smithdw
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Everything posted by smithdw
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If he found it, the coordinates must be pretty close. After all the work you did verifying the coordinates, I'd say your coordinates to the cache are 'good enough'. There's always the possibility that his GPSr was 'off' at the time he was there due to satellite positioning, cloud cover, interference or maybe even the phase of the moon. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The way I figure it, if someone can find it, the coords must be close. If everyone (or most) finders report that the coords are off, then I'd recheck what I posted in the cache page. Yes, you learn a lot about geocachers by reading the forums and their cache logs. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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All I usually do when placing a cache is just sit the GPS on top of or as close to the cache as possible and set it to average the position for 2-3 minutes or at least 200 samples. I have a Garmin III+. So far they have all been found and no one has made any remark about the coordinates being off. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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HELP!!!! Connecting GPSr to computer
smithdw replied to Pharmadude's topic in GPS technology and devices
quote:Originally posted by lightnsound:I think I'm just gonna throw a serial port card in the one slot open in the machine. Anybody think of a reason this would't work? Predicting is difficult, especially when predicting the future. That should work. The only thing that I can think of is that you will be using your only open slot. Be sure to get a standard RS-232 serial port card though. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo -
I don't have a WinCE/Pocket PC type system, so I wouldn't buy your program but here's my two cents on your program: There have been numerous posts regarding 'data scraping' or gathering cache info directly from the GC.com site. Every post has been NO NO NO NO, don't do it. You risk getting yourself banned or your IP address blocked from accessing the site. This activity loads the system too much and it's already too slow. If I did have a system that this would work on, I would be really hesitant on buying any software, regardless of how good it is or how little the price. I would definitely want a trial version before I'd buy anything, regardless of what the program is for. I pretty much only use freeware for geocaching and I know that there are a lot of other people that feel the same way. And here is a link for the GPX file format. I just did a Google search on GPX file format definition. There are a lot more sites that have the info, this is just one of them. One other thing, thank you for writing the program, even if I probably won't use it. This is a great sport/hobby/obsession and we appreciate all the help anyone can give us to make the information easier to manage. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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Some GPSr's allow you to set the battery type so the level indicator will be more accurate. I used to have a 315, but I don't remember if it could of not. If you use NiMH cells, they are the same voltage as NiCad cells if your GPSr lists NiCad battery type. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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Too many people at once. I'd suspect there's been a lot of geocaching done over the weekend and everyone is trying to enter all their logs tonight (Monday 5/26/2003) "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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Yep, the site is overloaded with all the geocachers using it. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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Check to see if your GPSr has a battery cover that allows the batteries to move around a little. Also check if the spring contacts might be allowing a battery to move a little causing it to come away from the contacts. You can try putting a thin piece of foam over the batteries to help keep them in place. If this doesn't have any effect, then it is probably a bad solder joint inside the GPSr. Most likely I'd send it it for factory repair if it's still under warranty, or take it back to the store where you bought it and exchange it if they have a good return policy and it hasn't been a long time since you bought it. If it were mine personally, I'd open it up and see if there were any bad connections, but I have about 30 years of electronics experience. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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You log it just like a 'regular' cache. Most of the locationless caches have requirements that must be met such as a picture or pictures of the object that you need to find, usually with your GPSr and maybe you in at least one of the pictures. Also, most require the coordinates that you found the object at. Some have other requirements beyond or instead of a picture such as information on the object found. Read the cache page for the requirements and read through some of the logs to see what others have posted for their information. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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quote:Originally posted by Pneumatic:They won't last as long as alkalines, but many cachers use NiMH rechargables. In my legend, a pair of the 1800mah cells last about 8-10 hours, and I just keep a spare pair with me. For about $20 you can get 4 AA cells and a slow charger (13-15 hours charge time). For about $35-$40 you can get a rapid charger (1 hour typical charge time). I'd definitely recommend rechargable batteries. I have 2 sets for the GPSr (Garmin III+) and 2 sets for the digital camera. It is a little more expensive initially, but you will save a lot more money in the long run. Just be sure to fully charge them when you first get them. If you can afford it, I'd recommend a microprocessor controlled charger (they run between $40-$100 depending on how many and what sizes of batteries they will charge at one time). They charge the batteries very quickly and do not overcharge or overheat them which will reduce their lifespan. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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HELP!!!! Connecting GPSr to computer
smithdw replied to Pharmadude's topic in GPS technology and devices
quote:Originally posted by Pharmadude:Thanks for the tips, folks. I located one here http://www.gpscity.com/gps/brados/19181.2.9620798020276467516/usb4adapter.html, but if possible I would like to get one locally, since I am going away in a couple of days, and there's no time for mail order to arrive before I leave. Pardon the local references, but anyone know where to purchase one in the Vancouver BC area? So far I've tried London Drugs and Radio Shack with no luck. Check your local Staples store. They list stores at 3037-152nd Street (White Rock), 1322 West Broadway, 901 Seymour Street, 2105 Park Royal South. Our store here carries Belkin USB/Serial adapters. Also, call around to your local computer stores if you can't find it at Staples. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo -
Magellan GPS Companion for Palm m500
smithdw replied to Volley's topic in GPS technology and devices
I've got the same thing for my m515. Here's what I have done: 1. Download GPS Babel 2. Use GPS Babel to convert the .loc or .gpx file to the NAV Companion format, save the new file something like geocaches.PDB 3. Double click the geocaches.PDB file to add it to the HotSync loader 4. Hotsync the Palm. There are a couple of things that are a problem: 1. Any waypoints that are already loaded in the Palm will be replaced with the new waypoints. Since I only load waypoints, not save any while I'm out caching, that isn't a problem for me. If you want to merge the waypoints that are already in the Palm with the new ones, the read the readme.magnav file that is included with the source code download. 2. It looks like there is a limit of 255 or 256 waypoints. I tried to send 340 waypoints to the Palm and while scrolling through the list, the Palm locks up and requires a reset. I downloaded about 254 waypoints and it works correctly. Another program to use which is much nicer than the Magellan software is Cetus GPS. I prefer Cetus to the Nav Companion. Make sure you use the latest BETA version, which has all the neat features and seems to be pretty stable. You send waypoints to it in the same way as the Nav Companion, just choose .loc or .gpx input file in GPS Babel and Cetus GPS format on the output. I just named the output file geocaches.pdb and selected the database in Cetus. Hope this helps. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo [This message was edited by smithdw on May 23, 2003 at 10:02 AM.] -
Would you have a problem with this?
smithdw replied to ScurvyDog's topic in General geocaching topics
We have many trees with markers and signs of various types nailed or screwed to them. Most are placed by the forestry people, either on private lands that are open to the public or on BLM land or in National Forest land. I would believe that a nail or screw would do less damage than a chain or wire rope around it since the tree is growing and will eventually grow around the chain/wire if it doesn't break it. Since you are putting the nail or screw into a rather large tree, it probably won't even penetrate beyond the bark. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo -
You write the caption (May 22)
smithdw replied to georgeandmary's topic in General geocaching topics
The Headless Geocachers strike again!!! "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo -
quote:Originally posted by Stunod: quote:Originally posted by Team GPSaxophone:Change it to an award celebration since the Webbys cancelled it. We could all meet at the event cache location to celebrate winning the award. How about a nice central location, like Denver? Albuquerque maybe? http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ihazeltine/bandbass.gif Party at Team GPSaxophone's house!!!! http://208.55.63.109/images/homer.gif __"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand."__ Albuquerque should be nice this time of the year, not too hot yet. I'm thinking of going to the annual meeting that IHS has down there in July. I haven't made it for the last few years, but I've been there quite a few times before that. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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I carry mine with me all of the time. I don't have a regular land-line phone anymore, so it's the only phone I have. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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I wasn't sure if I was going to post to this thread or not. I have been running Seti for about 4 years now and I am a member of another group. I don't know if the geocaching group was active back then or not, but if it was I would have joined up with geocaching instead. I am not going to change groups, since I have been with the Sysopt group for so long and I don't think it would be fair to the rest of the Sysopt group to bail out on them. Anyway, here are my SETI stats as of right now: Your credit: Name: smithdw Results Received: 44565 Total CPU Time: 41.538 years Average CPU Time per work unit: 8 hr 09 min 53.7 sec Average results received per day: 31.01 Last result returned: Wed May 21 07:03:31 2003 UTC Registered on: Mon Jun 14 06:53:11 1999 UTC SETI@home user for: 3.937 years Your group info: You belong to the group named: Sysopt.com Users 2002 Your rank: (based on current workunits received) Your rank out of 4495459 total users is: 956th place. The number of users who have this rank: 1 You have completed more work units than 99.979% of our users. I have around 62 systems running Seti 24/7 ranging from about 23- PIII-450, 28- PIII-933, 1- P4-1.4, 2- P4-2.66, 5- Celeron 600, 2- Dual Xeon 2.8, and a Dual PIII-933. I'm not sure of the counts of systems, but that should be pretty close. I just broke the 1,000th place level reciently and now I'm waiting for the 50,000 WU certificate. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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Try this one here "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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quote:Originally posted by DustyJacket: quote:Originally posted by smithdw:Thorlos are great socks. I've had a pair for about 3 months now and I don't wear anything else while I'm geocaching..... That must get a bit drafty...... DustyJacket Not all those that wander are lost. But in my case... Ha ha, it gets a little cold in the snow too.... "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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quote:Originally posted by Cannonlaw:If you are a Priemium Member then you can do a pocket query. This will potentially give you an update every day, and put it into EasyGPS format for downloading directly to your GPS if you have that capability. It appears that one of the criteria that you can search for are caches that have not been found. If you want to be the first finder, then I think this is your ticket. And by the time I get my Pocket Query results, there could have been 2-3 cachers already there grabbing all the first finder goodies. We have several that it seems that they spend the day looking through the cache pages and jump right in the truck to head out when one shows up. I have done that, but it's a little harder when I'm at work and they are retired. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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quote:Originally posted by skydiver: quote:Originally posted by smithdw:So how does this program work? Do you get a list of new caches and check to see if they are within the areas that users enter, or does your site look on GC.com at different times of the day for each users request? The reason I'm asking is that I don't want to put a huge additional load on the GC.com servers which could happen depending on the way your service works. I had the same concern when I wrote this... so it doesn't matter if there's 10 people, or 10,000 signed up ... the same load is put on the GC.com servers... which is very little. Basicaly what I do is watch for new cache id's (not the waypoint id, but it's numeric equivilant that you usually see in the URL) to get used up, and then periodicaly check that ID to see if it got approved yet. If so, then I check to see if anybody signed up for the alert needs to be notified of that cache. Sometimes, the program doesn't notice a new cache is approved until several hours after the actual approval took place, so the alerts aren't exactly 'real time', but it's still a lot better than once a week. --------------------------------------- Cool, I didn't want to sign up for anything that would slow down an already loaded system. Thanks for the service and the info. I'll see how it works... "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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It doesn't matter, caches are referenced by their waypoint number. I've seen several caches with the same name. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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So how does this program work? Do you get a list of new caches and check to see if they are within the areas that users enter, or does your site look on GC.com at different times of the day for each users request? The reason I'm asking is that I don't want to put a huge additional load on the GC.com servers which could happen depending on the way your service works. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo
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4/5/2002 - 5/2/2002 = 35 finds June 2002 = 49 finds August 2002 = 52 finds March 2003 = 54 finds Looks like I better get busy for the year to year totals though, the highest was 279 between April 02 through March 03. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo