freecoder

There have been a few topics about this. You might do a search for Etrex vibration. A quick fix is to put a strip of tape on each side of the inside of the removable back. See what happens. A more elegant fix involves a few little "nipples" of silicone caulking. Good luck.

See this topic for more topo map comments and opinions.

I'm going to weigh in here because I have almost a years worth of motorcycling and hiking experience with Topo and Metroguide and I've been geocaching with both for a bit more than four months. In the Oregon forests where I do most of my hiking, Topo has almost no trail coverage. You have to realize that there are quire a few trails in these areas and Topo shows only a few major trails in the most used areas. Your mileage may vary. The main use I have for topo is not the contour lines, those are too far apart to be of any to me while hiking. In the car and on the motorcycle where I am covering more distance they can be of some use. I use the stream data to help determine how to approach geocaches. This is about the only real use I have for Topo. Topo also uses this annoying shading for National Forests and parks (almost everywhere in the woods around here) and this makes the roads and contour lines extremely difficult to see on my Vista. The display on the V may do a better job in these areas. I purchased Metroguide pretty quickly after using Topo for a while because it has all of the forest service roads that I want to see and enough in the way of gas stations and restaurants, etc. That's my two cents. I guess it all depends on what you want to do with it.

First of all, if you are going to be looking for more than a few caches a week I would strongly suggest that you get a copy of EasyGPS to upload waypoints. You should have received the cable to connect to your PC. It is quite painless to do. That said, to enter waypoints in manually, access the main menu either with the Page button on the top right side of the unit or by using the menu. Select Mark from the main menu and you're off. The rest is pretty intuitive. Geocaching waypoints use the "hddd mm.mmm" format for lat/lon. If your lat/lon are not displaying in the above format then you might have to go into Setup from the main menu, select Units and look at Position Format. That should be it! Good luck.

I'm definitely interested. I'm just getting over tendinitis in my left (clutch) arm and am now cleared to ride again. Since the tendinitis started about the same time as I learned about Geocaching I haven't been able to do both at the same time yet. I have the Garmin bicycle mount on my Etrex and my brother made me a custom stainless steel bar that bolts into the (unused) mirror bolt holes on my BMW. Works great. I used my GPS while riding all last summer and fall and with the maps up I don't have as many wrong or missed turns. Easy to find nearest gas, too. We should work some group thing out.

I've been doing a bunch of work over the last week or so creating and modifying my GPXSpinner templates. I've found a few deficiencies in the Groundspeak XML namespace. You mention one of them, date_last_found. Another is total_number_of_logs. That number is handy so you can tell if you expect the tell-tale "Geocacher Bumblebee dance trail".

Robertlipe, Yes I would be willing to code it, it doesn't look too hard and the code to poke the value into the structure is already there. I just don't have any time to do it until I get back from Europe in August. If it's still on my list then I will look at it.

I couldn't figure out a way to attach anything to a post so I put my templates on my netscape account for all to retrieve. Look here: Zipped templates. A few notes: 1) I created a style sheet so that I could change things globally easily. The cachestyle.css file is referenced as releative to a folder called style under the Spinner HTML directory. You can change the LINK tag in each template if you want the style sheet somewhere else. 2) I wanted to avoid the multiple files for decoded hints and decoded logs that the default spinner templates produce. This led me to a method that uses a simple form on the page that allows the user to turn on and off the decryption. For decoded logs, I haven't figured out a way to selectively show either encoded or decoded logs without getting a duplicate set of happy/sad face icons. Bring up a page with an encrypted log and you can see what I'm talking about. If anyone figures out a way to deal with this, I would appreciate letting me know. I am a software engineer but I am not a web developer. Five days ago if someone wanted to talk to me about CSS and DOM, I would have said "Huh?". Therefore, these probably have some issues. Constuctive criticism gladly accepted.

I know everyone has their own preferences for how they like to see cache information but I use GPXSpinner and have created my own templates for viewing and printing. This way I have total control over what I see. It doesn't take much HTML knowledge to tweak the templates. Dawn&Richard, If you're interested I can email you my templates as a starting point.

Sorry, but it looks to me like deficon will define the icon you want to use for your waypoints Like waypoint, Exit, Geocache, etc). What I am talking about is a way to define what Garmin calls the waypoint "Display" property, whether it displays the symbol, symbol & name, or symbopl & description. Even after being munged by GPX Spinner, waypoint names are still pretty cryptic and I like to see the symbol and the description rather than the default behavior of showing symbol and name. With that said, is there something in gpsbabel that will do this? Thanks

LilDevil, No, it's not any different (could have saved me some time if I hadn't been so BLIND). I did miss it in the download section because I only visited that page to download the software two weeks ago. If you are looking for suggestions, I'd say add a link to the Examples page that references the download page. Or just put your templates there and reference them from the download page. While I'm making suggestions, you might want to update your variable list to include %log_date_xml%, %minlat%, and other variables that are there and not implemented. It would also be nice to have some visibility to the input file name at the ini file level (yeah, I know, a whole new cncept there) so that I can create unique HTML directories for a few different gpx files. That's not a big deal, though. I can rename the directory after spinning. Thanks for a cool program. R

Argh!! For my previous post, I thought if I used quote it wouldn't interpret the and so you'll need to get rid of the Razz string and the Red Face string and replace them by and . Sorry.

I just started my premium membership a few days ago so I am still coming up to speed on all the new stuff I can do. IMHO, one of the best things about GPX Spinner is that the output is customizable. I create two main HTML files for each cache, one for viewing and one for printing. I have a link to printable one on the other. I also created a template so that the Spun GPX file has all of the good stuff necessary to use Watcher. I did this because the original main reason I wanted Spinner was to munge the waypoint names. I use to do this by hand. This is much better. I wanted those cool waypoint names for use in Watcher and for use in Mapsource. At the risk of having a long post, I'm including my template for GPX files here: gpx_template2.gpx: quote:<% output_filename=spinner2.gpx %> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?> <gpx version="1.0" creator="GPX Spinner %version% - http://www.gpxspinner.com" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0" xmlns:topografix="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/Private/TopoGrafix/0/2" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0/gpx.xsd http://www.topografix.com/GPX/Private/TopoGrafix/0/2 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/Private/TopoGrafix/0/2/topografix.xsd"> <desc>Geocache file generated by GPX Spinner</desc> <author>Russ Burns</author> <time>%current_date_xml%</time> <keywords><![CDATA[cache, geocache, Groundspeak, gpxspinner, spinner]]></keywords> <bounds minlat="%minlat%" minlon="%minlon%" maxlat="%maxlat%" maxlon="%maxlon%" /> <% sort caches by ID %> <wpt lat="%latitude_raw%" lon="%longitude_raw%"> <time>%hidden_date_xml%</time> <name>%new_name%</name> <cmt>%new_description%</cmt> <desc>%new_description%</desc> <url>C:Documents and SettingsdefaultMy DocumentsGPS Stuffcache%ID%.htm</url> <urlname>%name% by %placed_by%</urlname> <sym>%new_symbol%</sym> <type>Geocache</type> <Groundspeak:cache id="%ID%" available="True" archived="False" xmlns:Groundspeak="http://www.Groundspeak.com/cache/1/0"> <Groundspeak:name>%name%</Groundspeak:name> <Groundspeaklaced_by>%placed_by%</Groundspeaklaced_by> <Groundspeakwner id="60146">%owner%</Groundspeakwner> <Groundspeak:type>%type%</Groundspeak:type> <Groundspeak:container>%size%</Groundspeak:container> <Groundspeak:difficulty>%difficulty%</Groundspeak:difficulty> <Groundspeak:terrain>%terrain%</Groundspeak:terrain> <Groundspeak:country>%country%</Groundspeak:country> <Groundspeak:state>%state%</Groundspeak:state> <Groundspeak:short_description html="True">%short_desc%</Groundspeak:short_description> <Groundspeak:long_description html="True">%long_desc%</Groundspeak:long_description> <Groundspeak:encoded_hints>%decoded_hints%</Groundspeak:encoded_hints> <Groundspeak:logs> <% sort logs by reverse logID %> <Groundspeak:log id="%logID%"> <Groundspeak:date>%log_date_xml%</Groundspeak:date> <Groundspeak:type>%type%</Groundspeak:type> <Groundspeak:finder id="%finderID%">%finder%</Groundspeak:finder> <Groundspeak:text encoded="%log_encoded%">%decoded_log_text%</Groundspeak:text> <% if latitude %><Groundspeak:log_wpt lat="%latitude%" lon="%longitude%" /><% endif %> </Groundspeak:log> <% endsort logs %> </Groundspeak:logs> <Groundspeak:travelbugs> <% if travel_bugs %> <% sort travel_bugs by name %> <Groundspeak:travelbug id="%bugID%" ref="%bugGUID%"> <Groundspeak:name>%name%</Groundspeak:name> </Groundspeak:travelbug> <% endsort travel_bugs %> <% endif %> </Groundspeak:travelbugs> </Groundspeak:cache> </wpt> <% endsort caches %> </gpx> You'll have to change the quote:<url> line above to have a good link to your cache page from EasyGPS. I also had to mess with registry to get Spinner to be in my OpenWith list because EasyGPS is evil and changes the registry so that you can't have alternate programs in your context menu. That's all for now. Thanks for the cool program. R

I just found this program today and it's useful for me for just one reason. (But it is an important reason). I get my GPX files from pocket queries and use GPX Spinner to munge the waypoint names and create HTML files that I can customize. I use Watcher to find caches of interest. I have been using GPSBabel to convert my GPX fles to Mapsource format. I use Mapsource to display caches on a map. I want to display Symbol and description for my waypoints when in Mapsource. Short of going through the dialog and changing each waypoint by hand there is no way to accomplish this. I haven't found a magical XML tag that specifies how the waypoint should appear when converted from GPX to Mapsource. EasyMPS seems to be the answer! I can do everything the else the way I have it set up. I just have one final extra step to convert the .mps file that says display "Symbol and Name" to a .mps file that says display "Symbol and Description". Tres cool! Thank you.

I have a Vista and use both Topo and MetroGuide. Metroguide has almost almost every road I have ever wanted including National Forest roads. Topo has stream data which here in the Pacific Northwest can be very handy to determine which way to approach a cache. I don't much like the implementation of the Topo map data because National Forests are shaded and on the grayscale Vista it makes visibility an issue. The data seems accurate enough for geocaching use, however. I don't have a separate unit for my vehicles and so I use the map data extensively to help plan how to get to urban (and sometimes rural) caches. The Mapsource software itself seems capable enough and if you get MetroGuide it will do autorouting. If you have your cache waypoints loaded, you ust click from one to next and it will create a route for you. I also find the visual representation of where the caches are to be of great use, although from reading these forums it seems that there are other options for that. Just my opinions of course, but I hope this helps. R

I might have jumped the gun a bit because I am just now reading up on Pocket Queries and Clayjar's Watcher program and such. I still think that these basic additions would be nice to have for non-members.

I have also found this to be annoying. I have several suggestions for improvements to the seek capability: 1) Allow user to specify number of caches displayed per page 2) Allow exclusion of caches found (display by default) 3) Allow inclusion of caches hidden (otherwise don't display) 4) Allow inclusion of inactive caches (otherwise don't display) Using these options I could quickly get a list of the 40 closest active caches that I have not either found nor hidden. This seems like something quite a few folks would like. I've been toying with the idea of a post-processor that would take the HTML code and parse out caches that met certain criteria. It may be a while before it gets to the top of my list

How about an option on the seek page that would allow display of unavailable caches? I would like to lobby for an option to not display found caches. It would make it much cleaner to see the ones your planning to hunt. Freecoder

I'll chime in here with my two cents worth. I have a Vista and Topo and Metroguide. I haven't had many issues with the accuracy of the maps and those have been minor. I was looking for a cache yesterday and the map showed the cache on the other side of the road from where it really was. I would just as soon ignore the map when it comes to that. For use on my motorcycle, though it is just great. I can find the nearest gas station with just a few clicks. That data has yet to fail me although I bet there are some errors there. The biggest problem I have with program is in management of waypoints and tracks. I agree with SpongeRob that is ludicrous to have to have cut and paste waypoints when you just want to merge some waypoints from your unit with those in an existing file. I also have a big problem with the limitation in import/export formats. GPX is not supported?!?! Come on! It is a royal pain to get my geocaching waypoints from a .gpx file to a .mps file. (And yes, I really DO want to do that because I keep a different set of maps in my for geocaching than for motorcycle riding.) EasyGPS can't handle maps. That's my take on it anyway. Freecoder

sling sand!, Having the unit mounted flat with the display up makes the problem as bad as it can be. I think the worst shocks would come at the bottom of a fall such as hitting a rock or a limb with an ATV. If the cover is in the direction of the fall, the batteries would tend to be forced in that direction which can jar them loose just a bit (enough to turn the unit off). Try two pieces of electrical tape, one on each half of the cover. Make them just large enough so that cover is very snug. Freecoder

I also had the same problem. I believe it is due to the fact that the replacement cover that is used for the handlebar mount produces a slightly larger clearance inside the battery compartment. The problem was much worse with Maxell NiMH batteries than the other two brands that I have (NoMem and Panasonic). I solved the problem on my unit by doing two things. First, I measured the different NiMH batteries that I had and I always use the largest of the three. There was a surprising amount of difference in the length and circumference of the batteries. Second, I placed a piece of tape on the inside of the handlebar mount's cover. I didn't put tape in the unit or on the batteries because that made the stock cover too difficult to get on. That's the long of it. Freecoder