I've been working on the code for my Arduino GPS System over the past couple of days and am pleased to announce some new features.

The one thing which has been bugging me is that the system lacked any ability to store location data. This was annoying since if you wanted to save some coordinates you needed to write them down, and key them in manually if you wanted to visit the location later.

In order to remedy this, you can now input up to 20 way-points into memory so you don't need to write anything down. The way-points are held in the Arduino's EEPROM so they are persistent between power cycles. This means I no longer need to carry a pen and paper inside the case with my GPS receiver.

To further support using way-points, I also implemented a simple backup routine so you can save your way-points and configuration settings to a computer.

The updated code can be downloaded at the Arduino GPS System project page.

On Wednesday Amara, Ben, Emily and I went geocaching in the wilderness of Charleswood.

Geocaching is a "sport" where people hide containers in parks and other places and place the coordinates of the containers online. Other people then download the coordinates and use GPS receivers to attempt to locate the containers and sign an enclosed guest book. Some containers have small toys which you can exchange assuming you had the presence of mind to bring one with you when you left.

To make this extra nerdy, we used my home built GPS receiver. We set out with the locations of four caches written down and managed to locate two of them. We didn't spend much time looking at each location due to an abundance of mosquitoes, but managed to find the easier caches.

I enjoyed the hunt and would definitely like to go geocaching again. If you want to learn more about geocaching, I recommend you visit http://www.geocaching.com which has excellent explanations and a huge databases of caches waiting to be found.

Thursday last week wasn't shaping up to be that spectacular day. I was tired, frustrated and just wanted to sleep the entire evening when I got home from work. I checked the mail and found a package that redeemed the evening - my freeday order had arrived.

Earlier in January the electronics retailer Sparkfun had an event named freeday in which they gave away $100,000 dollars of electronics. The first 1000 people to order got a $100 discount on their order and all they had to pay was shipping.

On freeday I managed to order an Arduino, a GPS receiver and a board to interface the Arduino and GPS reciever together. Needless to say, after checking the mail I immediately ran downstairs to my workbench and started work on connecting everything together.

My goal right now is to make a simple electronic compass and navigator as a build up to the slightly more ambitious GPS enabled hat project. This weekend I finished the compass and I am currently working on the navigator.

Anyone up for a city-wide game of GPS hide and go seek?

Lately I've been giving some thought as to what micro-controller tinkering I should do next.

The first thing I need to do is to finish what I have started and complete the 'weather clock' project. I tracked down an old mantle clock which I might purchase tonight, so all I need to do is get some servos and print the new clock face. Hopefully I can complete this by Christmas.

I have also been playing around with the idea of a GPS enabled hat with an Arduino doing all the processing work. The various ideas I have had are;

- A hat that notifies the wearer when they are close to certain drinking establishments
- A hat that uses multiple vibrating motors to always indicate true north
- A hat that will guide the user to a disclosed (or undisclosed) destination by merely providing the direction to travel in
- Some combination of the above

I also thought that the hat could be used for some form of perverse orienteering competition. Individuals could be timed on how long they took to complete a set course of unknown checkpoints using only the hat for guidance. The hat could also lead someone to a party or another secret event.

This will take a while to implement since the hardware required is rather costly, but I think it will be a really cool project once it is completed.