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So my husband came home all excited last night, saying something on the radio gave him an idea for a cache hide... he says to me "what if we hide a cache that contains some kind of sound emitter? So the coordinates listed would be nearby, but not spot on, and the alarm would go off every hour and the cache page would say you need to be there near the hour mark."

 

But I got to wondering if this would even be allowed per hide rules and general good sense. And even if it was allowed... now we're looking to see what kind of device would be good for this so suggestions welcome.

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Yah, the better caches out here are out in the middle of nowhere. So, while a random muggle walking nearby wouldn't really happen out here in the desert, the chances of somebody calling the bomb squad are not totally eliminated, so I appreciate the post. I wonder if I can find something that doesn't just beep but emits some kind of word or something. Like announcing the time?

 

And the trouble of insulating whatever device AND still being able to hear it? I think so far that might be our biggest challenge. I thought about a waterproof watch "padlocked" somehow to the outside of the cache container so it's easier to hear. But since it's the high desert, I do worry about the elements, no matter how "waterproofed" the device is.

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In the UK we have "Key finders"

Attach one to your keys, and when you clap your hands or whistle, the little alarm goes off...

Beep Beep Beep Beep.

 

Means you need to be close enough to clap/whistle and then hear it, but no chance of someone accidentally hearing it. (unless they clap/whistle near to it! :P ) And means you don't have to plan to be at the cache at a certain time.

 

edit to add

link

 

I don't know of a cache with one in, but it was discussed in the UK side of the forums ages (years!) ago

Edited by Bear and Ragged
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I think that's a fantastic idea!

 

My only concern would be somehow insinuating on the cache page that the ability to hear would be required for finding the cache, without giving away too much.

 

I'm an English teacher and I didn't READ your post :P I read "insulating on your cache." Totally changed that word and left out the word page :lol:

 

I LOVE the key finder idea... I'm going to look into that further and think of ideas of how to word it on the cache page too.... mind churning :)

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I believe this has been discussed, and probably even tried more than once.

The cache contains a waterproof alarm watch, or the watch is suspended in the vegetation above the container.

The watch is set to 'go off' at some time well after dark, when nobody (except some crazy cacher) is likely to be around. The listed co-ordinates take you close enough to hear the sound, but you will not know exactly where to look until you hear it.

I also recall some variation using an FRS radio. You key your radio on some specified channel, at some specified location, and hear the radio in the cache to know where to find it. This would be really fun if the CO was diligent enough to replace the batteries daily.

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Or have some sort of solar recharger, or be hooked up to a distribution grid.

 

I've heard of some that emit a continuous radio frequency. Some you have to build a receiver to reach that frequency; one I think you could hear over your car radio (very low power to avoid problems from the FCC).

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So my husband came home all excited last night, saying something on the radio gave him an idea for a cache hide... he says to me "what if we hide a cache that contains some kind of sound emitter? So the coordinates listed would be nearby, but not spot on, and the alarm would go off every hour and the cache page would say you need to be there near the hour mark."

 

But I got to wondering if this would even be allowed per hide rules and general good sense. And even if it was allowed... now we're looking to see what kind of device would be good for this so suggestions welcome.

 

Sounds like an interesting idea. My only concern is your statement "So the coordinates listed would be nearby, but not spot on". IMHO, you should *never* Intentionally post soft coordinates for a cache. If you don't want to use the actual coordinates for the container, make it an unknown cache. In fact, I like the "key finder" idea, especially if you could create a "trail" of key finders that require the seeker of the cache to clap their hinds down the trail until they've found the final.

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GCQ1Y4 Push My Button II used a remote doorbell. The first stage held a pair of the battery operated buttons. Once you found those, you had to walk around, pushing them, until you got close enough for the buzzer to sound.

 

Cache maintenance became an issue, though... particularily up here in the snow and cold. I asked some retired friends of mine to adopt it, but even though they had the time, it was a longer drive for them, so eventually I just let it go and put out a straightforward cache in its place.

 

But I know where there is now another one based on that idea, and the hider is amongst us! ;)

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What ever happened to those little cricket devices. You hide them in a small office or room and once every minute or two you hear a cricket chirp for a split second. Those were made to drive people crazy for days. Maybe something like that could be used. A cacher would know he's close and pause to find the source well a muggle would get bored with a dumb bug and walk away. I might see if I can find one of those and I have a location I could set it up in. Well once they removed that bag of bones and finish their investigation on the site. Swizzle

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What ever happened to those little cricket devices. You hide them in a small office or room and once every minute or two you hear a cricket chirp for a split second. Those were made to drive people crazy for days. Maybe something like that could be used. A cacher would know he's close and pause to find the source well a muggle would get bored with a dumb bug and walk away. I might see if I can find one of those and I have a location I could set it up in. Well once they removed that bag of bones and finish their investigation on the site. Swizzle

They only last a few days unless you adapt a longer life power source. I imagine a D cell could power it for close to a year.

 

try the annoy-a-tron

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/b278/

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What ever happened to those little cricket devices. You hide them in a small office or room and once every minute or two you hear a cricket chirp for a split second. Those were made to drive people crazy for days. Maybe something like that could be used. A cacher would know he's close and pause to find the source well a muggle would get bored with a dumb bug and walk away. I might see if I can find one of those and I have a location I could set it up in. Well once they removed that bag of bones and finish their investigation on the site. Swizzle

They only last a few days unless you adapt a longer life power source. I imagine a D cell could power it for close to a year.

 

try the annoy-a-tron

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/b278/

 

Awesome. I got that locked into my favorites until I can buy it. I drive by that bag of bones almost every day so changing the battery once in a while would be cake. I'll just buy a half dozen batteries every 6 months. I wonder how well it would sound and weather inside of a decon container? Either that or a lock n lock up in a tree hole. Swizzle

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I wonder how well it would sound and weather inside of a decon container? Either that or a lock n lock up in a tree hole. Swizzle

 

I had my doorbell in a Lock & Lock. I thought it was loud enough, and as you can see from the logs, most people agreed, but the person that adopted my idea ended up using a small dry bag instead.

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I wonder how well it would sound and weather inside of a decon container? Either that or a lock n lock up in a tree hole. Swizzle

 

I had my doorbell in a Lock & Lock. I thought it was loud enough, and as you can see from the logs, most people agreed, but the person that adopted my idea ended up using a small dry bag instead.

 

It's a piezo speaker that makes the sound. Piezo speakers are easily muffled so inside a decon it would be horribly muffled.

You would need to shelter it from the elements but keep it open. A small hole will allow it to sound though.

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What ever happened to those little cricket devices. You hide them in a small office or room and once every minute or two you hear a cricket chirp for a split second. Those were made to drive people crazy for days. Maybe something like that could be used. A cacher would know he's close and pause to find the source well a muggle would get bored with a dumb bug and walk away. I might see if I can find one of those and I have a location I could set it up in. Well once they removed that bag of bones and finish their investigation on the site. Swizzle

 

Remember "beepers"? Before cell phones you could get a "beeper" that someone could call, then enter their phone number so that you could call them back when you got to a pay phone (remember payphones?). When it received a call it would beep several times (or vibrate), then it would play one short beep every five minutes or so until you "retrieved the message".

 

So iit around 1993 when I was working as a systems administrator for Viacom when my boss called me into his office. "Shhhh", he said, "Listen". After a couple of minutes, I heard a short beep. "What is it? Is there a virus in my computer?" I told him to reboot it and 15 minutes later I was back in his office. Now his computer was turned off, but after a couple of minutes....beep. He then practically tore apart his desk and eventually found a beeper duct taped to the bottom of one of the drawers. One of his employees, who was leaving to company and had to turn in her beeper decided to play a little practical joke on her soon to be former boss by leaving the beeper stuck to his desk then calling the number before he came into work in the morning.

 

Whatever *did* happen to beepers? Where did they go?

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They only last a few days unless you adapt a longer life power source. I imagine a D cell could power it for close to a year.

 

try the annoy-a-tron

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/b278/

Actually, a pair of D cells. This gadget takes 3V. Hmmm... do I need one of these?

 

The only gotcha I'd see is cold weather operation. Serious cold will drop the cell voltage a good bit. Wonder how cold these would go on 3V? A cricket chirping in the snow might keep the muggles wondering, too!

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They only last a few days unless you adapt a longer life power source. I imagine a D cell could power it for close to a year.

 

try the annoy-a-tron

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/b278/

Actually, a pair of D cells. This gadget takes 3V. Hmmm... do I need one of these?

 

The only gotcha I'd see is cold weather operation. Serious cold will drop the cell voltage a good bit. Wonder how cold these would go on 3V? A cricket chirping in the snow might keep the muggles wondering, too!

 

Ah, I see you are correct. A pair of D-cells would work for quite a while.

If I had to guess, a pair of Lithium D's would keep it operational to about 10 below F. The real problem would be the moisture that could get into the piezo speaker. Those are pretty fragile in their own way.

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They only last a few days unless you adapt a longer life power source. I imagine a D cell could power it for close to a year.

 

try the annoy-a-tron

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/b278/

Actually, a pair of D cells. This gadget takes 3V. Hmmm... do I need one of these?

 

The only gotcha I'd see is cold weather operation. Serious cold will drop the cell voltage a good bit. Wonder how cold these would go on 3V? A cricket chirping in the snow might keep the muggles wondering, too!

 

Ah, I see you are correct. A pair of D-cells would work for quite a while.

If I had to guess, a pair of Lithium D's would keep it operational to about 10 below F. The real problem would be the moisture that could get into the piezo speaker. Those are pretty fragile in their own way.

 

I wonder if those re-usable oxygen absorbers would work out ok to help make it a little more water resistant. I see them in survival and surplus mags once in a while. You put them on an oven rack and open the door of the oven. Then you put your oven on its lowest setting to dry them back out. Swizzle

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The real problem would be the moisture that could get into the piezo speaker. Those are pretty fragile in their own way.

Yes, and a little tough to "seal" without muffling them substantially. Some of them are already relatively water resistant, but most aren't. The trick is not to worry about restricting air flow, but to avoid restricting air movement. A bit of thin polyethylene (cheap sandwich bag material?) RTVd to the top where the piezo's vent is should get it. Just make a "bubble" and keep the glue to the outside edge - don't run it tight across the top.

 

Heck, the rest of the rig isn't exactly potted for mil spec use in the dampness of the jungle, either. Smartest move might be to mount the whole thing in a plastic box with the piezo right up against a hole in the case, and put the polyethylene over the hole in the case.

 

Guess I need to get me one of these things to play with.

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Why not use a wind chime? You wouldn't have to replace it... But you would have to put it in a very secluded area with little to no muggle traffic, and you would have to say in the cache record that it can only be found on a windy day. You could just attach a film canister to the bottom of the chimes. Just a though...

-Danger Jackson

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Why not use a wind chime? You wouldn't have to replace it... But you would have to put it in a very secluded area with little to no muggle traffic, and you would have to say in the cache record that it can only be found on a windy day. You could just attach a film canister to the bottom of the chimes. Just a though...

-Danger Jackson

 

Oh, nice idea!

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We had one like this in our area. Cache page coords took you to a container that had a remote control device and coords in the vicinity of the final cache. When you were at the second coords, pushing the button on the remote you would hear "Sounds of Nature". That was the name of the cache. See GC15Q3Q. It's since been archived because it was difficult to keep the batteries fresh.

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I love this concept. My brother bought one of those remote controlled fart machines from a gag gift store that he wanted to put out as a cache. I don't think he ever figured out a good way of doing it though.

 

I think a really cool letterbox hybrid would be utilizing LPFM (Low Power FM) Radio. Drive to a certain place and then turn your FM radio to a designated channel, where a looping description of where you need to walk/drive/etc. to get to the cache could be heard. Problem is that LPFM setups cost thousands of dollars and you have to go thru the FCC permitting process.

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I love this concept. My brother bought one of those remote controlled fart machines from a gag gift store that he wanted to put out as a cache. I don't think he ever figured out a good way of doing it though.

 

I think a really cool letterbox hybrid would be utilizing LPFM (Low Power FM) Radio. Drive to a certain place and then turn your FM radio to a designated channel, where a looping description of where you need to walk/drive/etc. to get to the cache could be heard. Problem is that LPFM setups cost thousands of dollars and you have to go thru the FCC permitting process.

 

??? You're thinking low power when you want to be thinking LOW power! Those LPFM systems used along highways are quite a bit more than the 100mW allowed for licence-free use, and cover quite a bit more territory. A cheap 100mW (or more accurately, 250uV/m at 3 meters) FM transmitter with one of those cheap "reminder" messaging gadgets could be put together for less than $60 including batteries. Ramsey makes all kinds of toys of this sort. A cheap AM is http://www.shopramseyelectronics.com/am1c-...-kit-p-792.html and their cheap FM is http://www.shopramseyelectronics.com/fm10c...kit-p-1232.html (stereo, no less). There are others out there cheaper yet. AceAudio certainly isn't one of them ... geez, talk about expensive.

 

For $299, you can go "first class" without Ace's price and use one of the commercially available gadgets that some realtors employ: http://www.radiohousetour.com/ although it's not clear how long these are expected to run on any given 12V source of juice. They don't specify the current draw.

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Why not use a wind chime? You wouldn't have to replace it... But you would have to put it in a very secluded area with little to no muggle traffic, and you would have to say in the cache record that it can only be found on a windy day. You could just attach a film canister to the bottom of the chimes. Just a though...

-Danger Jackson

 

I am so going to steal that idea when I get back to the states. And I know just the friend that will let me use his porch to hang a wind chime.

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Years ago - I was assigned to teach classes in an old printing facility. There were tunnels under it with no lighting. We had a ball leading the adventurous people in the class on trips down in the tunnels (all adults, BTW.) Eventually, some students felt brave enough to go on tours without us as guides. I built a tiny light sensor board and wired it to a small board and speaker about 50 feet away. It was a simple matter to hide everything in the tunnel.

 

When the brave explorers went down below, they would reach a point deep into the maze that their flashlights would hit the sensor. From behind them, between them and the only known exit, a deep growl would resonate in the darkness. That particular spot would always seem to be wet.

 

A Night Cache would be a wonderful place to rebuild this, wouldn't it? It ran off a 6 volt latern battery and the battery lasted at least 2 years. I would just have to set the sensor inside a light shield and adjust the sensitivity.

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Near Gig Harbor, WA. there was a cache where the coordinates lead you to a rope hanging down a tree. You gave it a good yank and the cache was near a bell hanging in another tree some 100 feet or so away. In a heavy wind the bell would ring on it's own. Dick, W7WT

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I've been looking at geocaching for some time and have only just decided to take the plunge, but if noise cache creep in I'll be stffed before i get started because I'm deaf :P Something to maybe think about?

fin i can most definately sympathize, my sister is deaf. i think that would be something to keep in mind for the posting, so people would not waste their time on a cache they would not be able to locate. there are some that i, would never be able to do as well, if it required tree climbing, sure footedness on rough terrain, or even a hike of more than a mile i am pretty much out. good thing there are lots and lots of good ones to go on that dont require me to go beyond my own limitations, though i try to push those every chance i get.

 

-d of the hudsonfam

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I've been looking at geocaching for some time and have only just decided to take the plunge, but if noise cache creep in I'll be stffed before i get started because I'm deaf :P Something to maybe think about?

fin i can most definately sympathize, my sister is deaf. i think that would be something to keep in mind for the posting, so people would not waste their time on a cache they would not be able to locate. there are some that i, would never be able to do as well, if it required tree climbing, sure footedness on rough terrain, or even a hike of more than a mile i am pretty much out. good thing there are lots and lots of good ones to go on that dont require me to go beyond my own limitations, though i try to push those every chance i get.

 

-d of the hudsonfam

I think it would be fair to say my tree climbing days are long gone :o I could send my daughter up a tree but I'm 99% certain she'd get stuck :ph34r:

Hearing aid batteries are tiny and have an amazing amount of power in them for their size.

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I have a 'doorbell' cache in operation (GC1RAM4), which has recieved very good responses. I have had finders PM me with compliments.

 

I'm currently testing a 'key finder' cache. I left this container on my property in torrential rain, cold nights, warm sunny days and it still works…

 

b256b211-bfb9-4636-a465-830f6f1fd4c8.jpg

 

However it works too well! The slightest sound and the thing goes off. I thought after a couple of weeks out in the field it would calm down, but unfortunately it is still going strong.

 

I also have a similar cache in development…

 

509c1b88-0128-4e45-a694-f11ca49d32c5.jpg

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Wow!! I'm editing this whole thing. I don't sound so smart after drinking a little to much of gramps dandilion wine. My original idea sounded good to me last night but I don't think I got a good point across. I wanted to use some kind of speaker that would help to deter people from illegally dumping in the middle of the night. Just something that said "HEY" really loud and fast so its tough to pinpoint. Now that I'm a little "clearer" I guess it wouldn't be such a good idea to have a loud speaker yelling in the woods at someone who may just be parking there for a number of other reasons that aren't bad. Sorry to all of those subjected to my drunkeness. Now for something a little more reasonable. My original idea was to place a night cache inside the tunnel. A fake rubber bat with a magnet placed inside of him. His mouth is a little larger then the size of a bison tube. Do you think it'd be possible to hook him up to a noise maker? I was also thinking a remote control set up with 2 red leds for his eyes. Only problem is I'm not all that technical. Reading schematics is like reading greek to me. Any ideas? Swizzle

Edited by swizzle
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