Hidden on a trail just north of Mountain View, the puzzle at the posted location is a small microcontroller, which you can turn on by bringing a 9V battery. Solve the field puzzle here and it will reveal the final location to you!
RFC: Request For Comments
Request for Comments, in information and communications technology, is a type of text document from the technology community. An RFC document may come from many bodies including from the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Research Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, or from independent authors.
The Story
You are a blackhat, and your mission is to find a prize somewhere around these parts. You are hot on the trail of the person who hid it -- and what you have to do now is extract the GPS location of the final geocache. This location is safely tucked away in the innards of this puzzle microcontroller you will find here. Upon completion of the puzzle, the microcontroller will reveal the GPS location of the geocache to you, and you can retrieve and log the prize.
Important details
- A laptop with WiFi to solve this puzzle. Using a Linux or Mac laptop is recommended, Windows may be harder (but still possible).
- A 9V battery to power the microcontroller, a full battery will last 3-3.5 hours.
- Recommended: a second device (cellphone, laptop, tablet) to read RFCs and search the web on.
Pictures of the physical (starting) stage are welcome. Any pictures or hints in the logs pertaining to puzzle stages, or the final location (including the container), will be deleted.
Good luck finding the treasure! If you're ever in Zurich, Switzerland, take a look at the identical copy there!
Congratulations to mswma and gw0143 to be the first to solve the puzzle. Congratulations to rragan and cachbefound for being the second to solve the puzzle.