Comeback of Webcam Caches.

[Captain Terror]

I proposed this idea in the geocaching.com forum to little response, but I want to know how Aussies, especially South Queenslanders feel about webcam caches.

The reason I ask is that they are now grandfathered to groundspeak and can only be listed on either GCA or waymarking. I am of the understanding that very few of us use the waymarking site, so that lead me to browse GCA. I can only find about 8 webcam caches nationwide and most of them have few finds. I know of a few around here (mainly live surf and seaway cameras) that I would love to make them into caches.

Is it worth my while doing this or a waste of time for whatever reason? Thought, comments?

[Damo.]

You are absolutely right. Not very popular.



I'd put it down to the difficulty of claiming a 'find' as well as they are somewhat lacking in a sense of acomplishment. The cameras tend to stop working and the cache owners allow people to just take a picture of themselves resulting in the listing being little more than a flawed virtual cache. Did one once. Didn't bother with any more after that.

Other's opinions may vary though so if you want to list one, go right ahead.

[Captain Terror]

Thanks damo.

How about then If getting your picture taken was part of say a puzzle cache?

The cams im looking at have a live stream webcam, but also take periodic still pictures, which are stored on the site for a fair few days.

[Papa Bear_Left]

A plain webcam cache is somewhat lacking in challenge; just stand on a beach/street/wherever and get seen by a camera. Whoop-de-doo.

[ruzzelz]

Tried a couple and there were always problems either site being down or no one home to capture the feed.

The primary point of the cache is to bring you to something at the site or the challenge of the find

[Webguy]

Surely this is one of the most challenging, and, as far as I know, the only of it's type...

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... ca37fd531a

[Lucy]

I've found one, but couldn't really see the point.

[caughtatwork]

Webcam caches are excellent.
Walk up, phone a (pre-arranged) friend, take the picture, walk away, log a find.
Great for the numbers whores.

[allrounder]

I think they are cool if you can co-ordinate with someone.

My friend (Shadow!) did one in Canada and got me to take the photo while I was at work (shh, don't tell anyone) - I could even see her talking on the phone to me!

[CraigRat]

They never went away , well not from here anyhow.

[ruzzelz]

Surely this is one of the most challenging, and, as far as I know, the only of it's type...

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... ca37fd531a

Like most webcams it does not appear to be functioning when you wish to look at it

[Devar]

I myself had a webcam cache that was just a pain in the backside, it ran fine for ages, but then suddenly only worked very intermittently, and then finally died, even though the domain is still up, etc. I suppose the maintenance for them just becomes too much.

[Richary]

I finally found one on the weekend trip to Adelaide. Never got around to it before as I couldn't be bothered organising a friend to be in the right place at the right time. Now with technology of course you can grab your own picture.

So now we have a photo of a geek holding a laptop with a 3G dongle under a sign that says Adelaide Nuts. Sort of appropriate really But I have one on the list of icons.

[stringy]

Well I don't really understand them anyway.

[Captain Terror]

The idea of a webcam cache is that the hider finds a camera out in the world that has a live feed to a website. surf cams are an example of this. then hider posts the coordinates of the camera and the website you can find the feed. to log a find, you must have a screenshot of yourself in view of the camera. this means you often need to have a friend at home on the computer ready to take the photo.

thats it in a nutshell anyway. the geocaching wiki and maybe GC will have a mkore detailed definition.