The Future Travels Of The Travelling Hackerbox

For the past year, I’ve been organizing a very special project over on hackaday.io. It’s the Travelling Hacker Box, a box full of random electronics junk, sibling to the The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk, and a project that has already traveled more than 25,000 miles. Earlier this month, I said the Hackerbox is going international, I asked for contributors to receive the project in faraway lands, and now it’s time for the final report. This is where the Travelling Hackerbox will be going over the next year.

More than 200 people responded to the call for hackerbox recipients, and after weeding out a few people who can’t follow instructions, I have a pretty good idea of where the box is headed. The planned trip consists of stops in:

  • Canada, from Vancouver to St. John’s, with a total of 12 stops.
  • Greenland. Yes, Greenland.
  • Ireland, then on to the UK, with stops from Glasgow to Brighton. Total of 10 stops.
  • Netherlands, 3 stops
  • Belgium, France, Spain, Malta
  • Italy, 3 stops
  • Switzerland, 4 stops
  • Germany, 6 stops
  • Denmark, Norway, Sweden
  • Estonia, 2 stops
  • Latvia, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Israel, UAE
  • South Africa, 3 stops
  • Australia, Perth to Melbourne to Sydney To Brisbane, total 11 stops
  • New Zealand, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland, 3 stops
  • India
  • Pakistan, 2 stops
  • Brazil, Panama, and Mexico

mapSince the inception of the Travelling Hackerbox, I’ve been keeping track of the distance the box has traveled by referencing the closest airport to the recipient and plugging those destinations into a great circle mapper. The first box, before it was stolen by a jerk in Georgia, traveled about 14,100 miles, great circle distance. The second iteration of the box, before it was disemboweled following the Hackaday SuperConference, traveled 28,200 miles, or about 45,000 km.

europesmallThe planned travels for the International Travelling Hackerbox will put an additional 52,000 miles — 84,000 km — on the odometer. That’s a minimum distance traveled equal to around the Earth twice, and when this trip concludes, the Travelling Hackerbox, in all its incarnations, will have almost traveled halfway to the moon.

Right now, the path the hackerbox will take is relatively set in stone. I have only contacted recipients on the Canada to Greenland leg of the trip, though. If you want to receive the box, you might be out of luck. Unless you’re in some place that’s really, really awesome (Antarctica, St. Helena, North Korea, a cool hackerspace, or Easter Island), the travel agent for the Hackerbox is himself on vacation.

The Hackerbox will travel on, and I’m encouraging all recipients of the box to post a link of their teardown of the box on the project page. Check out that link for a status update of the box.

19 thoughts on “The Future Travels Of The Travelling Hackerbox

  1. “Unless you’re in some place that’s really, really awesome (Antarctica”

    Wait, wait, wait. It’s going to Christchurch, right? You’ve *got* to get it to Antarctica. Christchurch to Antarctica is as simple as finding someone who’s going down to McMurdo. Find the right few people and you could get it down and back through Christchurch in no time.

    Honestly, this is way too easy not to happen, and you don’t want to miss the last continent on the globe, right?

Leave a Reply to lageosCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.