Ideas for a half-digital "treasure hunt"

[MikZzona]

Hello hello

I am faced with a challenge IRL, and I was hoping that some of the half-Idiots half-geniuses we have around here might have ideas on how to solve it.

I work with an association, and we want to organise a sort of treasure hunt in October. It would be a physical hunt, but relying on a digital support. In short, the idea is to put up ~200 unique posters all around the city, we leave them up for a couple of weeks, we ask people to look for them, and we register how many of these posters each person has seen, so that we can distribute prizes at the end to the few people who found the most posters. The posters are the "treasures", so to speak. So if Carl-Gustav participates to the treasure hunt and finds 120 posters, I need to know that, so that I can reward him with the car of his dreams and a kiss on the cheek.

That's the whole problematic here: find a way to actually be able to have this information : Carl-Gustav found 120 posters.

To be noted, I do not need to know which posters Carl-Gustav found, only the amount he found, and I do not need any information about him except an email address, nor will I store this information once the treasure hunt is over, and nor will I do anything about this information except view it and compare it to the scores of all other participants.

 

Of course we cannot have people physically stay next to each poster to register whenever somebody comes by, so I thought we would need to create some sort of "registry" online. I thought that the registry could be fed by unique QR codes, a different code of each poster, or something of the like. This way, when Carl-Gustav finds a poster, he scans it with his phone, and boom - his finding is directly registered in the database. (That way, Carl-Gustav doesn't have to bother typing in information himself, and can instead take the time to eat his second kanelbulle and take a påtår for his coffee during his daily fika.) But I imagine that this "solution" (if it really is one) implies that the user (Carl-Gustav) is automatically recognized when he scans the QR code, so I guess this would entail the creation of an account to begin with...

So, this is the "solution" I've been thinking about, but HOW ?? How do I turn this into reality ? Am I even close to a solution ? This here is way too intricate for me to find the right way to go. Can one create a "simple" registry like that, that could be fed from QR-codes (or something else?) and recognize the user? Or do you know of online tools or apps that exist and actually do that, or can help us get on the way? Doesn't have to be free either, we can find some budget for a good solution. I can find a number of people that actually know their stuff (more than me, at least) to work on this, but I need to be able to know what to ask.

So yeah, hope that was clear enough, and if anyone has any ideas please let me know Contrary to Carl-Gustav, I cannot offer you the car of your dreams, but the kiss on the cheek can be arranged - doesn't have to be from me though.

 

Cheers!

[RobMc]

Dead simple

Each player is issued a unique ID

Each poster is given a unique code

You can then choose a method that the player registers that code (using his ID) and adds them up, could even be email if you can be bothered to keep the tally.

ps You can keep your Saabs thank you, I have a nice Trabant

 

pps If they register with Rob for a very generous 100 euros each I'll sort it out

You must keep it simple and you must have an honest person checking and running it, there are too many ways to cheat using an automated system. i.e. putting in multiple codes, multiple times using one ID and other easily thought of cheats. Sending it to a central person highlights any funny business.

[Kitsune]

18 minutes ago, MikZzona said:

Contrary to Carl-Gustav, I cannot offer you the car of your dreams, but the kiss on the cheek can be arranged

Fuck. I don't have any ideas if Rob doesn't want the car or a kiss on the cheek I'll take it. I can't drive so that kinda narrows it down

[RobMc]

19 minutes ago, ShinyAbsol said:

I can't drive so that kinda narrows it down

Lets have a bit of fun, neither can most girlies  OMG what have I said ? (laughing)

I call my wifes car 'The Transvestite', because it's always in the wrong gear  

[Kitsune]

1 hour ago, ShinyAbsol said:

Fuck. I don't have any ideas if Rob doesn't want the car or a kiss on the cheek I'll take it. I can't drive so that kinda narrows it down

Feel like I should clarify that this is a playful joke and NOT sexual harrassment

[lTplkey336]

Rob can you run our presidential election in november?

[ReaPeR]

RESTER THEM AND SUMMIT A PHOTO OF POSTER WHEN FOUND.

 

[RobMc]

6 hours ago, lTplkey336 said:

Rob can you run our presidential election in november?

No problem, I've got some ideas already but the senior admins are ignoring my request to join the political forum, as if I'd cause trouble ?

Which side do you want me on ?

[RobMc]

8 hours ago, ShinyAbsol said:

Feel like I should clarify that this is a playful joke and NOT sexual harrassment

God bless the Snowflake generation, thought we were getting a choice?

[MikZzona]

13 hours ago, RobMc said:

Dead simple

Each player is issued a unique ID

Each poster is given a unique code

You can then choose a method that the player registers that code (using his ID) and adds them up, could even be email if you can be bothered to keep the tally.

ps You can keep your Saabs thank you, I have a nice Trabant

 

pps If they register with Rob for a very generous 100 euros each I'll sort it out

You must keep it simple and you must have an honest person checking and running it, there are too many ways to cheat using an automated system. i.e. putting in multiple codes, multiple times using one ID and other easily thought of cheats. Sending it to a central person highlights any funny business.

That sounds good, I like that, thank you! Would you have suggestions as to which methods exist to set up such a system? I keep looking of course, looking into Wordpress atm or such half-ready solutions, being short on time and knowledge and all. Otherwise we'll consider email as a possibility indeed if we can't find a more systematic method - although we are (hopefully) talking about thousands of submissions here, those would be long nights going through all of that hehe.

 

9 hours ago, ReaPeR said:

RESTER THEM AND SUMMIT A PHOTO OF POSTER WHEN FOUND.

 

That could work in principle indeed, but I am afraid that people wouldn't bother sending photos, it could be ok for the first one but getting too tedious when they have to send dozens of them

 

11 hours ago, ShinyAbsol said:

Feel like I should clarify that this is a playful joke and NOT sexual harrassment

I feel sexually harassed. What do we do?

Edited August 22, 2020 by MikZzona

[Kitsune]

27 minutes ago, MikZzona said:

I feel sexually harassed. What do we do?

Well first of all if you're not joking here then I will apologise profusely because it's never my intention to make you feel that way! If you are joking then I will probably also apologise profusely because that's what I always do anyway

[MikZzona]

'Course I'm joking Rosie

[Kitsune]

Oh? well then sorry for thinking you might not have been joking haha. 

I can always find something to apologise for.

[BlackRose]

@Labob any input as you like to make these kinda things!!//

[RobMc]

7 minutes ago, BlackRose said:

@Labob any input as you like to make these kinda things!!//

Babies???  no no Shiny said she was only joking Rosie

[Labob]

I would think there are many qscan apps that would let you save the scans on a calendar. As an admin I would create the calendar and allow all who play access so they could upload the scan to your calendar. From there you could see who and when they scanned your posters. Add xtremeidiots.com to the poster please  shameless plug. 

[Sitting-Duc]

As has been suggested - a simple QR code on the poster (probably with a 'friendly code') for those without QR capability. Then a simple website to manage the 'treasure' and record finds. I would keep the concept simple. I have created a quick example to give some ideas... plus I kind of like the concept in general. Haven't looked to see if there is already an existing service that provides what you want.

See example: https://fm-treasurehunt-webapp-mikzzona.azurewebsites.net/

Links to treasure: 

• https://fm-treasurehunt-webapp-mikzzona.azurewebsites.net/TreasureHunt/RegisterFind/9539676B-C721-4A3B-E17D-08D846F0F275
• https://fm-treasurehunt-webapp-mikzzona.azurewebsites.net/TreasureHunt/RegisterFind/0C4B463B-35F0-4444-E184-08D846F0F275
• https://fm-treasurehunt-webapp-mikzzona.azurewebsites.net/TreasureHunt/RegisterFind/B7A1B700-74F3-4327-E18A-08D846F0F275
• https://fm-treasurehunt-webapp-mikzzona.azurewebsites.net/TreasureHunt/RegisterFind/67DFB0B4-8E2F-4B02-E197-08D846F0F275
• https://fm-treasurehunt-webapp-mikzzona.azurewebsites.net/TreasureHunt/RegisterFind/B7A1B700-74F3-4327-E18A-08D846F0F275

If the user isn't already logged in they are taken to the login page (or they can register). If they are already logged in then they are taken directly to the register page. 

Centralised model does allow easier tracking and minimal manual intervention etc.

[MikZzona]

Thank you so much for your input guys! We'll dig into all of that and I'm sure we'll be able to make it work now

 

@Sitting-Duc That's awesome, exactly what I need ! Thank you so much for going the trouble to create this example website ! I'll show it to my colleagues here and we will most likely go in that direction

[Sitting-Duc]

41 minutes ago, MikZzona said:

Thank you so much for your input guys! We'll dig into all of that and I'm sure we'll be able to make it work now

 

@Sitting-Duc That's awesome, exactly what I need ! Thank you so much for going the trouble to create this example website ! I'll show it to my colleagues here and we will most likely go in that direction

No worries - I quite like the concept may try and make something of it. 

The code is here: https://github.com/frasermolyneux/FM.TreasureHunt and contains some terraform to deploy to an Azure app service. I was going to use Azure storage but ran out of time so used the generic SQL database for the back-end in the end.

The majority of the 'proof of concept' is in here: https://github.com/frasermolyneux/FM.TreasureHunt/blob/master/src/FM.TreasureHunt.Web/Controllers/TreasureHuntController.cs

 

[BlackRose]

yesmaybe  something on the website formemberstodo@sittingduc???