I’ve found two and currently have one out.
Pros: They are genuinely cool and do add another level. As you approach the GZ (or more accurately, first stage in a multi) then if your Garmin GPS has them enabled (and you don’t leave that feature turned on all the time or it uses battery) then the GPS will beep and show “Downloading coordinates” and within a few seconds, will update itself to the next stage or final. They self-power and run for a number of years, and you can hide them so they don’t need to be accessed again (within a rock crevice or inside a moot or wall). Nothing to show and no chance of being muggled.
Cons:
Not everyone has the ability to use them. You still need a physical final. Not everyone can figure out how to turn on this feature even if their gps is so blessed (I had to give instructions on the cache page)
Arguements: Sorry, don’t agree that there’s no place for them. It’s a cute idea, cute enough for the notoriously Garmin-phobic Groundspeak to adopt them (although you’re not allowed to mention Garmin on the page (sigh) ).
There are a number of caches that aren’t usable by certain people. Yours, Daves and anyone who places a remote cache excludes those unfit or physically unable to reach it. A cache up a tree excludes climbers. All gps’s exclude those without a GPS/smartphone/computer (or ability to read a map). Agoraphobics might not be able to go to an event cache. That’s doesn’t mean they should be banned.
As a CO:
When I placed mine, I took some good advice from, I think, Forgetful Elephants, and ALSO put coordinates of the final stuck underneath the footpath sign.
I get the odd positive feedback from somebody who’s sought out my very rare chirp cache and sometimes they’ve travelled a fair way specifically to do it. I also get comments saying “Thanks for the printed coords or I wouldn’t have been able to do it, I don’t have that feature”. I also get NM logs from people who insist it isn’t working, and when I get there to check, it is.
Will I place another? No. My curiosity about the technology is satisfied, they cost about a tenner each, and it doesn’t attract significantly more finders or even fave points than a random film pot in the hedge – something I find for most series type caches, they don’t get the finds. Those faves I get are more usually for the final container than the method of getting there. GC3P8FB
