EarlyMorningHours

A very nice upgrade indeed. This is really turning out to be quite a nice program! The forecast calls for a rainfree Saturday in Buffalo, NY so I'll give it a good field workout then.

I've been using GPS Tuner since V1.0. What I have noticed in V1.3 is that it will read .LOC files properly. The .LOC file I tried was generated from a .GPX file using GPS Babel. I've been terribly busy at work lately so I still haven't had a chance to see if the .LOC file generated by GPS Tuner is now proper. Previously it was a carraige return seperated file. Lastly, I tried using GPS Tuner V1.1 to assist in finding a cache and it was pretty much useless. I haven't tested V1.3 to see if any improvements have been made to the algorythm for seeking out caches. Overall the program seems to show some potential.

JamesJM, I store my GPX file on my SD card and GPXSonar finds is automatically. I created a folder called "My Documents" on the SD card and put it in there.

I knew I should have looked into this further before mentioning anything... The LOC file that GPS Tuner generates does not appear to be in the same format as a LOC file you get from Geocaching.com. It looks like a plain text file where the fields are CR seperated. Still trying to determine if I can store multiple waypoints per file. So little time, so much to do.

Geo, Charlene and I went out on a six cache hunt today and I was eager to see how GPXSonar would work in the field. I am happy to report that it simply rocks. I'm now able switch between GPXSonar, the PIE page for the cache (which GPXSonar generates), and Mapopolis. You could say I'm in Geocache heaven. As a side note I would like to thank crashmore for informing me about the GPX to maplet conversion utility. Its really a godsend for the Mapopolis user. I now have over 400 caches within 100 miles tucked away right in the application. I don't know if you have had the opportunity to try out the GPS Tuner application I was telling you about, but it has a feature where you can more accurately hunt down a cache's coordinates using averaging (is this considered cheating?). Of coarse this would also assume the cache owner had some pretty accurate coordinates posted on the cache's listing. One nice feature for GPXSonar would be to export a LOC file for the selected cache. You could then pop right over to GPS Tuner and do your thing. As far as performance goes, my GPX file has 482 entries in it and I have to say that I am pretty satisfied with how responsive GPXSonar is. The initial file read can take a little while, but once thats done it seems to fly along just fine. I'm using an iPAQ 3975 upgraded to PPC 2003 with a CoPilot bluetooth GPS.

Geo, Thanks for the reply and the link to this thread. I *really* like just copying my gpx file over instead of the whole conversion process with GPX spinner. This program has already won me over. I am curious as to how much and how far you want GPXSonar to go. Do you plan on having the app converse with GPS units (like for the averaging function we had discussed)? My feature request would be to have exporting of caches to the format Mapopolis uses. As far as I can tell GPS Babel does not support Mapopolis. Just want to say congrats for a job well done and I hope you do continue development. One more thing.. I think this is the first PPC app I've used that utilizes the .NET CF.

I bought a CoPilot Bluetooth GPS from Mobile Planet for $199 (no software). I use it with my IPAQ 3975 and couldn't be happier. I've experimented with MS S&T 2004 and have deemed it a waste of time. For geocaching, Mapopolis seems the best to me. Also have iGuidance loaded. My usual setup is a RhinoSkin aluminum case that has a quick release holster. Most of the time, the GPS picks up just fine while its in my pocket. I can get over six hours on a charge out of the GPS and about 4 hours on the iPAQ. Overall I couldn't happier with how this works. One more thing, I discovered a program called GPS Tuner that lets you do averaging on the PPC which really increases your accuracy dramatically. You can find it at either Handango or PocketGear.