drone

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 12/4/2017 at 2:06 PM, NYPaddleCacher said:

Those that go after caches requiring a canoe or kayak can get in a lot of trouble (which includes dying) if they don't use common sense, yet GS hasn't restricted canoe/kayak caches in anyway.  Although it's a moot point, if drone caches were allowed, one would hope that cache owners would not submit a listing for a cache in a location closed to recreational drone use.  That would be breaking the law, and we can't have geocachers which violate local laws.

Paddlecraft are allowed in pretty much any public waterway. Drone use is much more varied and restrictive, and often those restrictions are not obvious to a Reviewer.

[+cerberus1]

5 hours ago, terratin said:

I also can't say I find drone pilots responsible when they fly their things in a beautiful place and disturb the silence. I don't hike up that mountain with loud music either.

Curious whether you actually have experience with drone usage.  Unlike the kids toys,  a drone is usually high enough that you really can't hear them at all. 

[+Manville Possum]

26 minutes ago, cerberus1 said:

 Unlike the kids toys,  a drone is usually high enough that you really can't hear them at all. 

 

Exactly. They are spy equipment for taking high quality pictures and video. 

[+thebruce0]

I once took a trail around an undeveloped area, and heard a heavy buzz. Couldn't place it. Then a drone snuck over the nearby mound hovering around me for a bit about 2 storeys up. Thought I might have stumbled on some top secret gov't installation and would be apprehended in minutes. Kept walking, it sped away, but I never found the drone operator. Creepy.  (and I wasn't apprehended)

Edited December 14, 2017 by thebruce0

[+Manville Possum]

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

I once took a trail around an undeveloped area, and heard a heavy buzz. Couldn't place it. Then a drone snuck over the nearby mound hovering around me for a bit about 2 storeys up. Thought I might have stumbled on some top secret gov't installation and would be apprehended in minutes. Kept walking, it sped away, but I never found the drone operator. Creepy.  (and I wasn't apprehended)

 

Wow, that's interesting. Sounds like you were lucky. 

[+jellis]

I know in my area most of the East Bay Regional Parks are banning the use of Drones in the parks. Especially over marshes and wildlife habitats.

[+Wacka]

Most of those marsh areas in the SF Bay area are also approaches to the airports, so they are restricted there.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Wacka

[+Korichnovui]

On 12/10/2017 at 4:47 AM, cerberus1 said:

 IIRC, in '15 Geocaching HQ asked all Reviewers to not publish caches involving the use of drones.

I'm not aware of any guidelines saying that I can't use one to access a cache if able.

 

I came upon your post while doing some research. I was thinking of making a puzzle cache where the puzzle clues are contained in a YouTube video, with some of the footage captured by a drone. Hopefully that’s different?

[+hzoi]

On 12/4/2017 at 7:45 AM, Keystone said:

Please note, Community Volunteer Reviewers will not knowingly publish a cache that requires the use of a drone for the finder to retrieve and log a find on the cache.

Use of a drone for scouting an area, as described by the OP, wouldn't be regulated by the Geocache Listing Guidelines -- just by applicable laws in that area.

 

 

On 5/7/2018 at 0:39 AM, Korichnovui said:

 

I came upon your post while doing some research. I was thinking of making a puzzle cache where the puzzle clues are contained in a YouTube video, with some of the footage captured by a drone. Hopefully that’s different?

 

I think that's sufficiently different from the scenario Groundspeak wants to prohibit - see Keystone's quote above. 

 

In your proposed scenario, finders wouldn't be using a drone to retrieve and log the geocache itself, they'd be watching a video to find the coordinates for the geocache (and then would have to go out and get the geocache itself and log it).  The fact that a drone was used to film the video should be irrelevant.

Edited May 8, 2018 by hzoi

[+Fugads]

On 5/6/2018 at 10:39 PM, Korichnovui said:

 

I came upon your post while doing some research. I was thinking of making a puzzle cache where the puzzle clues are contained in a YouTube video, with some of the footage captured by a drone. Hopefully that’s different?

 

Maybe it's silly of me to repeat what I already said earlier in this thread... but it wasn't entirely clear from my other post and it seems that someone new is asking a kind of different question. I had a cache published similar to the idea you describe above. See https://coord.info/GC5YP2N . Made for a very fun cache creation. The container was made up to look like a drone that had crashed into a tree, and I must say I enjoyed every aspect of putting this listing together.

[+elrojo14]

On 5/6/2018 at 9:39 PM, Korichnovui said:

 

I came upon your post while doing some research. I was thinking of making a puzzle cache where the puzzle clues are contained in a YouTube video, with some of the footage captured by a drone. Hopefully that’s different?

 

That is a great idea! I might have to do that. 

 

I was going to make a drone cache. A multi where the North coordinates were on top of one building with permission and the West coordinates on top of another building with permission. Groundspeak said no way! 

 

Maybe I will revive that idea and make it where you can see the coordinates with a spotting scope or a drone. 

 

Let's do this! 

[+Korichnovui]

I'll show you my puzzle once I have it made, but because of certain bottlenecks It won't be ready for another month and half - ish.

[+elrojo14]

On 5/9/2018 at 2:44 PM, Korichnovui said:

I'll show you my puzzle once I have it made, but because of certain bottlenecks It won't be ready for another month and half - ish.

 

Surprisingly, they published my cache today! https://coord.info/GC7QCYX

[+arisoft]

1 hour ago, elrojo14 said:

 

Surprisingly, they published my cache today! https://coord.info/GC7QCYX

 

Indeed, if it is a correct assumption that you can find the cache without any GPS usage.

[+elrojo14]

5 hours ago, arisoft said:

 

Indeed, if it is a correct assumption that you can find the cache without any GPS usage.

 

Using satellite imagery, why would you ever need a GPS to find any cache? https://coord.info/GC3N08Y

So this rule kind of puzzles me at times. However, our local reviewers seem to allow caches that get you to the start point and then have you start a certain direction. Given these guidelines, I think I am satisfying "A landmark used as a reference point to determine the next stage". Go to the Taft sign and head southwest on Harrison Street. 

[+Korichnovui]

7 hours ago, elrojo14 said:

 

Surprisingly, they published my cache today! https://coord.info/GC7QCYX

 

Cool!

This isn't how I was going to make my puzzle but I like yours. I may want to make one like this, too!

My idea is more firmly rooted in the notion of coming up with coordinates to go to. I will have a coordinate checker.

I have several spots picked out. I could have done the first spot already but I crashed my drone and am impatiently waiting for the replacement to arrive later this week. I hope to have the cache published before the end of the week.

The second spot is.... more difficult to get to but hopefully I'll be able to take care of it within 2 weeks.

Now I'm wondering where I could make an "aerial tour" video of my own.

 

What drone did you use? Clearly you were flying it from a car while someone drove you around?

[+Touchstone]

6 hours ago, arisoft said:

 

Indeed, if it is a correct assumption that you can find the cache without any GPS usage.

Seems like kind of a Letterbox Hybrid design to me.

[+elrojo14]

11 minutes ago, Korichnovui said:

 

Cool!

This isn't how I was going to make my puzzle but I like yours. I may want to make one like this, too!

My idea is more firmly rooted in the notion of coming up with coordinates to go to. I will have a coordinate checker.

I have several spots picked out. I could have done the first spot already but I crashed my drone and am impatiently waiting for the replacement to arrive later this week. I hope to have the cache published before the end of the week.

The second spot is.... more difficult to get to but hopefully I'll be able to take care of it within 2 weeks.

Now I'm wondering where I could make an "aerial tour" video of my own.

 

What drone did you use? Clearly you were flying it from a car while someone drove you around?

 

My wife got me a Parrot Bebop 2 for Christmas 2016. I have really enjoyed it, but man I wish I had a Mavic. This is actually my third Bebop 2. The first one lasted about a week before I was flying it back into the neighborhood and clipped a palm tree, the rotors shut down, and it powered right onto the concrete of my neighbors driveway from 20 feet in the air. I never got it working right again. 

So I found a replacement on Amazon for $350! It worked fine. Then Parrot e-mailed me and said they don't usually replaced crashed drones, but they will mine! SWEET! So I was going to have two drones. Two days before the replacement arrived, I again, hit a tree across from my house, the drone fell from like 30 feet this time and hit another neighbors retaining wall and was done for. This one I have managed to keep whole much longer and just found out more about better battery maintenance and charging. I did manage to back it into a hill at a Geocache a couple months ago, but successfully recovered it. 

 

There really are two great things I have that have really enhanced my Geocaching. A Yamaha XT225 dual sport motorcycle and a drone.

 

7 minutes ago, Touchstone said:

Seems like kind of a Letterbox Hybrid design to me.

 

Should I have put a stamp with it and made it a LBH? I was basing it off of this fun cache I found. https://coord.info/GC46WZJ

Edited June 3, 2018 by elrojo14
added response

[+Korichnovui]

1 minute ago, elrojo14 said:

 

My wife got me a Parrot Bebop 2 for Christmas 2016. I have really enjoyed it, but man I wish I had a Mavic. This is actually my third Bebop 2. The first one lasted about a week before I was flying it back into the neighborhood and clipped a palm tree, the rotors shut down, and it powered right onto the concrete of my neighbors driveway from 20 feet in the air. I never got it working right again. 

So I found a replacement on Amazon for $350! It worked fine. Then Parrot e-mailed me and said they don't usually replaced crashed drones, but they will mine! SWEET! So I was going to have two drones. Two days before the replacement arrived, I again, hit a tree across from my house, the drone fell from like 30 feet this time and hit another neighbors retaining wall and was done for. This one I have managed to keep whole much longer and just found out more about better battery maintenance and charging. I did manage to back it into a hill at a Geocache a couple months ago, but successfully recovered it. 

 

There really are two great things I have that have really enhanced my Geocaching. A Yamaha XT225 dual sport motorcycle and a drone.

 

Mavic would be pretty awesome but I'm using the Spark, a bit more affordable and works great. But your video would exceed the range from the controller, so I'm guessing someone drove you around in a car while you flew it around?

[+elrojo14]

1 minute ago, Korichnovui said:

 

Mavic would be pretty awesome but I'm using the Spark, a bit more affordable and works great. But your video would exceed the range from the controller, so I'm guessing someone drove you around in a car while you flew it around?

 

My wife drove while I flew. You can see our red Explorer a few times in the video if you watch for it. 

[+Touchstone]

23 minutes ago, elrojo14 said:

Should I have put a stamp with it and made it a LBH? I was basing it off of this fun cache I found.

Nope.  Totally up to you.  I was merely pointing out to folks concerned about the GPS usage, that there are scores of LBH's with similar designs.  I've seen Multi's and Puzzles done in a similar fashion.

[+elrojo14]

1 minute ago, Touchstone said:

Nope.  Totally up to you.  I was merely pointing out to folks concerned about the GPS usage, that there are scores of LBH's with similar designs.  I've seen Multi's and Puzzles done in a similar fashion.

We are kind of getting into another topic, but the GPS usage does puzzle me. I really like the old LBHs that you use the clues in the description to get to, but those seem to be grandfathered in now. The reviewers seem to be more into making you use the GPS to get to the final, but it seems like such a fine line given so many other caches that don't. We have some fun local night caches you do by car. Again, I think they are publishable because you go to GZ and then the CO says "head this direction". That seems to be the way to involve the GPS. And if that seems to work, then I can live with that. 

[+Fugads]

8 hours ago, elrojo14 said:

 

Surprisingly, they published my cache today! https://coord.info/GC7QCYX

 

Awesome cache. I wouldn't worry about guidelines requiring GPS use. There are a lot of puzzles caches out there that have you start in one place and then follow picture clues along a route to reach the final. This really isn't that different except that it might be easier to solve from home than some of the other variants I've seen. But no worries there either. Really loved the video you put together for this urban hide. Makes it fun.

[+niraD]

1 hour ago, elrojo14 said:

We are kind of getting into another topic, but the GPS usage does puzzle me. I really like the old LBHs that you use the clues in the description to get to, but those seem to be grandfathered in now. The reviewers seem to be more into making you use the GPS to get to the final, but it seems like such a fine line given so many other caches that don't. We have some fun local night caches you do by car. Again, I think they are publishable because you go to GZ and then the CO says "head this direction". That seems to be the way to involve the GPS. And if that seems to work, then I can live with that. 

All the LBH caches that I've found have worked like this: Use accurate GPS coordinates to go to a specific location (not a general location like a parking lot or the entrance to a park), then use directional clues to navigate to the cache location. And a few puzzle caches have worked that way too: Use accurate GPS coordinates to navigate to a field puzzle, then use directional clues from the field puzzle to navigate to the cache location. I haven't heard anything from Groundspeak or the volunteer reviewers that accurate GPS coordinates have to be used to find the final, only that they have to be used at some point along the way.

[+barefootjeff]

7 hours ago, elrojo14 said:

Using satellite imagery, why would you ever need a GPS to find any cache?

 

I'd like to see you find this cache of mine just using the satellite image.

 

 

Many of the forest caches are like that - all you can see in the satellite images are treetops.

[+arisoft]

15 hours ago, niraD said:

I haven't heard anything from Groundspeak or the volunteer reviewers that accurate GPS coordinates have to be used to find the final, only that they have to be used at some point along the way.

 

I have heard (coordinates only to the starting point) and then the same reviewer published another cache with even less use of coordinates. You will never know what happens. I am using GPS to navigate to the parking lot so practically every cache have some GPS usage anyway.

Edited June 4, 2018 by arisoft

[+thebruce0]

16 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I'd like to see you find this cache of mine just using the satellite image.

 

Many of the forest caches are like that - all you can see in the satellite images are treetops.

 

At least that one you can gauge by a sort of centerpoint to the shoreline wrapping around. In the depths of a forest where say trails are hidden by thick canopy, with no distinct treetop standing out as a locateable landmark for at least 100m in all directions, yes indeed!

[+dprovan]

On 6/3/2018 at 1:55 PM, barefootjeff said:

Many of the forest caches are like that - all you can see in the satellite images are treetops.

I've looked for a lot of caches like that, often all I can see on the ground is the coordinates bouncing all over the place. :-)

Edited June 4, 2018 by dprovan

[+niraD]

25 minutes ago, dprovan said:

21 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

Many of the forest caches are like that - all you can see in the satellite images are treetops.

I've looked for a lot of caches like that, often all I can see on the ground is the coordinates all over the place. :-)

Back when I was geocaching sans-GPS, I found a few like that by navigating from landmarks that I could identify from the aerial photos. For example, there is a clearing almost due north of the location in the photo. One might be able to find that clearing, and then navigate almost due south to reach GZ.

 

A couple times, I've done something similar when the tree cover was too heavy for my smartphone to get a decent GPS lock, but it had cached aerial images that I could use.

 

It's a lot easier to use a dedicated device with a high-sensitivity GPS receiver and just follow the arrow. But it isn't always about doing things the easiest way possible.

[+Korichnovui]

Hit a snag.

My hide is just a tad too close to a community airport and the drone refuses to fly in that area.

I admit that I somewhat nefariously looked into flying the drone without GPS enabled (so it doesn't know it's in a restricted area) and that looks kind of risky, like the drone relies on GPS for some of its stabilization abilities. Besides, that would be breaking rules and I don't want to cause any trouble.

I'm researching getting authorization from the airport (it's small enough that it doesn't even have a control tower).

[+badlands]

4 hours ago, Korichnovui said:

Besides, that would be breaking rules and I don't want to cause any trouble.

 

Or be arrested?

[+Korichnovui]

I got all 3 of my drone puzzles published!

 

GC7R4M3

GC7Q663

GC7PZBQ

 

It took some work. I had to get special local authorization for the rogue drone one. For the Pasco neighborhood one, my initial vision was to show a nonmoving birds-eye view of the whole neighborhood but the altitude restriction prevented that, so what you see is my plan B. Really the same with the island video - a bit more height would have looked nicer, but I had maxed out the altitude again.

 

My big mistake was posting the videos as public instead of unlisted. One enterprising new cacher figured out that he could watch the videos and solve them before the later ones published. Live and learn!

 

Edited June 24, 2018 by Korichnovui

[+elrojo14]

Look at what this thread inspired me to do! This was an expensive but fun one to plant. https://coord.info/GC7ZNBA

 

I just checked on the final yesterday and it is still going strong.