EEVblog #82 - 10th Anniversary of GPS & Geocaching thanks to Bill Clinton

On May 1st 2000 Bill Clinton turned off Selective Availability on the GPS system and commercial GPS as we know and appreciate it now was born. A truly red letter day.
On May 3rd 2000 Dave Ulmer placed the 1st Geocache or "Geo Stash" and Geocaching was born. Tupperware was never the same again.

[AllenKll]

Dave, I love it! I still have my little yellow Garmin POS... and I still use it. I've been geocaching since '02, so I know what it used to be like, but heck, I had some mapping software, and I bought the data cable for my Garmin, and my laptop became a live positioning tool with MAPS! Unbelievable! I used the same setup to drive unplannededly across the U.S. in '04.. Great times indeed. But I do love my new NUVI, nav. system and wouldn't go back to the old ways. Well, except for Geocaching

[philbx]

Thanks much again Dave. Nice video indeed!
Hey a bit off topic, and sorry, but would like to mention the people at ArduPilot who are doing some great things in UAV's and GPS.

[BlaiseMibeck]

In 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 entered Soviet airspace after a navigation error and was shot down, killing all 269 passengers. This incident resulted in President Ronald Reagan ordering the Unites States military to make the Global Positioning System available for civilian use once it was completed, so that similar incidents could be avoided in the future.

Good on you Ron! :)

[gryzman]

they still have selective availability, we don't get the resolution military gets.

[pikuorguk]

Aww I had one of those little yellow eTrex GPS units. I liked how one of its selling features was the bright yellow colour - so you could find it if it fell on the floor.

Who owned a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet which had an awful GPS inside it? That thing could take fifteen minutes to get a lock - every time you switched GPS on. My Android phone takes seconds, it's great.

[cjmillsnun]

The military uses fixed receivers at known points that communicate with their mobile receivers.

Similar accuracy (to within 20cm) is available in the civilian market, but it's not cheap.

[Skracken]

I play a variation of it called Turf, it uses a similar concept to find places. But it's more competitive and points and toplists are involved. :)

[joblessalex]

found one once, it was a pill bottle. Almost threw it away until I noticed the stuff inside!

[onlywhenprovoked]

Funny timing - I just installed a new GPS in my car about 5 minutes ago.

[YukariYakumo]

Us "yanks" call it geo-cache-ing because the location is cached to the internet, it's a software term.

[fleuroman]

no internet, no computers, no gps... stop it dave, you'll scare the kiddies...

[AluVixapede]

My first GPS only gave heading, altitude, and speed with a basic way point memory of .. I think, 255

[artifactingreality]

I've been pronouncing cache as cash and I'm from the UK.

Oh well probably not going to stop now. It hardly ever comes up in conversation anyway.

[roscozone]

'Cache' is a French word. Its pronounced 'cash', not 'caysh'. The Americans getting something right for a change...?

[juankikote]

The use of the GPS in my cellphone is basic since I play Ingress

[therealoneeighth]

Geo Kayesh? Uh, no. Your guarantee doesn't mean anything.

[BKD]

You Aussies say geocacheing wrong... it is geocacheing!! Since you're always upside down and all the blood is rushed into your heads... you sometimes don't think right.


🙃

[Gameboygenius]

What I don't like about the way you pronounce "geocaching" is that it sounds too much like "geolocation".

[SimoWill]

@Yukari Yakumo Wow. Could you be any more wrong?