Check out video tech demos for both the completed box (above) and internal electronics (below) for a custom “Diamond Geocache” project by geocache veteran Stephen O’Gara of Team Ventura Kids.
While geocache has been around long enough to shed most of its “what in the world is that?!” sort of mystery, with the rise of increasingly sophisticated, low-power requirement gps tracker/locator shields and clever enclosure and locking design, makers continue to reclaim and renew this activity to serve purposes beyond the treasure/scavenger hunt. (O’Gara, for example, now places geocache bounties in beautiful places where he hopes people will visit, quite a shift from the Amazing Race style at-all-cost geocache power chasing of earlier years of the sport.):
This geocache has a diamond embedded in the top of a locked box.
Can you figure out how to open it?It is a boarduino brand arduino processor, with a light sensor input.
This one has it’s own power shut off designed in, so you can just leave it, and it will shut off. The small RGB LED on the front indicates ‘locked’ and ‘open’, by changing from red to green. A white spot led shines up thru the diamond to draw your attention to it.
Read more. Also, check out Kenton Harris’s Reverse Geocaching project below from the Adafruit Learn System!
Featured Adafruit Tutoral!
Reverse Geocache Box by Kenton Harris: Adafruit customer Kenton Harris used a reverse geocaching box to propose to his girlfriend (she said yes). After the project build and successful proposal, he shared how he built the reverse geocache with us. We thought others may be interested in building a similar box for their own proposals, or for fun! A reverse geocaching box works similar to other geocaching devices. It will guide you to certain coordinates on earth and instead of finding a geocache located at those coordinates, you carry the box with you, and it opens for you at a predetermined destination. This is also a great way to do a scavenger hunt (making someone go to multiple locations before the box opens).” (read more)
Great blog post. My favorite part is when the video with all the wires kinda ends with all of us just waiting for the Boarduino for time out. lol.