After a long hiatus, I finally got
around to create another fun project. As I was to return back to
India, I wanted to do something special for my girlfriend, something
that would take us through the memory lane of our college years.
I settled on the idea of creating a
reverse-geocache puzzle cum gift box. The idea is fairly simple and
there are plenty of examples on the Internet detailing how to make
it. The information at Sparkfun and Mikal Hart's website were particularly helpful. The final outcome is very similar to Mikal's puzzle box.
Components -
I ordered the components just 3 weeks
before my India trip & knew that it would be a race to finish the
construction in that short time-frame. Making matters worse was the
fact that I didn't have access to the awesome resources as I did at
Georgia Tech. It was a constant game of improvisations &
compromises.
For example I spent a good 3 hours in
cutting out the slit for display using nothing but just a hack saw
and a wood file. Never have I badly felt the need for the Dremel saw
tool. (wishlist !)
I decided to prototype everything on a
bread board before soldering down the components on a general
purpose board. However, in the end I just used a couple of zipties &
sawed down my breadboard to make it fit snuggly into the wooden box.
Pretty good design, I should say :)
The box opens itself up on the final
clue to reveal the gift contained inside it. However something went
wrong with my servo motor at the last moment & I had to make a
really ugly improvisation. I ended up putting a small lock in front
of the box with the intent of giving her the key once we were at the
final clue.
The code is fairly simple, but the GPS
parser is quite rudimentary & ugly. Perhaps if I had more time I
would have done it better/differently.
Project hosted at github.
git clone
git://github.com/roguehit/mystery_box.git
Some images -
The final box with the lock !
I had to rip out most of the insides to make room for the gift.
The 8-bit guts. (GPS on the right)
Lots of room
GPS receiver trying to lock on to the satellites
Sea link, location for one of the clues
