We all know about geocaching, right? It’s that interesting mix of GPS technology and old-style treasure hunting. Armed with a set of coordinates, a GPS receiver, and maybe some clues, geocachers look for the goodies previously hidden by others. The GPS is a pretty key part of the whole thing and Garmin has sensed the opportunity for a specialty device to serve the activity.
The Garmin Chirp is an electronic beacon that can send data to Garmin GPS units to guide searchers toward the cache and offers clues to help them find it once they’re close. Its transmission range is about 10 meters and once found it is the electronic version of the traditional logbook, recording visitors to your cache. It’s waterproof and has a battery life of up to a year. Password protection assures that you’ll be the only person who can program it. And at $22.99, Garmin is hoping you’ll be okay with leaving it hidden out in the woods for a while.
(via OhGizmo!)
I have a Garmin Oregon 550 and I ordered a chirp. I want to see first hand what it can do before I worry about using it with a geocache.
Meanwhile, the cache approvers on geocaching.com are NOT approving geocaches that REQUIRE use of a chirp-compatible Garmin unit.
There ARE other sites that have geocache listings, but they are not nearly as popular.
It seems to me this is counter to the purpose and fun of geo-caching. Of course, you would need to be very close before it would help but the cost of this thing just to be left in the woods somewhere is also a bit too much for me. I don’t know how the logging would work on this but part of the fun is reading what others say when they find the cache; either in the log book or on the website.
Neat idea. But, the fact that it only works with Garmin GPS units will limit its success IMO. I normally use my iPhone 4 for Geocaching (even though I own a Garmin GPS)…mainly because of the convenience aspect…and I assume the iPhone wouldn’t have any way to interact with the Garmin Chirp. I think I’ll pass on this one…
I agree 100%. I use my iPhone when geocaching, and my non-phone GPS is a Tom-Tom.
Very cool!!! This opens up a whole new set of doors. But I haven’t heard of this term *geocaching* till just now. My spell checker want’s the word to be *geochemical*. Either word now in que, I’m going to look further into this. And at such modest cost, these 21st century technological bread crumbs would be a good Christmas gift for the young and adventurous minds like my teenaged nephews, who seam to be forever looking to find new challenges in the gaming world… “B”