robertlipe

It's probably my fault, but the dates in the subject were whack. I think I've fixed them, but I'm highly medicated with a lot on my mind. If they're still wrong, another mod can help or I'll fix it upon my return. For posterity (and search...) the subject was "Oregon 7x0 Firmware 3.62 BETA Available 201701730. Released 201711207."

Removing the preloaded caches and then just setting your PQ to NOT include your own caches when it's generated is the general prescription. When I last spoke with Garmin engineering on this topic, the same geocache in multiple files, or even more than once in the same file, it was explicitly called out as undefined behaviour. After all, if the same GC# in three different files is active, archived, and temp disabled, what should it show? You can make up complicated assumptions about which file was read last or whether the reader should check time stamp or the generation time, but the last discussion I had was pretty clear that nothing that crazy was being attempted. If you have the same - especially conflicting data - in multiple files, whether GGZ or GPX, you're going to have a bad time. But this is getting OT for a bump for a two year old post.

As a mod (that also runs resources where I rely on community support) I have to walk a careful line, I'll admit to typing and then discarding a request/warning that it'd have been more tasteful IMHO, to include some amount of the text of the problem and direct links to the discussion. In the future, please include a more self contained post. Sites like GPSrchive are a tradition of GPS - indeed, most tech topics - but try a more balanced approach that compromises page views and a flow of information. Garmin 6x0 users upgrading to 5.20 should see the gpsrchive forum discussion and bugreport#80 about garbled background images. HHL, Atlas Cached - like you - is a long time member here with a long history of helping others. Please be nice.

The "0,0" coordinate off the shore of Guinea is so depressingly common in GIS that it has a name: Null Island. The is actually weather buoy at this location but there isn't land. It's become a running joke with those of us that have to deal with GPSes that write "0,0" and a "coordinates are valid" flag that goes through software that ignores the flag and then (stupidly) just uses the 0,0. Devotees of Nil have created http://www.nullisland.com/ and https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/null-island-is-one-of-the-most-visited-places-on-earth-too-bad-it-doesnt-exist

From your recent round of questions, you seem to looking for something beyond a typical geocaching GPS. If you're looking for the ability to log a bazillion points at a second aparts (or even sub-second) you probably want to explore the niche of GPS data loggers. Various members of that family have mechanical sensors to know if you're moving (lower power than GPS itself, using vibration), the ability to write to huge SD cards in a more compact format than GPX, and so on, you're looking for GPS Loggers. My first stop when researching members in this family is http://www.semsons.com/datalogger.html . They've been helpful with nerdy questions developing GPSBabel. Logging the performance of a race car or litter in a park or movement of a shipping container have different GPS needs than geocaching. This tidbit may not be what you're looking for. The 60Cx models - which are a 2006 rev of a 2004 product, which is eternity in tech - handles mass storage and GPX pretty funky in a "bolted on" kind of way. They were amongst Garmin's first receivers to do either GPX or Mass storage at all - and they didn't do it at launch. It looks like an afterthought in those models because it was.

> What's the purpose of the Foretrex series? Traditionally, Foretrex has targeted outdoor sports where size and battery life are key. They target hunters, campers, hikers, runners and cyclists (with the latter two moved more to Forerunner). As a geocacher, you'd probably trade a big color screen with cache info vs. a week of track logs from a single charge. Garmin (as the market leader) can afford to divide the market into many niches with specialized hardware. Re: the Amazon reviews, this won't help you in the field, but once you get back to a Real Computer, GPSBabel's track filter can "fix" those tracks if they really are stored that way and not just displayed that way. (Which seems dumb, but I really do think that an artifact of that "conquer ALL THE NICHES" strategy, they start over from scratch way more than they should and forget the lessons of the market every few years...) As for the original question, most of Garmin's recent devices have used MediaTek GPS receivers and several of their chips have had support for Galelio, Glonass, and others for some time. https://labs.mediatek.com/en/chipset/overview#Location Intelligence. Of course, even once the chips support it, it takes a while to make it into Garmin's products and then into the firmware. As to the meta question on whether that'd make a noticeable difference in your geocaching experience: probably not.

Moderator note: Please use good subject lines to better attract the attention of appropriate experts from the overview screen. Thanx!

Not to pick nits (especially with an esteemed contributor to so many) but in the name of not letting a typo become folklore, it's surely "Universal Time Coordinated" (abbreviated "UTC") that's in play, not UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator, a coordinate system - it's a common thing to type) that's in play here. As to the meta point about order being retained, the site has generally not knocked itself out to preserve logging order, time of uploads, time marked within an updload, or related data. There are all kinds of odd corner cases (including inflated mileage if you're trying to compute miles of travel in a day based on log order) that the site just really doesn't focus on. Once you start mixing software across sources (e.g. logging and/or viewing across the web site vs. multiple apps) you'll find even more room for wiggle room. If you log in multiple apps per day and you then upload finds on different days, you may observe differences in time zones, sort stability, log order. vs proximity order, and other zany things. If you actually care about miles traveled, keeping the logs from your unit would be most helpful action you could take. Then you'd have your actual time near every cache. Hint: remember to filter out DNFs and caches you drive by at high speed.

Remember, the "drunken bee dance" is a problem for geocachers - that was created for marine use, which seems to be Loren's case. The famed Magellan "overshoot" was compensation for moving inertia. A boat has more inertia and less nimbility than a human walking in the woods. In terms of accuracy and sensitivity, most marine models are on external antennas with a clear view of the sky and distances of dozens of meters tend to matter little. While the new units DO have better sensitivity and the increased mobile constellation can lead to better precision, upgraded maps/marine charts would be the better reason to upgrade from an "old" unit...duly recognizing that shore lines and marine hazards change relatively slowly, while fuel and food options do. Magellan has all but abandoned GPS completely and their marine chartplotters in particular have been dead for a long time. If you're happy with what you have, you're going to have to look away from Magellan anyway. Good luck and enjoy yours while it lasts.

Sorry to be a buzzkill, but I'm with Mineral2 on this one. eMap was never a terribly popular device and Legend/Vista-class devices replaced them right at the turn of the century. Frankly, any investigation beyond checking battery terminals for corrosion and maybe - maybe - cracking the unit open for corrosion between the PCB and case is likely to be effort thrown down the hole. Tens of dollars will get you a better mapping, outdoor - or both - used unit these days. The battery, mapping, cable situation on that unit just makes it a labor of love and not frugality to even chase. The problem described in the article below wouldn't be your issue, because you're on batteries, right?

There's a learning opportunity here (beyond the easy hook) so thanx for at least thinking it through. There's an "obvious" problem with the "take the median of the four corners to find the 'center' of the perimeter" approach. What is the problem? If you don't know, think it through. Share your thoughts knowing that there's a moderator that's asked you and that'll have your back for people being mean. If you know - helpful, coaching answers only please (and only in encouraging response to others that are standing on their tip toes to stretch and grow) If you're a flat earther, please don't participate. It's also a good reminder of several things wrong with virtual caches. Those are explicitly outside the charter of this group, so please refrain from that discussion.

I could have worded it better. Groundspeak's GPX writer often leaves the optional whitespace out of the XML tags. GPSBabel's GPX writer values human readibility, so converting a GPX file that's all on one line with no space - which is valid - to a GPX file will add whitespace to improve readability. Likewise for KML or many other XML-based formats: using GPSBabel to "convert" a format to itself will make the file easier to read and edit because it will add whitespace and line breaks when it can.

The PQ form doesn't go much out of its way to protect you from "attractive nuisances"; you should always preview - sorting by the params in question - the PQ before submitting, and certainly before shipping to the device and departing for a trip. If you want to submit a query with things that are "obviously" mutually exclusive like "have found" AND "haven't found" (guaranteed to result in the null set) or "is enabled" AND "is disabled", it'll happily run you an empty PQ. These should be radio buttons (mutually exclusive - you can't listen to more than one at once) instead of checkboxes and I imagine the dumb form is a result of a form generated by (dumb) code instead of a human listening to a UX designer. IMO, that page needs some serious love from a combination of UX, UI, and dev teams as it's been a frustration for many over the years it's been basically unchanged. The PQ interface has a lot of sharp edges in it. Combine that with Garmins accepting multiple PQs in different directories with different names - including when Macs "delete" files by copying them into a hidden file that Garmins don't recognize as "deleted" and it's all too easy to get caches on the device that you can't explain. Always remember that PQs are glorified text files and you can bring them up in your favorite text editor, search for them, run find/grep whatever on them. GPSBabel will convert a GPX to a GPX, but make it more human readable by adding indented whitespace.

See the very similar discussion below. The original Vista is as terrible in this regard as the iroginal Etrex. The newer models are night and day and buying behind the curve can be a bad move over time. This forum is chock full of "what should I buy" posts, so please do skim them for the previous advice. See also:

This seems unrepresented in the place to report site issues, https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/forum/139-website/ If you are affected and can make a concise summary of the issue, perhaps linking ack to this thread or specific posts, please start a thread there. (I could move this thread, but IMO it's better to cut to the "here's what used to work and now doesn't" page and skip the exploratory "hey what's going on?" phase of this discussion. An escalation with Garmin is in order as that seems to be the new piece of this equation. (And, bluntly, you've given them more money. ;-) ) It seems unlikely there is any new code in the Groundspeak API specific for these devices. It may be that Garmin's code is driving things in a different way and triggering weirdness but I'd amplify with the pressure on Garmin.

...which exactly the ambiguity caused by being imprecise with the model name. For an eTrex or eTrex H, actual geocaching info isn't stored in the GPS. The coords and the cache name are about all it'll hold - you can print the reset or copy and paste it to a Google Doc on your phone or whatever, but it won't go in the GPS. On "eTrex with a number", while the unit will do hint, description, logs, etc. you need a premium membership here to get the data to put into the GPS. Which generation of eTrex in play is pretty important to the direction the question goes.

Thanx for the helpful post, Mineral2. This advice seems spot-on. The cable is a commodity USB mini B. These were extremely common on phones 5 years ago, but most phones (indeed, most accessories) have moved to the Micro B which is thinner. Non-obviously, they're popular in phones because they're LESS durable. If you trip over the cable, you WANT the $3 cable to break away instead of tearing the socket loose inside your $600 phone. They're still easy enough to find and whether that's Amazon Basics, Monoprice, Deal Extreme or a hand-me-down, the cable will probably work as well as the Garmin-branded one. (Cables do break and they're not all built to the same quality.) When connected to the computer, it'll power through that connection. Personally, I'm not a believer in the "T" models. SD cards don't cost much at all and you can get better free (legal) Topo maps so easily these days, they're just not worth it. $70 for extra 4GB vs. a $12 32GB card and a few minutes downloading maps is easy IF you're willing to invest the time to do it. If you want to never touch the maps and pay for that convenience, go for it. NIMH batteries are the way to go these days. Garmin's own is ridiculously priced. It's "magic" is that the pair comes in a little clippy thing that pushes down a button in the compartment that allows them to be charged from the USB connection. If it spends a lot of its life in a car or on a computer, that's handy. For me, the convenience of carrying a set of spares and a fast charger when traveling dwarfs in-device charging. (This paragraph also contains enough hints to make your own if you're into that kind of thing.) For driving, a dedicated PND is a far more likeable solution with the large, bright touch screen and spoken turn-by-turn directions. "Take the second right in the roundabout." vs "beep beep". External antennas really only make sense these days if you're using it in, say, the hull of a boat or in a car with metallic window tint. Reception is so good on modern days that the days of wearing an antenna on your hat while hiking to get it two feet higher for a better signal are (fortunately) over.

[ Moderator note: please be polite and helpful to each other. ] There's a bit of unnecessary hyperbole here, perhaps caused by imprecise terminology due to Garmin's confusing naming scheme. Garmin eTrex 10, the subject of this thread, is about 6 years old. (2011-05), Geocaching-aware, has a USB mini-B, shows up as a mass storage device, you copy GPX files to it. It's a reasonable, albeit low-end, device. I'd be surprised if any software that supported the post-Colorado era devices didn't support these. (GPSBabel has no special code for it; it Just Works with our GPX writer.) The original eTrex hails from 2000. It has a serial port and thus needs a USB-serial adapter and all the pain that goes with that to attach to any modern computer. You certainly can geocache with it, but you're going to suffer. If you already have the cables and adapters and such, you can use GPSBabel or EasyGPS to get PQs or even .loc files to it, just like you've been able to do since the early 2000's. Honestly, if you've not already made that investment, it's hard to recommend doing so. Between these two points (2007) was the eTrex H, which was a respin of the original. It's basically the same primitive design, terrible screen, serial port, etc. but it has a better receiver chip that doesn't lose a signal if you're in tall grass. I'm guessing this product existed only because there were so many schools and books using the original and they ran into parts availability problems that they went to a maintaining engineer and said "change as little as possible, but replace the GPS chip (that we can probably no longer get)". As for being" legacy, a mid-life booster ten years ago to a 17 year old design can distort our views, but in tech, these are quite old devices. They can be made to work in today's ecosystem, but you're going to pay with your time and frustration. They're not quite an Okidata 200 or an Epson FX-80 from Mineral's posts, but some of the issues to conquer are similar. My general guideline is "etrex followed by a number is viable. If it has a serial port, cut your losses".

The "caches along a route" also makes caching road trips much more practical beyond simple radius queries. I'll be somewhat more firm than the (correct and polite) above responses. Your request is impractical and the site intentionally makes it impractical. Freshness matters in cache listings and you really don't want to try to manually build a mirror of the site. With a single premium membership, you can have 70,000 cache entries and nothing will be more than a week old. 70,000 finds in a week will make you a geocaching legend. If you focus on what you will realistically hunt in a week, it's really not an onerous restriction. In high density areas, a thousand can be a drag, but being able to run ten PQs each day, each returning a thousand caches means that with even a little bit of planning, you can always be within a week of any realistic ground you may cover. Most of us don't cache on multiple continents with no notice, for example. Please state your actual goal in a more realistic form ("I'm a business traveler and cover a large area in a three state region" or "I'm a truck driver that covers I-40 end-to-end several times a month" or whatever and you'll get better advice on how to reach it. "I want to build a mirror of the site and carry it with me at all times" isn't going to get you a better answer than "Buy 43 (and growing) premium memberships and get creative and efficient managing PQs" Also, while Garmin claims "unlimited" in a ggz file, I would not be at all surprised to see their firmware have serious usability problems when faced with millions. Even with "mere" thousands, searches and map draw times at distant zooms take a hit.

Moderator note: I'm approving this as your first time post, but please edit your question or add a clarifying post because I don't think a "ledge dress" is a common GPS term. Please include the exact model (full name, including any letters after numbers) to help the crowd help you.

Liability. Lots of camera vendors do the same thing. It's common when a designer wants to allow charging batteries in the device, but still offer compatibility with common AA's The plastic clips push a button that tells the device it's safe to charge the battery while it's in the unit because it "knows" that there are NiMH cells in the socket. Without this safety interlock, the device could charge any AA. If those AA's were Eneloop or your other favorite NiMH, that would actually be just fine. If it happens to be an alkaline or Carbon-zinc or Zinc Chloride ("Heavy Duty") there's an increased chance of the battery leaking in the device or even swelling or igniting. Customers that know their $30 battery is $6 worth of Eneloops in a nickel clip whose job is to push the button tend to be annoyed. Customers with devices damaged by leaking battery acid or fires - even small ones - tend to be beyond annoyed and sometimes litigious. So it's the best of both worlds for the consumer - they didn't go totally crazy with a proprietary battery pack and you can still use a battery you picked up at a gas station along the way. There's no Garmin secret-sauce in the battery; you can get or make a similar performing battery pack in a number of ways.

I don't think that'll work. I don't believe the Garmins will read a loc. They need a real GPX file. As Great Scott said, you'll need to convert them. GPSBabel will do that, but it can't make up data like difficulty, terrain, hint, container size, etc. that's not in the original. For example, gpsbabel converting a .loc to a .gpx will result in something like: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <gpx version="1.0" creator="GPSBabel - [url="http://www.gpsbabel.org"]http://www.gpsbabel.org"[/url] xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0"> <time>2017-07-02T16:44:57.830Z</time> <bounds minlat="35.972033333" minlon="-87.134700000" maxlat="36.112183333" maxlon="-86.620116667"/> <wpt lat="35.972033333" lon="-87.134700000"> <ele>0.000000</ele> <name>GCEBB</name> <cmt>Mountain Bike Heaven by susy1313</cmt> <desc>Mountain Bike Heaven by susy1313</desc> <url>http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=3771</url> <urlname>Cache Details</urlname> <sym>geocache</sym> </wpt> Observe that it's a pretty mechanical translation of what's in the .loc <?xml version="1.0"?><loc version="1.0" src="EasyGPS"> <waypoint> <name id="GCEBB"><![CDATA[Mountain Bike Heaven by susy1313]]></name> <coord lat="35.972033" lon="-87.134700"/> <type>geocache</type> <link text ="Cache Details">http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=3771</link> </waypoint> Not everthing that GPSBabel does is terribly hard. :-) Even that may not be enough information to trigger "geocaching mode" on the unit, but it at least should show up as a named waypoint.

Thank you, Overland1, Red90, Atlas Cached, and others in this thread for quality, helpful info. The posts here are spot-on. At Garmin MSRP, 20% off trade-in may still be more than other vendors for all but the latest models. I second the advice to spend less than the cost of the "t" on large-ish memory cards and using free, legal maps like http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download and https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ If you're carrying a better camera anyway (pretty easy to do, though the IPX7 rating is a step up from your DSLR or even point-n-shoot) the "50" upgrade is hard to justify, too. the $120-ish price bump will buy nice memory cards. It's an older model, but the Oregon 600s are being closed out for $195. It doesn't have the built-in cell radio for "live updates" like the Oregon 700, but that's not worth $200 to me personally. That, or the other features new to the 700, may be worth it to you and, if you're buying it for years of service, it'll fall off the "we don't fix those any more" list later. I'll admit I've gotten off the wagon of chasing the newest Garmins. As you can see in the "known issues" section of the FAQs cited above, it's not like the newest models are actually bug-free - ever. The older models have longer lists because they've seen more use and some of the red issues just haven't been confirmed in later builds. My 600 has some of the same issues that my 450 did which had some of the same issues as my Colorado. I've just learned to live with the relatively low quality firmware and pull batteries and live with the spontaneous resets I've had in all of them since my 60CSx. As for how old the 76Csx is, remember that was a 2006 remake of a 2004 product. (They were upgrades of the original 76C/76Cx to add the SirfStar III - and later MediaTek - receiver and SD cards, plus firmware changes to support the memory cards, though they were always pretty clearly a sidecard.) Twelve years is a long time in tech. The multi-touch, high-res screen and smooth scrolling maps will be night and day from your current one, even though those older X models remain the workhorses for search and rescue and a few other niches.

[ moderator note ] Subject changed to better attract the kind of experience you're seeking. Please take the time to pick a good subject line to help the crowd help you. Include details like what operating system you use, etc.

Moderator here. This thread is pretty nonsensical. It's OK if English isn't your primary language, but most of the helpful people here are English speakers. Stringing together nonsensical English words does not help them help you. Asking about a model you don't have and then arguing with the helpful answers you were given is not productive. Please be respectful of the time and accumulated knowledge of the people trying to help you by asking coherent questions. Device names and numbers matter. Etrex is a less performant product line than Dakota. They're less expensive for a reason. Etrex 30 apparently had some firmware issues with the compass early in its life. See https://forums.garmin.com/archive/index.php/t-30468.html for example. Referencing five year old videos without firmware versions or context isn't that helpful. Please try to ask more focused and coherent questions that reflect your actual experience of unmet expectations.