Garmin chirp Brings Geocachers Even More Creativity

Since geocaching seems to have become one of the greatest outdoor adventures available to modern man, Garmin coudn't let this opportunity slide past them so today, they announced the chirp, a wireless beacon designed specifically for this type of activity that provides cache creators with an unique way of storing hints, transmitting multicache coordinates as well as counting visitors.

For those of you that are not familiar with this outdoor sport, Geocaching is actually a high-tech version of hide-and-seek where participants of all ages explore the outdoors in search of hidden treasure and adventure, chirp alerting other geocachers that the cache is nearby, enabling them to access the hints you’ve loaded into chirp, multicaches becoming really easy to set-up thanks to this chip.

And that is not all, since this 1.3” by 0.9” (slightly bigger than a quarter) chip is also build so it can withstand all sort of weather conditions, Garmin stating the chirp has a battery life of up to a year while also being password-protected so you, and you alone, have programming powers for it.

“With chirp, geocachers have a new tool to enhance the joys of creating and finding caches around the globe,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales.

“In listening to and participating in the vibrant geocaching community, Garmin created a one-of-a-kind device that builds on popular innovations such as paperless geocaching and downloading cache details directly to the device.”

I must admit that if you are into geochaching this is actually quite an impressive tool for you to have, although that $22.99 price tag seems a bit high for such a small device.

End of it all, I must tell you the chirp is compatible with a wide range of Garmin handheld devices such as the Oregon, the Dakota and the recently announced GPSMAP series.