Lab cache

What is it?

A Lab cache or Adventure Lab is an experimental cachetype. The general idea is that the user visits a location and finds a code, entering the correct code in the Adventure Lab-app gives the user one found geocache. The new name is "Adventure Lab" and an "Adventure" can have up to 5 or 10 "Locations" depending on the type of Adventure, each Location equals one Lab cache in the user's statistics.

Lab caches vs statistics

Lab caches are in some ways separated from other geocaches. Geocaching HQ has the policy that from a statistical point of view Lab caches should be considered to be locationless (not to be confused with the geocache type locationless). Basically they should not be assigned a country, region or county. This means that they can not be included in any top list based on a location for example.

If a user want Lab caches to be included in their Profile stats they need to opt in by checking the "Include lab cache finds where applicable" checkbox in the Profile Stats settings. In BadgeGen v4 the badge The Lab Cacher was introduced.

Project-GC does not have data for who is the owner of a lab cache. Therefore they are not taking into account for such statistics.

Known issues

• At least the newer Lab caches have coordinates, if not all. Project-GC does not have access to this data today. Neither does it have access to owner information for them.
• Project-GC have earlier used an UTC timestamp to determine the day of the Lab cache finds. This was fixed mid December 2020. Therefore some users Lab cache finds will seem to have changed date, more likely to happen the further away from UTC they have geocached. The new date is however the correct one, the date determined by Geocaching.com. Geocaching.com uses a date based on the local time zone.
• Due to different kinds of information for Geocaches and Lab caches in the API's used, logging Lab caches at the same day as milestones might cause unexpected results.