raspberry caching

Headed off to the raspberry pi event at Milton Keynes today, no real caching planned and not suitable clothing but ok for the drive bys on the way up.

After two dnf s things improved then 2 hours later I arrived at the event (caching makes your journeys last longer).

Didn't know what to expect and soon saw dr sollys geotruck so knew if things went quiet there be someone to talk to about geocaching.

Within minutes of arriving I found someone who had done a light and fan project which pricked my ears as I had been looking at how I could do this and now with the ability to use unix code to see the thermal CPU temperture I reckon it be easier.

There were many friendly and welcoming people, skpang who runs a electronics business and a whizz with electrical stuff showed us a set up using a reversing camera as a monitor, excellent idea and one i want to do.

A lady who is a school teacher was telling us how hard it had been to try and get pi s into school and one that annoys me considering how cheap these devices are and the fact that these things could be what brings in new programmers etc to a future generation.


At the end of the event we went on a tour to see some of the old computers, including collisus and the witch. The witch is a two tonne machine from the 1940 s used by the harwell scientists to work out their huge calculations in the atomic research establishment. We were lucky to be shown it up and running and certainly an interesting machine. Whilst looking at the other computers there I came across one with basic code. Remember this:

10 print"hello";
20 goto 10
Run

Yeap that brought back memories, then there was one, yes, well two, bbc micro machines my first insight into computers when I was 8 and those famous red buttons at the top.

After the event myself and dr solly went off caching, a linear route, with two vehicles we parked one at one end and one at the other end. Things started off ok till we got near a bridge and found with dr sollys walking stick that it was about knee deep with what was left of a walk way and a plank of wood. After some careful adjustments we were able to make our way across.

Later on we did a night cache nearby and realised once we did it that we had passed some caches that I hadn't done so got one on the way back to the car. Note next meet run a pocket query of the area. The night cache was a huge cache with some good goodies. Dr solly torches left at various good caches including this one.

Along the way we talked caching and pi s and one idea I need to do is turn off the GUI off one of my pi s, also need to add the hard drive dr solly gave me for a file server project .

For what was meant to be a morning out ended up being a great day out, thanks to everyone at raspberrypimk event and dr solly .

geocaching pi

Not really been up for much outdoorness recently, might be the time of the year or I can't be bothered to drive for an hour to get to a trail.

However I have started a new project called raspberry pi. It's a £20 quid computer that you need to then buy a lead to you tv (99p) a case (a couple of quid) power pack (couple of quid again) wifi or Ethernet and USB keyboard and mouse (about 7 quid) and a USB powered hub (three quid). Oh an an sd card of minimium 4gb and preferable class 10.

So for under fifty quid it's up and running, I currently have two. One is plugged in with ssh and vnc so I can play and learn from anywhere. The other I interchange the sd cards, one card has xbmc on it and since changing the class 4 card to a class 10 doesn't seem to buffer or drag no more I know have a better way of watching films than with my apple tv.

Ok I've had to start learning Linux and unix and have been lucky to find many of the books on amazon second hand costing a grand total of £2.81 including postage for many books costing ten times what I'm paying for brand new. Yes I've had one dirty book with part of a page ripped out, but 99% of the books have been received like brand new.

My current project is to make a cloud at home to use from anywhere. I did succeed with my first file server and ended up connecting my tb harddrive back to the router and have since started adding all my DVD s to it as my music (200gb) is already loaded on there after going through a spate of buying secondhand CDs for less than a quid including postage and using iTunes to get a better quality with their service and cloud thingy and certainly cheaper than buying the old albums from iTunes.

So what have I planned? Well I'm looking eventually to run one of these devices from the car with mobile data, touchscreen, live maps and live cache status of caches, ambitious? Yes but an interesting project it will be.

mega day out

Firstly sorry for not posting in a while it's been hectic with the only big trip out to sussex to do the Leigh valley loop and a few 5/5s that we were passing, one being an excellent one in a tunnel.

Today however we went to the Halloween event in Northamptonshire. Starting the day off early we managed to get twenty caches on the way up including a night cache thanks to my excellent led lenser torch and find a ten pound note floating in the street.

Once at the mega it was a case of downloading the just published caches with my mifi dongle and netbook and adding the caches to the gps s.

The caches were so well thought out that it was impossible to fault any. After getting caught in a bad hail storm that soaked us we still plodded on and later on participated in the excellent night cache series of 14 caches and a cache in a tunnel under the nearby main road where I came across my first live and wild otter. By the time I got my camera phone out it was gone.

Finishing the day on nearly 80 caches and some of the most excellent caches to date. We meet up with friends and like with all caching events made new friends too.

Once again a big thank you to the organisers, it was one excellent day and with mega status too it just shows all the hard work and dedication the team have shown.

Will we go again next year? Silly question really, a big yes from us and once again thank you.

weekend caching

We spent the weekend in Weymouth a place that seems to have a cache every 528ft

After solving all the Olympic rings we decided to hit Weymouth to get them. While we had plenty of dnf s on caches we focused out time on the Olympic series as that was what we were aiming for, getting all the clues for the bonus's.

While we solved them all we hit a brick wall with red bonus 5 and the bonus bonus. The red bonus involves a 5 mile hike or you can drive to a carpark less than 528ft from the cache and pay a huge parking fee for the priviledge which we refused which then meant we couldn't get the bonus bonus either which was a shame.

The series took us to some great locations around Weymouth that most tourists know nothing about and took us on some nice walks. There were a couple of caches I would question as being placed within guidelines, but there was some excellent ideas too.

All in all we enjoyed the whole series and the weather after a windy first night with a power cut to the whole of Weymouth turned out to be a great weekend both weather wise and caching plus time to do other things.

I need a new gps

My poor Oregon 300 which replaced my two etrex s is in a sorry state so I've started the task of looking for a new one, an Oregon 550 as I'm not keen on the new Montana devices. I managed to find one for £260 but still pricey then I thought, if all my unique viewers to my blog donated £1 each I could afford a new gps immediately. But will that happen? Watch this space ....

another 5/5

I qualified for the mario Mctavish 365 day challenge a month ago, so yesterday on a trip to hayling island we picked it up with some drive bys and some caches on hayling itself. Whilst we picked up the last two of the day I popped behind a tree to relieve myself as nature was calling and to my suprise in front of me in the tree was a munzee. So out with my phone to capture it. Whilst I'm not really into munzees if i do come across any now I do capture it with the phone app.

Today I been sorting out some puzzles in Weymouth to do, fed up at staring at the oc screen I turned it off but with a smug grin that there is a good days worth of caching ahead next week :)

Later this week we are going to the camping event up Nottingham way so anyone going feel free to say hi.

depression

Well today I thought I talk about something that affects me, depression.

It's when the brain doesn't get enough serotonin which is the happy stuff naturally found in cocoa. Because my body doesn't make enough of it I have to take tablets to increase it. However exercise also helps, I find geocaching a great way to boost it and today went out with frodo to get some caches that friends had kindly sent me co ords for.

With walking being a prime example recommended by doctors, my doctor always encourages me to get out and go geocaching as not only am I getting exercise to try and boost my serotonin levels but the buzz and feel good factor also from finding a cache brings you up too.

Today we did around Wiltshire, not feeling up for one of stans excellent events we decided to get a few drive bys and do a nice series near littlecote involving traditionals, puzzle, wherigo and a letterbox cache of which frodo enjoyed to especially trying to sniff out sticks at gz and eventually taking one from the stickoflague.

There was a clever safe cache where you had to pick up the co ords and safe combination which we enjoyed, the combination was rather stiff but eventually we got there and the safe opened :)


In the distance we could hear the rolling thunder but stayed dry only seeing rain when we returned to Wantage which had suffered some flash flooding.

What a nice afternoon out, just dread next week all the logging.

an apology

I would like to apologise for any hurt or upset that I have caused anyone recently with my posts. It's been due to frustration and my mental health and I have ashamedly taken it out on my friends and reviewers who I do class as friends too. I must remember this is only a game that we all enjoy, again I'm sorry.

pq s and garmins

Had an interesting chat today so thought I do a blog on getting pq s onto your garmins.

Firstly log onto geocaching.com and click down right side on build pocket queries.

Next create a new query

Name the pq, for this ill call it today, tick day you want then how often you want it to run. Where it says show me 500 caches of change to 1000

Types=any
Containers=any

Then tick: I haven't found, I don't own, are not on my ignore list, is enabled

Tick difficulty and terrain

Leave within and go to from origin and select what you want, here I'm choosing home.

Within a radius leave at whatever

Place during=none selected

I'm not choosing attributes but they are there if you are looking for say a night cache or a scuba cache.

Then click submit information.

Next click on pocket queries at top then go down to tab pocket queries ready for download and click on tab.

Click on the name of picket query you have just created and choose to save.

Open up the zip folder and highlight the two files ending in .gpx one is caches the other is waypoints

Turn on gps and choose delete all routes reset all trip info under settings and then plug into the computer. Open up the garmin folder on the computer open garmin and you will see some files and folders geocache_visits.txt is here for upload if you have done caches (upload field notes on gc site) if you have already done that then delete this file.

Click on gpx folder delete archive and current folders and anything else in here and paste the two .gpx files here renaming the long number as 1.gpx and the other with -wpts.gpx to 1-wpts.gpx and your all done.

However I save mine to memory card which is memory card, garmin, gpx again delete everything in this folder before pasting the two gpx files and renaming them as mentioned in last paragraph, this I find helps them load up quicker

Go to bottom and choose remove hardware and remove all when told to do so unplug and turn on your gps, it will take a moment to load up and if correct when you open geocaching you be able to find caches. If not (and the reason I recommend sd memory cards) is you can turn it off take out the card, turn it back on and load up, reset waypoints and then turn off, reinstall sd card and turn back on, this time they should load up with no problems. If you are unfortunate for them to go down in the field at least with memory card you get the option to remove it and retry.

Hope this blog helps you out if not feel free to comment.

my weekend

Spent much of it rechecking caches wading through water and crawling up tunnels, one I tried when I was 10 but gave up. This became a place for another cache and even found a quick way back in if I need to perform maintenance. This place even led to my old back garden which was cool.

Then looked at a few places to place the very last one which will involve keys, locks and stuff used so far, plus a few new bits. Problem is all the work needed to get this in place so probably be another weekend.

Already have several favourites on my first in the series as well as an attempt on number two. All have to be done in order to do the next stage and so forth.