kallt_kaffe

How does one send a rather rude yet polite email?? Is there a certain technique one should follow?? Oh, I'll give you an example to work from... Dear Sir, thanks for taking the time to not help me at all. Your outstanding lack of expertise have greatly inspired me to try to solve the issue myself. Best Regards xxxxxxxx (the above is just an example and not what I sent)

I agree... It's not hard to hire some people send out replacement for broken units, that'll keep 90% of their customers satisfied. Try to email a technical question and the service may no so great anymore. I mailed a simple question to their support asking how I could see if my Nüvi 205 used WAAS/EGNOS or not. The reason for the question is that their swedish website claims that both the 205 and the 255 are WAAS/EGNOS-enabled. Their first answer was that I could not see it and that EGNOS was still under testing and that the signal propably was not strong enough. I answered and let them know that my eXplorist 100 often got an EGNOS lock and the recieption of the Nüvi is better than the eXplorist. I also linked to the swedish product page that claims that it is supported. The answer I now received was that that older Nüvis supported WAAS/EGNOS because they did not have HotFix. Since the 205 has hotfix it did not need WAAS/EGNOS. Now... you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that HotFix and WAAS/EGNOS does not have very much in common. In fact, their own FAQ describes both technologies so I found this answer offensive. Here's where I totally gave up on Garmin support and I sent them a rather rude, but polite, mail, quoting their own FAQ. They never answered my last mail and I did not expect them to either...

Buy a MicroSD card (or borrow one). Download a free map from here: http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/ or here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map...Garmin/Download

So many times I have thought that if my GPS had been using OpenSource software it would have done so much more. For example, take a Nüvi 2x5 hardware. - Rotate the screen 90 degrees. - Make zoom level for custom POIs configurable. - Add a compass screen. - Enable WAAS/EGNOS. - And why not throw in native paperless support reducing the need for GSAK macros? What do you have? A non waterproof Oregon 200 with limited batterylife for a third of the price. Or take a GPSMap Cx/CSx or a eTrex HC/HCx and add paperless geocaching support... Will Garmin do it? No, never as that would harm sales for their latest products. But if the firmware had been OpenSource it had been done long ago.

This was recently discussed here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=216411

If you get it on a preloaded microSD card it will not be locked to your specific GPS. However if you get it on DVD and install it to MapSource you can combine your CN maps with Topo maps into a single gmapsupp.img (up to 2Gb) and switch maps in the map setting menus. Both alterantives has it's pros and cons but personally I prefer being able to select what to store on my card and not needing to swap cards when going from CN to Topo maps.

With my Legend HCx using the 60CsxPOI macro I have loaded just above 17000 POIs. About 2500 of these are speed camera positions, the rest are geocaches. In the macro settings (advanced options) I have configured it to use abbreviations and Smartname. I've only choosed to include the hint and the status of the four last logs. The cachename itself will tell you difficulty, terrain, size and cache type. It's not as paperless as one would like but it includes the most important information. My poi.gpi is 1804kb. Custom POIs will however not show on the map unless zoomed in a lot, but that can be adjusted in the map settings. On "Map Setup - Points" I have changed "Map Points" from "Auto" to "1.2km". That did the trick. I guess that the Venture HC works just like a Legend HCx only with less memory.

I recently went that road. Teamed up my Nüvi 255 with an eTrex Legend HCx. The Nüvi is great for car navigation and for the paperless part (using the advanced Nuvi macro and spoilersync). No so good when it comes to battery life and in bad weather conditions. Still works better than expected for caching even though it lacks WAAS/EGNOS support. Have only done two caches so far with the Legend HCx but I like it so far. I can control it with one hand and muggles will hopefully think that I'm doing something with a mobile phone. Accurancy is better than the Nüvi and I don't have to be afraid to accidently drop it in the snow (of which we have plenty at the moment). Still, I'd love to replace them with an Oregon 300, if and only if, I would be 100% certain that it would do the job aswell or better. At the moment there seems to be issues with the Oregon. I'm following the beta firmware threads in this forums, hopeing that they will one day get it right.

You can store some information by customizing the GSAK export a bit. See my post here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p;#entry3857284 I'm pretty sure that will work for the Venture HC aswell. In fact, you may even have some luck with this GSAK macro: http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=8932 (The offical specs says it does not support custom POIs but the firmware changelog says that support has been added: http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3745)

I assume we're talking about cache descriptions as a jpeg? I know nothing about your phone but can it read html files? I would be surprised if GSAK could not export to html.

C = Color x = has support for memory card

Read this thread, then decide: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=214662 I went with a Legend HCx and saved some money.

Having found over 140 caches with Nüvi 205 I can confirm that the Nüvi is not as bad for caching as one may think. As long as you do "city caching" or at least not very far away from roads you'll propably be fine with the City Navigator maps. However the Nüvis do support Topo maps if you want to use it off road. I'm using the "Advanced Nuvi macro" found in these forums and I've made my own custom vehicle that is a bit more cachingfriendly than the ones provided by garmin that you can find here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=213782 The Nüvi is a good starter and it's alwasy nice to have a car navigation GPS when you decided to move forward towards a real terrain GPS. I've just bought an eTrex Legend HCx to team up with my Nüvi but I'll still bring my Nüvi for keeping cache descriptions and do car navigation. I've haven't looked at the specs for the Nüvi 360 but for the Nüvi 205 I miss the following: - A real compass screen (not to be confused with electronic compass which I do not feel a need for) - Waterproofness - Better battery life (have never run out of batteries on my trips so far though) - WAAS/EGNOS support for better precision (The Nüvi 2x5 seems to lack WAAS/EGNOS support)

Hey, I (almost) did that! I didn't have the dif1a and ter1a- I'll go switch that. I think that will make it easier to read! I have the %hint, but it is pretty short. Beats nothin' until I figure out the rest of this stuff. I'm sure I could just cache this way, but I'm seeing it as a personal challenge to learn how to do something more than just email on this computer. I really like the idea of paperless since I'm already drowning in paper and organization is an issue. Now I just need to figure out a way to flag a cache on the gps to alert me that looking atthe cache page is necessary. I may just have to do it by hand... Thanks again- I may just get there! This is the GSAK macro you are looking for: http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=8926

If you do not want to go the Macro and POI Loader route you can still get some useful information by using the "Send to GPS" feature in GSAK. In the dialog change the following: - Uncheck "Use defaults" - In "Waypoint name" enter: %smart=9(%dif1a/%ter1a/%con1) - Maximum characters should be at least 16 - In "Waypoint description format" enter: %hint The dif1a and ter1a means that 1=1 1.5=A 2=2 2.5=B and so on...

For custom POIs see this page: http://pilotsnipes.googlepages.com/ For just getting better names when exporting as "Favorites" from GSAK I use this naming: %Smart=9(%Dif/%Ter/%con1) and a maximum characters of 20. With the "W" version of the Nüvi you can propably increase the max characters to something like 25 and change %Smart=9 to %Smart=14.

Be careful - read this post before you upgrade http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...t&p=3846173 If this true, this firmware might render the Nuvi worthless for finding a cache "off road". Somewhere I read that Garmin's response was that the Nuvi is designed as a vehicle navigation device and not for off-road use. BS Edit: Here it is - http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...t&p=3826758 Looks like this is related to firmware v4.8 Let us know if off-road mode is still disabled in v5.0 I've done off-road caching with FW 4.8 in both my 205 and my 255 and there was no problem with off road caching. In fact with the 4.8 firmware I noticed that I get a straight line between my start position and my goal AND between my "vehicle" and my goal. As far as I can remember before the upgrade it only drew a line between starting position and goal. I'm not 100% certain it came with FW 4.80 or 4.60 but I'm pretty sure it wasn't there with the older firmwares. I just upgraded both units to 5.0 today and the option is still there. Haven't done any caching though but I do not think it has changed.

I've also tried their emailsupport and it was really bad. I got answers that showed that the person answering had no idea what he was talking about. After a few mails I felt that he was either trying to fool me with technical buzzwords or that he did not understand what he was talking about. Either way I felt offended by it and sent a pretty rude mail with quotes from their own online FAQ that clearly described HotFix and WAAS/EGNOS as two technologies that aren't very much related to each other. Newer got an answer to my last mail though.

Think of degrees as hours and it works exactly like time. 1 degree = 60 minutes So 60 degrees and 20.324 minutes are 60 + 20.324/60 = 60.33873 However, if your GPS support changing format it will be so much easier.

If it's just an issue of the laptop not having serial ports you only need to spend $5 on something like this: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5859 You'll propably end up getting something more modern anyway but it could be cool to keep the old one as a backup. Especially if you cache with your kids it's never a bad idea to have more than one GPS. And paperless is all about getting as much of the cache information into your GPS as possible, eleminating the need for printing out the cache descriptions.

Sans spoilers the two macros should be creating essentially the same set of files - check the sub-folders you may be loading more data than you think. j That's what is so strange. With your macro the poi file is even smaller (propably because of the 5 logs limit). My theory about the delay is that it is caused by separating the caches into different types. I got my GSAK sorted by distance from my home coordinates and with the pilotsnipes macro I assume that it will store the POIs in that order making it very quick to list the POIs, at least when I am near my home coordinates. (When testing I was about 30km from home). By storing the POIs by type it will need to go through a lot more of the POI file before making sure it has found enough nearby POIs to start showing them in the list. This is of course just my theory and the only way to prove it would be to hack your macro to not split the caches into different types. Or perhaps it may be enough just to make a filter that only has traditional caches. I may try that and get back to you. I have two Nüvis (a 205 and a 255 (same hardware but more flash in the 255)) and I did a test and only loaded traditional caches on each GPS using the pilotsnipes macro on one and your macro on the other. I ended up with just above 15000 POIs with both macros and it is just as quick to load caches on both GPS:es. I'm going to do another try using your macro. This time including all cache types but using a distance limiter to get the same or less POIs than in the previous tests. I'll post the results when it's done. If my theory is right then the delay will be back. EDIT: Yep, with just under 15000 POIs this time and a POI file size of just under 30Mb the delay is back. Problem solved. If I keep my speedcamera .csv files in C:\GSAK\POI_Loader I will get a large delay when trying to list caches. However, if I move the speedcamera files to C:\GSAK\POI_Loader\GC (GC is the name of my GSAK database) then the delay is gone and it starts listing the caches as quick as the pilotsnipes macro.

I totally agree. Got a 205 and a 255 myself (not the Wide versions though but as I use it for caching I prefer it to be small and easy to hide). The "T" versions of these models comes with a different car charging cable that has a TMC reciever on the cable if you need/want traffic information. And yes, they are totally awesome for storing cache information if used with the proper GSAK macro.

While the Oregon being the only terrain GPS with a touchscreen (not counting the crossover Nüvi 500) I still would stay away for it for now. While many are perfectly happy with it there are several people (in these forums) which have compared the Oregon with Gpsmap 60csx and 76csx and the Oregon seems to have serious problems getting their accurancy up to par with the "old" generation. I'd love an Oregon myself if I'd knew it be as precise as the 60CSx. Asfaik you can just get an USB cable for your eXplorist 210 (search on eBay) and transfer waypoints to it using GSAK. You can do the same for most (if not all) Garmins aswell. The newer ones usually (or always?) use standard mini-USB connections which is nice. The Oregon and the Colorado offers paperless geocaching out-of-the-box. I believe the crossover device, Nüvi 500, do the same but I may be wrong. The Garmin Legend HCx/Vista HCx and at least the GPSmap 60/76/Cx/CSx devices can filled with geocache description with the proper GSAK macro. It's will not provide as good paperless geocaching as the Colorado and Oregon but it's better than just having the coordinates. GPSmap 60/76/Cx/CSx may be the best choice at the moment or a Legend HCx or Vista HCx which more or less does the same as the GPSMap series and some claim that they are as accurate. I don't know much about the Colorado and how it compares to the "old" generation. It may be a good option too.

Are you using one of the Nüvi macros to load it with cache descriptions?Yes, jjreds macro (http://jjreds01.googlepages.com/download) works perfectly with the zumo Sorry for being a bit offtopic here but does the Zumo use the same vehicle format as the Nüvi? Caching with the Nüvi using the map screen can be a bit frustrating as all the vehicles covers to much (in my opinion) of the map and none of them have clear centerpoint. I've solved this by making my own custom vehicle which can be found here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=213782 If the Zumo suffers from the same lack of geocachingfriendly vehicles then you may want to give it a try. Asfaik no one has tried it on a Zumo yet but it has been succesfully used on several Nüvi models.

Are you using one of the Nüvi macros to load it with cache descriptions?