Daniel Durrans, Web Systems Developer and Internet Consultant
Daniel Durrans, Web Systems Developer and Internet Consultant
Geocaching is a hi-tech global treasure hunt that originated in the USA. The aim of the game is to find a cache, usually a metal or plastic box hidden in the countryside, when all you have been provided with is the longitude and latitude coordinates.
Geocaching was invented in the USA as a result of US President Bill Clinton announcing that "Selective Availability" would be turned off allowing all users of the Global Positioning System to be able to determine their position to within 20 meters.
On the 3rd May 2000 Dave Ulmer proposed a way to celebrate the demise of Selective Availability. He hid a bucket of trinkets in the woods outside Portland, Oregon and announced its location in a posting made to the USENET newsgroup sci.geo.satellite-nav.
Caches are hiden all over the world. There are many websites on the Internet that publish the location of caches. One of the most popular cache listing services is provided by Geocaching.com
The cache listing services give the longitude and latitude of a cache.
Once you know the longitude and latitude of a cache you can feed these co-ordinates into a GPS receiver and save them as a waypoint. The GPS should then be able to help you navigate to that location.
Once you reach the location of a Geocache you will usually have to hunt around for a bit in order to find it. A cache hidden in the woods may be under some logs or be hidden in a hole in a tree. GPS is only accurate to about 10 meters at best, therefore it is only going to get you close to the cache and not actually on top of it.
I haven't been Geocaching for long however I have really grown fond of the sport. The image below shows the number of caches that I have found.