Track a Soda Can with GPS? 346
I am Kobayashi writes "According to the Indianapolis Star Online, next summer Coca-cola will feature a promotion in which winners will be located by satellites tracking GPS devices implanted in the winning cans.... Hopefully they track you fast before you throw-away (or recycle) your winning can...." And in another bit of Coke news, they've got a new high-tech billboard: jhkoh writes "Reuters/Yahoo is reporting that Coca-Cola has unveiled an 'intelligent' billboard in London's Piccadilly Circus -- at 99 feet wide, the world's biggest -- that supposedly will respond to weather, movement, and SMS text messages. The billboard itself is 52 square meters of LED display. How soon before someone hacks it?"
My 1.25 worth... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this where my 1.25 goes each time I buy a 20oz. Coke? Funding expensive marketing ploys? How about the old way? Why can't that be the way we do contests?
"Excuse me ma'am, I see you are holding a Coke, you won the contest, now come with me into this dark alley to claim your prize." - that scares me, there ARE people out there that would do that...
Well, as a Coke lover, it looks like I am not going to be drinking Coke anytime soon. I would rather lose (or be dead in the case of GPS in cell phones which I have complained about before) a contest than be tracked by a third-party.
Oooh, it's just for the promotion. Oh, it's just to make sure they don't leave the store w/o being bought. Oh, it's just to see how many ARE leaving the store w/o having to track the money. Oh, it's for your own good. Oh, wait.
No thanks.
GPS Reception (Score:5, Insightful)
AND it will have to transmit as well, thats going to be a nice piece of technology.
But seems you could possibly cheat - there are devices to detect semiconductor material (used to detect "bugs"), so with a bit of tweaking you could possibly figure out which can has something inside.
Re:NOT GPS!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't feel bad, I'm sure you didn't know what GPS stood for, thinking it was just another hip sounding acronymn you saw on slashdot.
I wonder how they will get around the legal issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Geocaching (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite seriously, how in the world is Geocaching a "blast"? Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it basically:
Person A: Hello, I have hidden something in this exact location.
Person B: Hey, Person A was right! They did put something in this exact location. Umm...WHEEEE!
I don't get it.
Re:GPS Reception (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets call this warcoking
If they want to track you that means they have transmit which means I can potentially receive the signal.
An easy way to game this would be to hang outside a Coke distribution center with antenna and a decent laptop.
You just sit in your car and try to find coke machines that are leaving the facility and are transmiting.
Then you follow the truck until it stops its xmit and you found your store. Then you go in and scan the shelves with the laptop until you find the right can.
Bingo...
What would be really funny to do is the money from the contest to buy another GPS
ha
Kevin
Skeptical analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
GPS (if that's being used, which is likely) is a one-way system, which means a passive device receives timing signals from a constellation of visible satellites, and uses the timing differences to estimate location and speed of the receiver.
The critical question is what happens next to that data. It can't be transmitted back to the GPS satellites, since they are only able to receive control signals from their operator (Loral?). In fact, it's unlikely to be any satellite-based system, due to the power requirements to punch a signal up to above the atmosphere (such as a satellite phone or VSAT terminal.) Such requirements mean a big heavy battery, and a very carefully aligned directional aerial (in most cases.)
So, what's the back channel? One example of a GPS transponder [nordicwirelesswatch.com] uses GSM to send the coordinates to a local cell network, probably via SMS. A European system (Galileo [spacedaily.com]) being developed for tracking vehicles [eu.int] on roads throughout Europe, using UMTS [pi.ijs.si] or similar technologies.
Note that all of these devices so far require a package that is somewhat large than that which can be hidden inside a can of Cola!
Several problems with this (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The GPS satellites don't tell you where you are. A GPS receiver figures out where it is by triangulating its position by measuring how far it is away from each satellite. This takes some pretty advanced electronics which would barely fit in a soda can.
2. GPS does not track. Nothing is beamed back to the satellites, and even if it were, it would not reach them without a lot of power and a high gain antenna. The most common ways to get realtime tracking information on a GPS receiver is to couple it with ground-based radio or cell network. This would have to go in the soda can along with the rest...
3. GPS (generally) only works outside. The signals that GPS uses are very high frequency, weak, and thus very prone to attenuation due to obstacles. They COULD use the can itself as an antenna, but even that probably wouldn't give you enough gain to get the signal indoors.
4. Power source. None of this stuff works without power. How are they going to propose to keep this thing powered while they have this thing stored in the back of a warehouse for god knows how long before it gets put on a shelf and bought? Even if you didn't have it activate until you, say, opened it, there's still a pretty good chance you will not be in a location where GPS signals can be acquired.
Pepsi, please stick with the damned instant win cards.
Oh, and you are planning on going though with this, it may not be a good idea to fill the can.