Technocache

July 14, 2004

Stemming from a topic brought up in the "Night Cache" thread- I am curious to see what sort of thoughts there are out there about technology enabled caches...

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=75374

After thinking about this, I would like to make a solar powered cache , that flashes an IR LED once the sun is down, or when you trip a motion detector...

anyway- What other kinds of technology enabled caches have you either seen or thought of...

1.6k · July 14, 2004

I've heard of caches that have an infared tripwire type system that sets off an alarm when the beam is broken...

Never actually seen the cache, but I've heard about it in the forums. BTW, I really like your IR idea, does anyone actually sell the type of flasher you're talking about stock or would someone have to make one?

July 14, 2004

I have never "seen one", but with a little technical knowledge I would imagine it would not be hard to make- or buy one of those solar powered yard lights- and cannibalize it.

July 14, 2004

ya know- its kind of a mean idea- but you could make a techno cache that broadcasts a RF signal that would essentially scramble the gps signals- thus rendering you GPS inop. while you are near the cache. From that point you would have to break out your trusty compass and orienteer your way...

1.8k · July 14, 2004

If it floats your boat.

July 15, 2004

I have never "seen one", but with a little technical knowledge I would imagine it would not be hard to make- or buy one of those solar powered yard lights- and cannibalize it.

Solar powered, dark aactivated IR beacon:

As you suggested, use a solar yard light as the base. Pick up one of those little clip-on single LED flashers, usually available for a couple of bucks per 4-pack or whatever. Finally, an IR LED from a dead TV remote or somesuch. The flashers usually (in my experience) run off of a couple of button cells for 3 volts. Similarly, the LED yard lights often use a pair of AA or AAA NiCd cells, also for 3 volts. Replace the LED in the flasher with the IR unit, and replace the LED in the yard light with the flasher/IR combination. Mix thoroughly, and serve well chilled.

July 15, 2004

Great Topic!!!......Why did the AmishHacker not think of this one.....anyway it would be great to see some pics of these caches. I know a few have poped up in the Cool Cache Containers Thread

July 15, 2004

Actually, I have toyed with similar ideas several times before moving to Florida. The one I was working on used visible red LEDs in the flasher so that you didn't need a camera or light intensifier/night vision units to see it, but tossed in a couple other kinks to make it interesting.

If I can manage to get out of Florida and move back up north, I'll have to get something placed using a beacon or two...

5.3k · July 15, 2004

This one is near me and I need to track it down one of these nights. It uses a flashing LED afetr following a trail of reflectors.

5.3k · July 15, 2004

I just set a night cache up. I was going to have a presure swithch under so that whenever someone pick up the ammo box it would set of a loud alarm, I am planing another night cache that I may do that with.

July 15, 2004

I just set a night cache up. I was going to have a presure swithch under so that whenever someone pick up the ammo box it would set of a loud alarm, I am planing another night cache that I may do that with.

A night cache we found had a motion sensor inside the cache. When you pick it up, a lady screams, "HELP! Let me out of this thing!". It scared the %$&*#*$ out of us but it was a lot of fun!

July 15, 2004

ya know- its kind of a mean idea- but you could make a techno cache that broadcasts a RF signal that would essentially scramble the gps signals- thus rendering you GPS inop. while you are near the cache. From that point you would have to break out your trusty compass and orienteer your way...

This is too funny. I was just having this conversation with another cacher 2 days ago. HMMMMM very interesting, I just used the link to the sight we were on that had the schematics and the site is now gone. I googled the topic, saw the article name and the page is gone. Great I wonder if I will be getting a visit from the men in dark suits soon. LOL

But to address your topic, we thought about a GPS jamming cache. From what I remember though, the jammer would cover about a 200-foot area, and we did not spend much time to see if the range could be set for something less than that. Oh well, good idea while it lasted.

This cache might fall under this topic. He did have to write the game This was a fun way to get the coordinates. 9 hours of reliving my younger days of playing games on the VIC 20. LOL I think I still have that thing around here some where, maybe I will pull it out and see if it still works

July 15, 2004

Umm... the solar garden light is a good idea (but I would say that; I bought several of them yesterday for exactly this purpose!) but why use an IR LED? I mean, the whole point of _infra_ red is that it's invisible...

Once you add a small microcontroller to the mix, the possibilities start to open up. You can now get little 8-pin MCUs for a couple of bucks, and they'll run on a couple of AAA alkalines for months or years, if the application is written the right way.

Ideas in my 'to do' list:

-variations on the night cache flashing LED idea, including a simple 'flash only at night', Morse or prisoner's code continuous flasher, torch-flash-activated flasher, etc.

-solar powered radio transmitter (using the garden lights!) that uses about 32k of MCU flash to store some digitised speech with coords. Aimed at a night cache initially, but it doesn't need to be. The output would be so tiny that it could run off the batteries full-time and they'd still charge every time the sun shone. (The cache description would specify a frequency. Oh, and the requirement for an FM radio!)

-if solar power's not an option, an alternative to keep the power down is to have the MCU sleep and wake up once a second to do a quick radio 'beep' and only do the full coords every minute or two. The beep allows the radio to be tuned but takes much less total power than continuous transmitting. This should run for a year or two on a couple of good AAs.

-holes bored in posts, etc. that take laser pointers (from a nearby cached box) whose beams cross at a point that has a micro with the next waypoint (or just a log if you don't want a 'real' cache!) One of those pop-up sprinkler housings seems like a good bet, given that the area with the crossed beams needs to be open. Should look great in fog! The laser pointers will either need to be pulsed to reduce current drain or be recharged in their cache box, maybe by solar. (Thanks to GSVnofixedabode for brainstorming this one with me!)

-A continuously beaming 'business card' that can be received by a PDA or IR-enabled mobile phone or laptop, with the next coords etc in it. A power supply and a secure location required for the transmitter! (I'm using an old Palm I picked up cheap. And an MCU to 'press' the transmit button and then reset it, cos I can't write the code to do it on the Palm!)

-A 'moving-message' display in a window with the next coords scrolling across it. (I have one ready to go, but I want it to be a night-only cache so I still need to modify it to only work when it's dark. I'll have it in the upstairs window of my employer's office building.)

There are others in my memopad, but these might get some tech-heads' creative juices flowing. I'd love to hear of caches that use any of these ideas!

Rgds,

Ian (Bearded part of Bear_Left)

Christchurch, NZ

1.6k · July 15, 2004

Umm... the solar garden light is a good idea (but I would say that; I bought several of them yesterday for exactly this purpose!) but why use an IR LED? I mean, the whole point of _infra_ red is that it's invisible...

Once you add a small microcontroller to the mix, the possibilities start to open up. You can now get little 8-pin MCUs for a couple of bucks, and they'll run on a couple of AAA alkalines for months or years, if the application is written the right way.

Ideas in my 'to do' list:

-variations on the night cache flashing LED idea, including a simple 'flash only at night', Morse or prisoner's code continuous flasher, torch-flash-activated flasher, etc.

-solar powered radio transmitter (using the garden lights!) that uses about 32k of MCU flash to store some digitised speech with coords. Aimed at a night cache initially, but it doesn't need to be. The output would be so tiny that it could run off the batteries full-time and they'd still charge every time the sun shone. (The cache description would specify a frequency. Oh, and the requirement for an FM radio!)

-if solar power's not an option, an alternative to keep the power down is to have the MCU sleep and wake up once a second to do a quick radio 'beep' and only do the full coords every minute or two. The beep allows the radio to be tuned but takes much less total power than continuous transmitting. This should run for a year or two on a couple of good AAs.

-holes bored in posts, etc. that take laser pointers (from a nearby cached box) whose beams cross at a point that has a micro with the next waypoint (or just a log if you don't want a 'real' cache!) One of those pop-up sprinkler housings seems like a good bet, given that the area with the crossed beams needs to be open. Should look great in fog! The laser pointers will either need to be pulsed to reduce current drain or be recharged in their cache box, maybe by solar. (Thanks to GSVnofixedabode for brainstorming this one with me!)

-A continuously beaming 'business card' that can be received by a PDA or IR-enabled mobile phone or laptop, with the next coords etc in it. A power supply and a secure location required for the transmitter! (I'm using an old Palm I picked up cheap. And an MCU to 'press' the transmit button and then reset it, cos I can't write the code to do it on the Palm!)

-A 'moving-message' display in a window with the next coords scrolling across it. (I have one ready to go, but I want it to be a night-only cache so I still need to modify it to only work when it's dark. I'll have it in the upstairs window of my employer's office building.)

There are others in my memopad, but these might get some tech-heads' creative juices flowing. I'd love to hear of caches that use any of these ideas!

Rgds,

Ian (Bearded part of Bear_Left)

Christchurch, NZ

You use the infared so it can only be visible with infared camcorders or infared night vision goglles.

Edited July 15, 2004 by TeamK-9

July 15, 2004

ok first i'd like to say that this all sounds great and i'd like to see one done, near me of course. now a newbie basic question, could you see the infared light with a regular set of night vision glasses the kind recreational uses can get?

and if some one does this type of thing please let us know and possible a web page so some of us could try it too. thanks

July 15, 2004

back to the original question...my friend and fellow geocacher found a cache that had a laser pointer in it and you had to put the laser pointer in a small pipe-like thing attached to a post and it would show you where the next leg of the cache was by the little red dot. This could double as a cool night cache and a day cache too.

BTW, I love the technical mumbo jumbo talk about infared lights and radio scramblers....but you guys have way to much time on your hands!!!!!! :unsure:

July 15, 2004

ok first i'd like to say that this all sounds great and i'd like to see one done, near me of course. now a newbie basic question, could you see the infared light with a regular set of night vision glasses the kind recreational uses can get?

and if some one does this type of thing please let us know and possible a web page so some of us could try it too. thanks

Yes, commercially available night vision and image intensifier units can see infrared. More practically, most camcorders can see it too, at least to some extent. Easiest way to tell if you have something that can see IR: point your TV remote at the camera, scope, or what have you. If you see it flashing (probably brightly), you've got an IR viewer.

Many camcorders and digital cameras have an IR filter in the optics, to more accurately reproduce color, I guess, since black and white cameras don't often have them (my best IR imager is a $40 B/W camera-on-chip unit that I hook up to a handheld TV set - no filtering at all, and a remote control can be used like a dim flashlight).

July 15, 2004

Ya know- I wish I knew a little more about electronics. It would be only too cool to tear apart an old cell phone- one equipped with the 911 GPS feature (that is the feature that transmits your gps coords. to a 911 dispatcher when you call) and program it to transmit its location. You *could* do this w/o a service provider- only the phone would transmit- no relay from a tower. Perhaps- then- and maybe only then- you could have a legit moving cache.

ooh- another IR idea....

Ok- make a cache that is set up to *recieve* IR commands from a universal remote (or palm, maybe one of these cool remote control Casio watches). When you are within range of the cache- or in line-of-sight, press a button to activate a sound, light, electronic unlocking servo- to activte the cache. With solar cells and and a photometer (or maybe a clock) this cache could be programmed to open/activate during certain times of the day.

something else that would be fun...you know those game cameras- that hunters set up in trees to take photos of wild game (motion sensor activated)? It would be cool to set one of those up in close proximity of a cache to "Log" who really goes to your cache.

July 15, 2004

Ya know- I wish I knew a little more about electronics. It would be only too cool to tear apart an old cell phone- one equipped with the 911 GPS feature (that is the feature that transmits your gps coords. to a 911 dispatcher when you call) and program it to transmit its location. You *could* do this w/o a service provider- only the phone would transmit- no relay from a tower. Perhaps- then- and maybe only then- you could have a legit moving cache.

Pretty simple to do with ham radio equipment. In fact I have built a box with a GPS antenna, transmitter, and some hardware that does just that - beacons its position, which is picked up by a receiver hooked into a computer, and then someone can actually look it up on the internet. Problem is the owner needs to be able to control the transmitter at will in order for it to be lawful.

Some very good ideas in here. I think I am going to fool around with a couple of them and see if I can come up with something cool.

July 15, 2004

hmm....i wonder if FRS could get around that (unless of course, the FCC doesnt like data on FRS freq)

You would think that with our almost total dependance on technology to find a cache- technology's use would not stop with the GPSr, but would continue with advanced, technology founded, Caches. Who knows, someday- a RFID tag may suffice entirely for cache, logbook, and perhaps- a good deal of space on geocaching.com.

July 15, 2004

The Rinos use FRS to transmit their position. It would be trivial to substitute an FRS transmitter/receiver for my current ham setup. However on FRS you are limited to 500 mW and the inefficient, built-in antenna.

July 15, 2004

The Rinos use FRS to transmit their position. It would be trivial to substitute an FRS transmitter/receiver for my current ham setup. However on FRS you are limited to 500 mW and the inefficient, built-in antenna.

My understanding is that data was disallowed outright on FRS, and in order to be able to transmit those data packets, the spec for FRS had to be amended. If I recall correctly, the databurst has to be shorter than 1 second, with no less than 10 seconds between databursts (I could be wrong here - it's been a while since I read it). These timings are supposedly handled by the Rino firmware and the operation is transparent to the user.

Would be interesting to have a radio-equipped cache lie in wait, listening for a DTMF tone or something before it sent its databurst (provided DTMF is allowed on FRS as well, and the seekers would still have to figure out how to transmit the tones through their unit).

Come to think of it, rather than requiring the seeker to be able to receive and decode the databurst, have it trigger a digital voice recorder chip that actually "reads" the coords over a specified channel on the radio. The cache coords get the seekers to within easy range for FRS (even with dying batteries), they transmit the activation signal, and it calls back a second or so later. Standby current on these things is pretty low, even moreso in "battery saver" mode (which would probably require a 2-3 second activation tone in order to be sure of triggering). Probably wouldn't take too much fiddling with off-the-shelf units to get it to work, and the transceiver wouldn't even have to be at the cache itself - just nearby. Place it high up where a solar battery charging system will do some good, and the elevation will provide some extended range even using the crummy stock antenna.

(Now you've done it - the wheels are turning...)

July 15, 2004

Come to think of it, rather than requiring the seeker to be able to receive and decode the databurst, have it trigger a digital voice recorder chip that actually "reads" the coords over a specified channel on the radio. The cache coords get the seekers to within easy range for FRS (even with dying batteries), they transmit the activation signal, and it calls back a second or so later. Standby current on these things is pretty low, even moreso in "battery saver" mode (which would probably require a 2-3 second activation tone in order to be sure of triggering). Probably wouldn't take too much fiddling with off-the-shelf units to get it to work, and the transceiver wouldn't even have to be at the cache itself - just nearby. Place it high up where a solar battery charging system will do some good, and the elevation will provide some extended range even using the crummy stock antenna.

oohhh...ooh yeah- solar, w/ radios ... imagine the cool multi-caches you could get.

instead of DTMF- you could use a morse code beep- perhaps a phrase or something, to activate the voice responder

July 15, 2004

Come to think of it, rather than requiring the seeker to be able to receive and decode the databurst, have it trigger a digital voice recorder chip that actually "reads" the coords over a specified channel on the radio. The cache coords get the seekers to within easy range for FRS (even with dying batteries), they transmit the activation signal, and it calls back a second or so later. Standby current on these things is pretty low, even moreso in "battery saver" mode (which would probably require a 2-3 second activation tone in order to be sure of triggering). Probably wouldn't take too much fiddling with off-the-shelf units to get it to work, and the transceiver wouldn't even have to be at the cache itself - just nearby. Place it high up where a solar battery charging system will do some good, and the elevation will provide some extended range even using the crummy stock antenna.

oohhh...ooh yeah- solar, w/ radios ... imagine the cool multi-caches you could get.

instead of DTMF- you could use a morse code beep- perhaps a phrase or something, to activate the voice responder

Come to think of it, don't most (all?) FRS radios include some sort of "roger beep" at the end of their transmissions? Just breaking the squelch and the beep should provide more than enough signal across the earphone output to trigger the playback circuit. Anytime anyone transmits on channel "x" within range of the transceiver, it would automatically key up and play the coords back to them.

Edit: Actually, I guess the "call" function on these radios sends a tone or tones that lasts something in the neighborhood of two seconds, specifically to wake up other FRS radios that may be in power saving mode. When the call signal is received, the FRS unit responds by playing an audio alarm through its speaker or earphone jack, right where you would want it for detecting an incoming signal. Just have the seekers punch the "call" button when they get there, and you're in business.

This could work...

Edited July 15, 2004 by Seamus

July 15, 2004

Man...You people must be highjacking my e-mails. :unsure: LOL I am in the process of setting up/testing a cache that will use a solar panel, endless loop recording, and a cheap RF transmitter. The seeker will be instructed to bring a FM radio set to a specific frequency. When they are in range of the transmitter, their radio wills pickup the broadcast giving the next set of instructions.

July 15, 2004

Man...You people must be highjacking my e-mails. LOL I am in the process of setting up/testing a cache that will use a solar panel, endless loop recording, and a cheap RF transmitter. The seeker will be instructed to bring a FM radio set to a specific frequency. When they are in range of the transmitter, their radio wills pickup the broadcast giving the next set of instructions.

Would something like this cause faulty GPS readings?

July 15, 2004

Man...You people must be highjacking my e-mails. LOL I am in the process of setting up/testing a cache that will use a solar panel, endless loop recording, and a cheap RF transmitter. The seeker will be instructed to bring a FM radio set to a specific frequency. When they are in range of the transmitter, their radio wills pickup the broadcast giving the next set of instructions.

Would something like this cause faulty GPS readings?

Wrong band. Unless you're transmitting right in the middle of the GPS segment of the band, it won't cause problems. I've got a cache that lives quite close to an active commercial FM broadcasting tower (lots and lots of power), and there have been no problems with bad readings or interference.

July 15, 2004

hmm- that would be a good idea...to use regular FM RF. In theroy- you could go to Frys Electronics, or what ever is your fancy and almost buy a kit to do that. Granted solar and voice chip would be extra....

5.6k · July 15, 2004

I can't seem to find it now, but there is a cache around here (Seattle Eastside) that uses a Bluetooth contact to get co-ords. Don't have any more details than that, sorry.

July 15, 2004

ok first i'd like to say that this all sounds great and i'd like to see one done, near me of course. now a newbie basic question, could you see the infared light with a regular set of night vision glasses the kind recreational uses can get?

and if some one does this type of thing please let us know and possible a web page so some of us could try it too. thanks

The "hair splitting" answer is - maybe. Depends on the wavelength of the infrared source.

I have a night vision scope I acquired at Sam's Club about 4 years ago. It comes with an infrared illuminator. But I can actually see it dimly when looking into the thing from several feet away. I suspect it is centered around 750 nanometers.

It cannot see an 880 nm LED, but my assorted black and white solid state TV cameras see 880 nm and 960 nm VERY well.

The two most common wavelengths of infrared LEDs are 880 nanometers and 960 nanometers. Some people can perceive a very faint (VERY faint) red glow in the 880 nm LEDS with some security cameras that see in the dark.

However, I have yet to hear of anyone able to see anything at all at 960 nanometers. I also suspect strongly that people really don't see 880nm light, but some of the shorter "out of band" portions of the light, somewhat shorter than 800 nm.

Someone mentioned digital cameras seeing near infrared. I've got some IR LEDs back in the shop, so some experiments are about to be done with the HP 620 camera.

OK - it can see an 880 nm LED as a faint blue "firefly" with the room light on. I wonder if it's "frequency doubling" - since 440nm is a rather deep blue-violet. Half of 960nm would be 480nm, which is also quite blue. Oh, to have an infrared spectrometer handy to test unknown infrared LEDs in the junk drawer

So that means the digital camera might be an effective way to spot infrared sources in the dark, even though it might not be that sensitive. Nice. Got to check with a TV remote when I get my hands on one.

July 15, 2004

Once you add a small microcontroller to the mix, the possibilities start to open up. You can now get little 8-pin MCUs for a couple of bucks, and they'll run on a couple of AAA alkalines for months or years, if the application is written the right way.

Ideas in my 'to do' list:

-variations on the night cache flashing LED idea, including a simple 'flash only at night', Morse or prisoner's code continuous flasher, torch-flash-activated flasher, etc.

-solar powered radio transmitter (using the garden lights!) that uses about 32k of MCU flash to store some digitised speech with coords. Aimed at a night cache initially, but it doesn't need to be. The output would be so tiny that it could run off the batteries full-time and they'd still charge every time the sun shone. (The cache description would specify a frequency. Oh, and the requirement for an FM radio!)

-if solar power's not an option, an alternative to keep the power down is to have the MCU sleep and wake up once a second to do a quick radio 'beep' and only do the full coords every minute or two. The beep allows the radio to be tuned but takes much less total power than continuous transmitting. This should run for a year or two on a couple of good AAs.

-holes bored in posts, etc. that take laser pointers (from a nearby cached box) whose beams cross at a point that has a micro with the next waypoint (or just a log if you don't want a 'real' cache!) One of those pop-up sprinkler housings seems like a good bet, given that the area with the crossed beams needs to be open. Should look great in fog! The laser pointers will either need to be pulsed to reduce current drain or be recharged in their cache box, maybe by solar. (Thanks to GSVnofixedabode for brainstorming this one with me!)

-A continuously beaming 'business card' that can be received by a PDA or IR-enabled mobile phone or laptop, with the next coords etc in it. A power supply and a secure location required for the transmitter! (I'm using an old Palm I picked up cheap. And an MCU to 'press' the transmit button and then reset it, cos I can't write the code to do it on the Palm!)

-A 'moving-message' display in a window with the next coords scrolling across it. (I have one ready to go, but I want it to be a night-only cache so I still need to modify it to only work when it's dark. I'll have it in the upstairs window of my employer's office building.)

There are others in my memopad, but these might get some tech-heads' creative juices flowing. I'd love to hear of caches that use any of these ideas!

Rgds,

Ian (Bearded part of Bear_Left)

Christchurch, NZ

I like the garden lights idea - just replace the existing light inside with a PIC and an infrared LED or two to pulse.

But some other nifty things that could be mixed in once a microcontroller is involved, could be make it react to turning a light on and off within a certain timing window, something that had to be deliberate, and unlikely to be accidentally done by muggles out doing the nasty in the woods

We turn on our runway lights by having someone key their mike 3 times within 3 seconds on 122.850 mhz. Something like that with a flashlight ought to work to trigger a cache beacon.

I'm thinking, turn flashlight on, off, on, off, on, off - kind of like sending a VERY slow "S" (...) in Morse code, or maybe 3 T's with inter-word spacing. Require the on and off intervals to meet a certain timing window - say, minimum of 500 millliseconds on or off, maximum 1.5 seconds on or off.

Anything too long or too short would be ignored. Set the phototransistor circuit where it doesn't take too much light to cross the logic threshold, and give it a timeout so once triggered it only flashes for maybe a minute or so.

I just thought of another wicked circuit.

Use both a visible and an infrared LED. The infrared winks intermittently all the time after dark, but if you wink a light back between the IR flashes (and synchronized to them), it turns on the visible LED for a minute or so.

3.8k · July 15, 2004

Fascinating.

5.7k · July 15, 2004

There is a cache near us that utilizes a "key finder". The cache is hidden in such a manner as not to be able to locate it easily. The posted coordinates are about 400ft from the cache at home plate. The cache is on the homerun wall. You have to walk along the wall and whistle and listen for a beep. My mouth was tired by the time we found it.

--Marky

July 15, 2004

interesting ideas all. I'll have to think up some nice tech style ones.

I'd discourage building any sort of RF scrambler though, especially to block GPS signals. To me, that would be a BIG nono with the FCC, not to mention the military, etc. Usually what I get with those frequencies is "feel free to use them, but don't mess with em".

Lights and beeping things are nice, but surely there's other forms of tech one could use...

And don't forget, caches in the parks often tend to get damaged or destroyed by the elements, muggles, or other ways. Think up cheap tech if you can

July 15, 2004

Some of the tech we've been eyeing for making a cache...

802.11b router (since we've upgraded to g, this is just excess hardware) that relays coords as it's SSID. A wi-fi laptop or handheld can pick up the coords. The specs for running it off of a battery with solar power to recharge is pretty common on the net.

Expanding the router idea I am considering using a junk PC running linux off of CD and hooking up a network cable to the router. Rather than using the SSID to broadcast the coords, the CD could be set up with a website for the cache. Power requirements could be satisfied by using a solar panel to recharge a UPS, but I'm half tempted to use one of the spare generators that I've worn through. They usually don't run much longer than ten-fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to boot the computer, router and broadcast the info.

The laser emitter idea has already popped up on here, our only change was to use beam splitters and benders to have the cache mark the way. Surplus stores sometimes have the laser emitters that they use in supermarket checkout lines which would be much more focused and have a higher output.

There's a few caches in the Los Angeles area that use CD-roms to hold data on finding the next waypoint (or next cache, or mission, etc.)

I sort of fear the day that the folks at Caltech notice the caches on their campus.

July 15, 2004

Someone said something about a GPS jammer well, http://www.gbppr.dyndns.org/PROJ/mil/gps/index.html

Enjoy!

July 15, 2004

And don't forget, caches in the parks often tend to get damaged or destroyed by the elements, muggles, or other ways. Think up cheap tech if you can

Too true. There was a MacGyver-themed cache in Sydney, Australia that had a micro-based box with a keypad and an LCD that delivered a "enter the number or the hostage gets it" countdown.

Great fun (with a typical McGyver solution to it) but it got flooded out in freakish rains once, then the replacement went missing. The cache-setter lost heart after that, not surprisingly. (The first one gets made from the junkbox but replacements cost 'new money'!)

If I was to devote a solar-powered PC and a wi-fi router to a cache, I'd want to be dadgum sure that it was secure!

July 15, 2004

Oh wow. I think some of us out here can find an 802.11b router or two in the "leftover" pile.

There are also small modules with built-in TCP/IP stacks that essentially can serve up an HTML page with enough space to put map GIF files and even allow uploads of pictures and log submissions out there that don't require a full-blown PC.

Speaking of caches near radio transmitters and high tension power lines, I've wondered about building something that can capture enough energy from the ambient electric and RF fields in such a place to be self-powered.

Also thinking about the TV remote idea, and the IRDA to palm pilot idea, as well as infrared only "fire-tacks" - retroreflectors made of IR transparent, visible opaque resin (kind of like a Wratten 87A/B filter in front of a highway reflector) that are only visible with self-illuminating IR equipment.

About 6 months ago I had a problem with raccoons raiding the cat feeder at night, so I stuck a pair of these $29.95 cameras with IR illuminators out there. Then I went to WalMart and got some reflectorized tape (red), and put little dots and strips to outline the shape of the feeder.

Last was to rig up a beam type sensor, and bolt the whole feeder on some high voltage insulators, and rig up an electric fence charger between feeder and ground.

At 3 AM when the raccoons would show up, they'd trip the beam sensor. I'd roll over in bed, turn on the TV, and verify it was raccoons and not just a cat for a midnight snack. If it was a raccoon, I'd cue up a videotape (for America's Funniest Videos of course ) and push the button to energize the fence charger for a second or two. There would be a loud noise and raccoons would flee the feeder. I'd shut off the TV and go back to sleep. My cat food bill went from $60 a week, to $12 a month.

But essentially - retroreflectors are awesome with self-illuminating infrared gear.

July 15, 2004

I would agree that being cost effective is the name of the game- unless you have it (the cache)secured on private property- with nearby public access so cachers can have unlimited access to the technology. I would also agree that a passive technology system will out last and be cheaper than any active one. However- surplus and used eqiptment is everywhere (I am in the business- and believe me, we throw out all sorts of stuff).

What I need to do is get a hold of one of those FM transmitters that they use on homes for sale- the kind where you can drive by and tune in.

Edited July 15, 2004 by Proximus Centauri

Technocache

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