ejnewman
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Posts posted by ejnewman
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Added feature to help sell to people who are attracted to shiny things?
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Basically, using Mobipocket is like flipping through a copy of your paper printouts on a handheld device, except you aren't allowed to write on them. Cachemate is more like having access to the geocaching.com website on your handheld because you can browse a list of cache titles, see all or part of the record (hints, descriptions, logs, etc.) for each one, add notes, mark them as "found", etc.
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The barometric altitude will only be accurate if the weather hasn't changed appreciably since the last time you calibrated it. Also, you can measure change in altitude over a short amount of time without calibrating the barometer. The altitude number it says will be wrong, but it should still be able to tell you that you are 50 feet higher than you were last time you checked.
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Take a look at one of the threads on making your own 24k topo maps. You won't be able to add all the details that a real map would have, but you can have topography (often more detailed than the 24k maps) and rivers/streams.
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My Vista CX has a list of all the maps on the device, with checkboxes that you can use to turn any combination of them on or off. This is handy for having my own homebrew topo maps showing at the same time as the garmin city maps.
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In Mapsource, just select the parts you want on one map, switch to the other map, select the parts you want there, then do the transfer. It remembers what is selected when you switch maps and then will transfer the parts you want from both maps in one shot.
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You can download shapefiles of county boundaries here:
http://nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html?ope...pbound#chpbound
You should be able to use mapedit and cgpsmapper to turn them into a map you can use on a gpsr, just like you can the homegrown topo maps.
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A local funeral home could probably probably put you in touch with the owner of the cemetary as well.
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The dem2topo step is pretty processor-intensive. Maybe try doing a smaller area first?
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There are a number of containers that may stay dry if everything works out. Ammo boxes are one.
Don't forget that an underwater cache has to not float as well. I don't know if a typical ammo box is heavy enough to sink on its own (I doubt it unless you put some heavy things inside), but you don't want to hike all the way out to place your underwater cache only to find out that it isn't heavy enough to stay on the bottom of the lake.
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You people are driving up the prices for used handhelds on ebay.
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I don't remember if that was the same error I got, but I think all I did was start over following all the steps again and the second time through I didn't get the error. I don't know what I did wrong the first time.
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Under the view menu you can force it to show what is in each level.
I think I remember getting that error, but I don't remember how I fixed it.
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If it has an integrated battery, then you should almost never have to remove the battery, only to replace it if it ever gets to the point that it won't recharge any more.
As far as backups go, most of these devices should work so that syncing it with your PC backs up your data. Theoretically, you could clear the memory then plug it back into the PC and it will end up in exactly the condition it was before the memory wipe. YMMV.
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Any problem with the micro-SD cards will be with the Garmin firmare not recognizing whatever the newest and largest card size is. It sounds like people have used 1 GB cards successfully so you should be fine using those or anything smaller. If card manufacturers come out with something larger then you might have to wait for a Garmin update for it to work, or it might work just fine.
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Ask lots of questions to the seller. "Does it lose ALL information when changing the batteries?"
I always assume that popping the batteries out of something with no external storage will wipe the memory. You shouldn't be storing the only copy of your geocaching database on a portable device anyway.
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It doesn't email you the file, it sends you an email when the file is ready. The link to download the file is in the email. Sometimes it takes several hours. Make sure you put the right email into the website and check your mail spam folder to make sure it didn't accidently get flagged as spam.
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How about you do your own homework? You'll learn more that way.
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I just received some paper maps from the USGS and the date on them is 1968 with a photorevision on 1985. I don't know how often the USGS updates the map data but I would hope that they realize that a lot of surface features changes have occurred since 1968.
Unfortunately, updates cost money and the USGS isn't exactly rolling in dough.
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What is very important is something which tells me where north is when I am standing still,
If you only need to know it precisely enough to be able to point your finger north then an electronic compass should be more than adequate. I don't know whether I would rely on it to guide me on an accurate heading over a long distance though.
Also keep in mind that you will go through batteries faster with an electronic compass turned on. -
Depending on the age of the students, a geometry lesson involving a compass and a protractor and map for orienteering would be far more helpful than anything you might do with a gps.
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For an altimeter, the elevation that comes only from GPS will be no more accurate that the GPS can be, and usually less accurate than the horizontal position. The elevation that comes from an internal barometric altimeter will be only as accurate as its calibration. To calibrate it you need to be standing somewhere where you know the elevation, but keep in mind that the calibration is only good until the air pressure changes on its own for any reason (like any time the weather changes a little bit).
If you really need to know your elevation accureatly a good topo map used along with the GPSr will be more reliable than the GPSr by itself, with or without barometric altimeter.
I don't know how accurate a built-in electronic compass (that works when you are standing still) is, I prefer a hand compass anyway.
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Any microSD card 512 MB or smaller should be fine. I've seen a few people mention ordering 1GB ones but haven't heard for sure that they work yet. Even if they don't, Garmin could fix it with a firmware update if they chose to.
You can write to them as many times as you want. Well, actually, you can't. They have a lifetime of maybe something like 100,000 or more write cycles, which you will probably never run up against in a GPSr. By the time you get to that point the card and the GPSr will be hopelessly obsolete anyway.
What Is The Current Version Of Mapsource Topo?
in GPS technology and devices
Posted · Edited by ejnewman
Mapsource is on version 6.something.
The Topo version number shouldn't have anything to do with how the maps are transferred to the device, the Mapsource app itself does that. Mapsource is for displaying and transfering the maps you buy or make (topo, street, or otherwise).