record 3 seconds' worth of video every 60 seconds, changing that setting when the box began moving for longer video recordings – thusly, only short glimpses when the box was sitting unattended, but longer recordings when the action was happening. Looking for the camera in the box pictures? It's hidden in the middle of the "B" in "Ruben."

[via Ruben van der Vleuten]