GPS Treasure Hunt

gan_ceanach · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 27, 2004 Posts: 2

Hey,
Was hopign someone could give me a couple of leads on a xmas activity that I want to put together for a couple of friends.
We've hired some cars and I want to pick up some sort of GPS based device that will allow me to travel round a couple of days earlier and determine landmarks at particular coordinates. The idea is I give the two teams of two guys, two GPS units, two digicams and a series of points, they have to find the locations and take a pic of what ever happens to be at that point. Cryptic clues to help them figure out what I want a pic of. At the end of the day the two teams come on back adn show me the pics, the winning team gets to pic what they want, cameras or GPS's.
As you've probably ascertained by now, we are a bunch of nerds, which means that we have access to plenty of laptop/pda hardware.
What I would like is something that is either handheld and just gives a location in terms of global coordinates (WAAS enabled if possible) or a USB dongle that does the same thing. We have some mac guys on board so anything that was mac compatible would be good, not critical though. Last thing is that we are in Victoria, Australia. I got the name of one group of suppliers down where but if anyone has any suggestions as to where to buy, I'd be more than happy to hear from them
Thanks in advance

Timothy

lbendlin · Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 2:00 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure if the geostationary sats for SBAS are in action for the AP area. (WAAS is only available in the Americas).

Somewhere I read about a combination receiver that has all options - CF, Bluetooth, USB - in one device. But t doesn't ave it's own display, so you would still need the notebook to read the position.

For your purposes a simple Garmin unit may be more suitable (like this

http://www.garmin.com/products/geko201/
)

and you would need to get a USB>Serial converter for the Mac.
_________________
Lutz

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gan_ceanach · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 27, 2004 Posts: 2

OK... well I guess I don't really need the extra accuracy, at least I know I can go for a non-WAAS enabled system now. For clarification, I don't necessarily need the unit to display (although it would be nice). Probably looking at something that is notebook compatible such as this thing on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=34290&item=5734003805&rd=1

I just want to make sure that this thing will do what I want (ie: give me location coords) without giving me a map (because that would take all the fun out!)
Cheers

Timothy

lbendlin · Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:05 pm Post subject:

Well, that thing on eBay is useless without a laptop and a mapping software... The Garmin can do both - show you the coordinates on its internal screen and also serve as a GPS mouse for the laptop
_________________
Lutz

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Diplo · Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:07 pm Post subject:

You might want to have a look at http://www.geocaching.com/ for ideas, too Smile

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