Difference between revisions of "GeoCaching Boxes"

Revision as of 12:46, 8 April 2011

For TEDxBloomington, Kevin Makice has asked us to make six geocaching boxes. His idea is to have these boxes collect things from the visitors that he can then use for his TEDx talk. He is raising money for this through KickStarter and has earmarked $150 or $25 a piece for us to build these.

Top box ideas with people who are willing to be in charge:

• Twilio box (Steve)
• Monkey Puzzle (Jenett)
• Metal Magnet Box (Jenett)
• Reverse Cache

Please submit your ideas below by April 8th. Good ideas will be quick to build and cheap. Here's some starter ideas.

• Build a Monkey Puzzle Cache: http://www.greathides.com/page221.html and have people leave something from their pocket in the cache
• Do a reverse cache: http://arduiniana.org/projects/the-reverse-geo-cache-puzzle/ and record where people walk on a SD card
• Build an acrylic maze http://www.zazz.com.au/pastproducts.php?past=1934 that at the end, the ball pushes a button and opens the cache.
• Have a voice recorder in the box and have people leave a messages
• Have a phone number in the box and people have to call the number and leave a message

• Something similar to this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Annoying-Autonomous-Rickrolling-Device-For-April-/ but doesn't play the Rickroll tune until the cache is opened.
• 'take a toy, leave a toy'
• box has several small pill bottles inside. People who find the cache are invited to put something in the bottle and hide it, and leave info about where they hid it in the log in the box, or on-line.

• Possible fun w/ cheap pre paid cell phones:
  • 'hide' a locked box with the phone near a semi-trafficky area (Rail Trail, B-Line). The phone could go off and alert somebody to it's existence, then the box tells them a number to call, or a site to go to, or a thing to do. People w/ the number can call periodically and have fun with that.
  • hack the phone to take a picture when it rings. Lots of pictures of confused people.

• Log your visit to a web site using any kind of cellphone: http://www.twilio.com/docs/howto/

Twilio is an API allowing you to set up telephony applications that interact with a web application you write.

In simple terms, with not so much code, we could set up a phone number people could call into or text. They could enter a 'pin', found inside the geocache box, and either enter a brief voice message, listen to a previous (random?) message, receive a clue about the location of the 'real' cache, or whatever, really. There's a pretty wide range of possibility here and I (Steve) plan to slap together a prototype over the weekend. It's a free trial but may require a bit of payment ~$20 to handle our needs. Could give a fun 'spy game' element to the thing, and watching the nearly real-time web log would be fun. We could even make little stickers w/ the number on them and put them up around town. Would be fun to see what kind of response it gets.

• Have a metal box with magnets on the lid and a cheap digital camera. Have people rearrange the magnets and then take a picture. They could even do a stop motion movie if they want.

My idea for this is to take pictures out of magazine, etc. and mount them on magnet sheets and cut them out. I'll try to get a wide range of pictures of things around Bton, objects, people, etc. I'll also stash some scissors and some magnet sheets in the box for people to make their own magnets. They could even cover a magnet with bits of things on the ground like rocks, leaves, etc. to make artsy magnets. I will ask visitors to arrange the magnets however they want using the metal box as a canvas. Then I will have a cheap digital camera and ask the visitors to take at least one picture. I will also ask them to think outside the box such as taking 20 shots to make a short stop motion movie. Someone will need to stop by periodically and take pictures off the camera and clean off the pictures so we don't run out of room. I think a metal ammo can would be perfect for this.