Geoseekr
-
Posts
5 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Geoseekr
-
-
I'm sorry, I should have elaborated a bit more on the puzzle. I thought about that, but had to leave for class.
I intend to leave the RFID reader at a local government owned property (i.e. a rec centre), and have the catcher "sign in" when they take it to the offset caches. The offset caches will have an RFID tag (only about $2USD) glued to the lid of the cache so as to deter theft. The reader will be in an enclosed metal box that I will make with the only easily accessible component being the batteries. Regular maintenance shouldn't be a problem, so I'll leave a spare set of batteries in case they run out, and check frequently to make sure things are okay.
I had the same response when I pinged the domain, but I pinged the domain name and it returned that IP, so the fact that the packet loss is 100% is irrelevant. The catcher just needs the IP.
If I left any questions unanswered, I'm sorry, its difficult to type from my phone. I'm aware that it will only appeal to a certain type of person, so perhaps after a week, I'll release a sort of "walkthrough" for the puzzle and the cache. Lets hope there's no thieves in my area!
I like challenging and unique caches, but I think a cache like the one you mentioned would be way out of my league!
Haha, it's only my first idea. I was inspired while working on a "reverse geocache" with my dad (GC2M9QE). Very fun stuff, and don't be intimidated! It's all very understandable once you dig into it a little bit.
Here is my perspective as a fellow geek.
I'm curious how you intend to clue the finders about pinging IP addresses. If you give them explicit instructions the puzzle will be tedious, not challenging. If you don't, I wonder how many people will figure out that's what they need to do. Also, I pinged the IP address you gave and got only timeout errors. Might be my OS (Snow Leopard).
The majority of geocachers will not be comfortable using the command line. In the worst case they might inadvertently do something to mess their computers up.
The RFID idea is interesting and I've thought about doing something with RFID myself. The main problem I see is that you will need to supply a reader since no one will have one. This means that the cacher will need to pick it up somewhere, carry it along, and bring it back to its starting point when done. If they don't return it the cache is dead. And if two cachers start a few minutes apart, the second cacher will have no way of knowing whether someone is using the reader or whether it is just gone.
I don't want to pooh-pooh the idea though. I really enjoy caches that are unique in some way. I am working on a microcontroller-based cache myself. My total cost will be under $20, so it isn't much of an investment if something goes wrong. BTW, I am requiring that cachers bring their own batteries, which gets around the battery maintenance issue.
I think I'll make the hint something like "ping, dword". As mentioned up at the top of the post, I hope to release a "walkthrough" of sorts after a week or two if people find it too challenging. It's always good to familiarize yourself with the command line! (Let's hope nobody messes up, I don't think there's anything similar to the ping command that can cause any issues.) I will be including an RFID Reader, Sparkfun offers what seems to be a good reader for about $30 USD (called ID-12, I believe). The best part is it's compatible with Arduino, which is the microcontroller I'll be using.
I am curious about your project, perhaps you can send me a message about your project and how it will be so cheap?
! -
I want to get some feedback from the Geocaching community before I get to work building this cache.
In general, how many people would be interested in a puzzle cache dealing with tech related things (for the puzzle, something to do with the internet, and the cache being a microcontroller based project)?
More specifically:
Puzzle:
The puzzle would be a list of sites. The person solving the puzzle would need to find the IP of the site using a ping through the command terminal. Then they would have to convert the IP to DWORD, which would leave them with a string of numbers. For instance:
Pinging www.geocaching.com [66.150.167.189] with 32 bytes of data:
The IP of www.geocaching.com is 66.150.167.189. (http://66.150.167.189 would bring you to geocaching.com)
Then convert that to DWORD: 66*256+150=*256+167=*256+189= 1117169597 (http://1117169597 would also bring you to geocaching.com)
So now the person solving the puzzle would have numbers, from which I could pull numbers to make the coordinates for the puzzle.
Cache:
The idea of this cache would be to have a box with an LCD screen and an RFID reader. When you turn on the box, it lists coordinates of another offset cache. When you go to that offset cache, you find an RFID tag in it and scan it. The box will then give you coordinates to another offset cache, at which you would do the same. After this, it would give you the coordinates of the final cache.
I would love to hear your opinion, and if you have any questions, let me know!
-
Well thank you for the quick response!
Any idea about the second bit? (CSS/PHP/Javascript)? I don't think PHP or Javascript is possible, and it seems that using css using the <style> tag is only sometimes successful (i.e. <h1 style="color:green">This works</h1> while <ul style="list-style:none"><li>this does not</li></ul>.)
I really wanted to do something like:
<script>
prompt('Hello!\n\nWelcome to my cache! Please enter the secret password to retrieve the coordinates','Enter password here...');
</script>
Ah well...
-
A quick question to the tech-ier people around,
Pretty simple question, I suppose. While playing around with posting a cache, I've discovered that the system is not very lenient in the HTML you are allowed to put into your cache description. I was wondering if there's a published list of HTML tags (i.e. <b>, <i>, <list>, etc.) out there somewhere. Also, the guidelines for incorporating things like CSS/PHP/Javascript. I want to make my cache page interesting, but have run in to many difficulties while trying. I suppose I can understand the need for such filters, but it'd be nice to be able to see what I CAN do.
Kind regards,
Geoseekr.
!
Curious about a puzzle...
in General geocaching topics
Posted
I do agree that I should perhaps do a little more research. The puzzle idea came when I was looking in to how phishing attempts work (I plan on naming my cache 'Gone Phishing' or something of the sort
). The ping command, although perhaps not needed, is a viable method of finding an IP address, is it not? Also, I would love to know what aspect of my original post doesn't make sense. To me it seems fine...
The physical cache will not be internet-based. It will "randomly" pick one of three offset caches and display the coordinates on an LCD screen. The coordinates for the offset caches will be stored in the program running on the Arduino. After they go to that offset cache and scan the RFID, it will pick one of the two remaining offset caches. After they scan all 3 RFID tags, it will display the coordinates to the final.
I will be using an Arduino. Don't feel like messing with parts, as you said.