Hide and Go Seek. Age old game of one person hides, the other counts to to ten with eyes closed, and then goes to find person A who went to hide. Now add a radio signal, converted to GPS signal, a VHF radio, and a couple of geeky fruit cakes driving around following a giant arrow and you have our Friday night.
We first hooked up our tiny MSI U90 to a camera stand turned laptop holder in the car.
Then we hooked up the sound from the VHF radio which was receiving the radio signal, into the microphone jack of the computer. We plugged in the cute GPS unit (cute because its tiny) and stuck the USB part into the computer and the GPS transmitter to the dash.
We turned on our TomTom, using only the map function so we could see upcoming changes in the road and set about on our way. Following the giant arrow of knowledge, we drove approximately 25km and found our target, after making only one wrong turn and getting ourselves stuck on the wrong side of some railroad tracks. We arrived, 6 meters from our goal, a big radio tower at a friend's work. However, we were informed that this wasn't close enough so we had to park even closer, and reach the 1 meter point. We found our goal, a blinking red GPS unit, at the base of the tower generating the radio signal.
We then were going to head to said friend's house for dinner, and thought that instead of dumbly following his car (in the snow) we should... play hide and go seek. He changed his VHF radio to output a signal, and we fixed on it, and away we went. We followed him, lost him visually and were able to track him down despite him trying to trick us by pulling off the road and hiding on side roads. The signal was clear and our arrow true.
A fun night of radio and gps geekery. :)
See Flickr for photos.
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