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John E Cache

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Everything posted by John E Cache

  1. I recently bought a ca-42 USB to serial cable on EBay for $10. It came with a USB driver CD. You can get ca-42 cables for $3. I would cut the 9 pin dsub connector off your Etrex cable and solder the ca-42 tx, rx and ground wires to the tx, rx and ground wires on the Etrex cable.
  2. Have you tried "export" in Google Earth? GE comes bundled with GPSBabel.
  3. I tried to google and ended up just adding my favorite GPS shopping keyword "semsons". I liked the GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr Mini Data Logger / USB GPS Receiver best. SIDE NOTE: I searched a long time ago for a GPS after I bought a camera with socket for a GPS. The optional GPS for the camera was way too expensive when compared to my stand alone GPS. I may start considering a GPS logger, now since I never found one for my camera.
  4. It seems to me that if you add more satellites to pick from, you have a better chance of finding a better fix than with fewer satellites. I have a new GPS and GLONASS cell phone and fix quality is still random and seems better with GLONASS turned on.
  5. Have you considered an unlocked gsm phone and prepaid Sims, yet? If not, maybe you could find a phone with a GPS.
  6. Put aside errors caused by operator errors like zig zag walking and picture the GPS on fixed spot on a moving train. My view is that there will be points on both sides of the tracks because of random GPS position errors that happen on all GPSs that publish position errors.
  7. Maybe you should think in terms of multiple tags because they are cheaper than a phone. Off the top of my head, scatter a bunch of x and o tags that people would take to a tic tac toe (naughts and crosses) game cache/person. Something where game progress determined what tag type you want would be fun.
  8. I'm sure kids think I am ancient,. All joking aside, I do really believe the GPS needs the time of day clock for longitude calculation. PS I forgot a third source of info that I found searching for OCR software. fuzzylogic
  9. Huh? Ancient sailors thought they were sailing on a flat surface and were worried about what happened when they came to the edge. Except for those who noticed that the ships masts appeared before hulls, and they wouldn't have known how to calculate the circumference unless they read Eratosthenes. (Too bad modern Greek politicians didn't learn how to do the math.) lol My thoughts here come from two places. The ' " key on my scientific calculator that Sharp calls the sexagesimal key and a book I bought off the sale table. http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780802715296-8 I haven't filled in the blanks, yet, because the book is still on my coffee table unread.
  10. It is more a random thought than a point. fuzzylogic says the thought is wrong. :-) Another thought. Both time and longitude are commonly expressed as hexagessimal numbers. I wonder if the ancient sailors knew they were using base sixty math to compute longitude? Number systems seem like a modern computer thing, to me.
  11. ...plus an accurate time of day for longitude(just like sailors since the the invention of accurate portable clocks). Nope. That is incorrect. The GPS satellites need accurate time, but the GPS receiver does not need any time information apart from that provided by the satellites. The geometry gives you a point on a spinning globe. How do you get the longitude if you don't know angle the globe is on its axis(commonly referred to as time of day)? Can you compute the time of day with a GPS clock?
  12. ...plus an accurate time of day for longitude(just like sailors since the the invention of accurate portable clocks).
  13. I think the GPS thinks you driving in a car. On the 60csx this happened when you set "snap to road".
  14. I have used my Garmin 60csx a lot for kayaking because I was able to find free maps with water features. That being said, I'm sure you know that you need a good water proof map and a compass for back up. I did the BWCA before GPSs. Have you considered a solar charger and rechargeable batteries? There ain't no stores up there. I wish could go back there with a GPS sometime. Have fun.
  15. Thanks for the ABS info. The only time the ABS has been used on my Mini is when one wheel acts up just enough to trigger low tire indicator. Sounds like you done good with the Forester. I almost bought a Forester once. I went with a big Ford van for my windsurfers.
  16. Considering the accident, do all the cars in the spreadsheet come with automatic breaking systems ABS. I grew up a flat lander in MN and thought I was a good snow driver until I moved out here. I slid down the road up to Saddle Mountain backwards. I'm wondering if ABS's help on the steep roads around here.
  17. I am curious how you know it is off by more than 20 feet. I see GIS in your sig. Do use GIS to determine accuracy?
  18. A few of my non-geocache friends do Dog Mountain(pun intended) every spring for the spring flowers and to start to get in shape for summer hikes. Not sure about caches though. A rite of spring for them, I guess.
  19. I predicted people would complain about the compass if they fixed the "sticky" problem in an earlier post. I didn't think it would be so soon. Maybe a picture would help. I searched for scatter plot and found one on this site. The green shows the positions that an accurate GPS reports when you leave it in one spot for 6 hours. The circle has a 10 meter radius. Lets say the cache is a few meters west and in the green section. The GPS will report your position all around the cache even though you actually in the center of the circle. The magnetic compass will have bearings of 0 and 359 and all bearings in between. Calibrating the compass or changing batteries will have no effect. If the GPS was completely sticky there would only be one point and no cloud and a steady compass.
  20. Those were some very scary pictures. I have an old Mini Cooper and last week I was drooling over the new all wheel drive Countryman All4. http://www.caranddri...-take-road-test
  21. My point is that microprocessor feature size doesn't shrink because Gordon Moore said they should, as your original post implied. Technology moves forward allowing for the features to shrink in size, and Moore's observation of this progression is what became "Moore's Law." I give up. We are talking different languages. I don't know what your definition of "feature" is. I am very uncomfortable talking about my previous life at Intel. When you said "It has nothing to do with..." and went off on long rants you implied I was ignorant. Moore's engineering based prediction was used as part of high level planning. I lived Moore's Law and should not have mentioned it, I guess.
  22. I guess I don't see your point. In my world the shrink meant less distance for signals to travel and smaller capacitance CMOS transistors that had shorter propagation delays. I admit I was looking at the leaf level instead of looking at the forest. The point I was trying to make is the GPSs don't advance like computers because they are fast enough to keep up with the unchanging satellite technology.
  23. "Moore's Law" was an observation made 30 years ago, and doesn't hold entirely true. It has nothing to do with the actual size of components; advancements in technology lead to the miniaturization of components, the resulting advancements in computing power leading to Moore's observation. I have no idea what you are saying and I worked as a designer in Intel's Logic Technology Division for many years. LTD did the shrinks to smaller geometry.. The smaller geometries were always faster. Moore predicted the shrink rate that was used to determine the geometry size of a next shrink. I guess I am a little biased when I say that Moore's prediction made computers become obsolete.
  24. Computers become obsolete because of Moore's Law where transistors get smaller and faster. GPSs work fine with older larger transistors. I think I would consider upgrading a GPS to get new features like GLONASS sats. My new Samsung Galaxy Note phone works great with GLONASS and GPS satellites. 20 visible sats most times.
  25. 50 meters? I was was talking about something entirely different. Sorry about that. Sounds like the tech was annoyed with a similar known limitation like me. Did you specifically mention the 50 meters?
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