GeekBoy.from.Illinois

I don't generally download the "Highest" resolution, I generally work with the "Higher" (medium level) resolution. With that, I was selecting regions on the map that claimed to be ~400MB, but would download to ~180MB. Now I can only select regions that report ~100MB and download to ~50MB. I have covered all of Lake County IL (with a little extra to cover areas I'm in often) in 7 download files at "Highest" resolution ranging from 145MB-200MB JNX file sizes plus 1 JNX file of about 35MB. I don't know if it matters, but I am running on a Mac. With version 3.02 I could select many regions and have them all queued up to download. I know that I had as many as 5-6 in the queue at one time. Now with version 3.11, I can only have 2 files in that queue or the app will crash when I try to select another region.

I don't generally download the "Highest" resolution, I generally work with the "Higher" (medium level) resolution. With that, I was selecting regions on the map that claimed to be ~400MB, but would download to ~180MB. Now I can only select regions that report ~100MB and download to ~50MB. I have covered all of Lake County IL (with a little extra to cover areas I'm in often) in 7 download files at "Highest" resolution ranging from 145MB-200MB JNX file sizes plus 1 JNX file of about 35MB. I don't know if it matters, but I am running on a Mac. With version 3.02 I could select many regions and have them all queued up to download. I know that I had as many as 5-6 in the queue at one time. Now with version 3.11, I can only have 2 files in that queue or the app will crash when I try to select another region.

I run the Mac version here and it seems quite stable for me... That is as long as I don't try to have more than 2 downloads queued at the same time. Using the older version, I could select 7-8 regions, and queue them all up to download. Now, if I have more than 2 regions selected at once, then it will crash. If I keep it down to the region actively downloading, and one more in the queue, it is very stable. I also noticed that I can no longer select large regions. I used to select areas that would download to 150-225MB JNX files, but now, they seem to max out around 100MB. Oh well, that just means I need to load more segments to cover the area I want.

I've run across some "Sight n Go" opportunities in multis that required taking a bearing "in place". They're not common, but I didn't know why the OP was specifically asking about that, either. Perhaps it was because not all smartphone options seem to allow this functionality. I know with the Colorado & Oregon models, it's not intuitive to find where it is located in the menus, but it is there and can be done. The app I use most on my iPhone just recently added the capability to perform projections.

If you get the model that can order pizza and make coffee, it is a little awkward to mount on your pushbike. It doesn't bounce too well either, nor does it handle the downpours. It does float, sometimes, but it also requires 'D' batteries to drive the heating element in the coffee maker...

Heck, with the iPhone or an Android phone, as long as you have the official Groundspeak app, and a data connection, you would have full access to the entire gc.com cache database of over a million active caches...

I've used several. I have a nice small external pack from Kensington that is about 1500mAh and will charge any device that uses USB to charge. I bought it back when I was still using my iPhone 3G, and a Blackberry. I also have an Energizer branded pack that puts out 18000mAh and will charge my iPhone 4 from 20% to full a good 4-5 times before it need to be recharged. It is a bit bigger than the Kensington one, but still can be carried in the hip pocket of a pair of jeans. A friend of mine bought a Mophie Juice Pack for his iPhone 3GS, and his partner bought a Mophie Juice Pack Air for her iPhone 3GS. Both of those are good and provide about a battery double for the iPhone. Not wanting to spend about $80 for a Juice Pack (which is about as much as I spent for the big Energizer pack) I spent about $20 for a clone of the Juice Pack when monoprice.com had them for $20. It worked great for my iPhone 3G. Right now I'm considering a Juic Pack Air for my iPhone 4...

You should get the email, but like you, about a month ago, I expired without receiving any advanced notice either. I opened up a support issue and was informed that the email was sent and it must have gotten lost in the mail. I know that email is not guaranteed delivery, so I just chalked this up as a server glitch somewhere. We all know that Groundspeak has had their share of email server issues in the past...

I have an HP iPaq that I have used as a GPSr. In order to do this, I had to buy an external GPSr unit (Garmin GPS10X). Luckily for me, the Garmin GPSr came with mapping software for my PDA, so I didn't have to spend more money to get my mapping. The PDA + External GPSr works well, and I use it for playing Wherigo modules. Here is what I can tell you based on my experience: HP iPaq - $250 Garmin GPS10X - $120 Spare battery for PDA - $30 Total - ~$400 With that setup, I can generally get through a long day of geocaching, but it is not very rugged, and is easily damaged by water or drops. Now, let me compare to something like: Garmin Oregon 300 - ~$250 AA NiMH battery 4 pack & Charger - $35 4GB micro SD card - $15 Total - ~$300 Now with that setup and I can easily go longer than with the PDA, and it is much more rugged and can handle a drop, or getting wet. So, I could spend $400 and have a delicate solution that will is bound to fail at an awkward time, or I can save $100 and buy a dedicated GPSr that will hold up better than the first solution, and will last me 2-3 years longer.

This error message looks out of place to me. I don't recall BaseCamp installing the EXE with the _306 in the name (but I don't run BaseCamp under Windows much either). Also, unless your Windows XP user account is named "User" the path specified in the error message would indicate that it is incorrect as well as the fact it is pointing to your "My Documents" folder. It looks to me like your download failed leaving a partial file in your "My Documents" folder, and it can't install because it is corrupt. I would re-download the installer from Garmin and see if the error goes away when you re-install with a good installer package. As a side note, only allowing a few hours in the middle of a business day before "bumping" your own post might annoy some folks. I would suggest giving people a little more time to read it and try to reply.

Well, I will often find myself removing my SD card while out in the field, to move data around, but then again, I only have an Oregon 400t, so I must manage my GPX files in smaller chunks. Heck, there are almost twice as many active caches in Cook County IL than what my Oregon will hold as caches. For this reason, I often have to move GPX files around when the caching group changes plans while out on the road. I keep my old Windows Mobile PDA around because it can read the micro SDHC card in an adapter allowing me to move the files easily while away from my computer.

I'd love to have something like this, but I've never seen them on store shelves. What are these things called; can anyone post a link to an example? AT Cross sells "executive Stylus units for about $25-30, and they used to sell a stylus "refill" for your standard Cross ball point pen. I have one of those I used for many years, now I just use the rounded "other end" of my Fisher Space Pen for my Oregon 400 when I'm caching in the cold, since it hangs around my neck on a lanyard.

My personal experience with the Oregon line is that the GPSr itself becomes less accurate when the batteries get too low. It may report a 12-16 foot accuracy, but it may really be off by over 30-40 feet. This also explains why my GPSr will consistently report a 8-9 foot accuracy when connected to external power in my car but goes to 12-16 feet when on battery. If the GPSr is less accurate, it may be bouncing you more and you are just thinking it's the compass that is being "flaky" due to the low batteries.

They don't *have* to be serial, but in general, that is one of the "safest" ways to keep the players from crashing. One that I have done requires you to walk a path around a small lake. It is setup to handle you going either direction around the lake, and handles it well. By that I assume that he has more than one zone active at a time otherwise it wouldn't handle someone going the "wrong way" around the lake. In general the way a Wherigo will work is that you have to go to some point and/or complete some activity before it will activate the next target. One of the less interesting one's I've done required you to go to a parking space in a park (literally in the parking space) then answer 4-5 trivia questions about the state you were in (you had to answer them using your internet enabled cell phone) then it gave you the coords to a guard rail where there was a small cache container hidden. You couldn't get the coords until you correctly answered all the questions. This one was poorly done such that the only way to exit before you answered all the questions (but had already answered the first) was to turn the GPSr off. It required you to answer the current question correctly before you could get the next question. The better cartridge that I've played took you through a storyline and when you get to certain places it would give you tasks to complete. As I mentioned earlier, it allowed you to follow the path around the lake in either directions with 3 zones active, the "real target" plus two other points (each about half way to the "real target". As you passed through each of the two half-way zones, your device would display a message reminding you to hurry. It was nice that it was setup to allow you to go either way though. This one also had the zones configured to be large enough that you had no trouble triggering that you were there. I imagine that this cartridge would be more like what you want, but it still requires you to go through a series of 7 or 8 points to complete. I'm not sure just how many zones you could realistically have active at once, but if you made your photo walks as a set of smaller cartridges (say 3-4 places each) and then just let them do several cartridges to complete it all, it might work much better. If you make a PDA version, you could use photos you have taken and audio (maybe a short comment about the camera settings used for your photo, the time of day, etc). With the handheld GPSr the audio wouldn't play properly, but the image could still be displayed. Your comments have made me wish I could make a few more hours in a day to play with the Wherigo builder some myself. Good Luck, and let us know when you get them done.

It is possible, but you would need to keep some things in mind. With Wherigo, the default is to require the "player" to stop at every zone before enabling/allowing the next zone. This would require your users to visit every site in a specific order. I believe that you may allow them to have all zones "active" at the same time and just allow them to enter the "zones" in any order, but this may also be one of the bugs mentioned earlier. Another thing to keep in mind, that many creators in my area do not do well, it to have sufficiently large zones to work with. If you create a zone that is too small, then it is nearly impossible for the "player" to be in the zone long enough to be detected as there. Remember that each GPSr has a positional accuracy and your unit may be off in one direction with the player's unit is off in the opposite, so they could easily be 20-40 feet away from the "point" you want. Your plan could work with Wherigo. It also sounds like it might work well as an "augmented reality" app for a smart phone like Android or iPhone.

When caching with these things called friends. I use it all of the time. I tend to use it when caching with family more than with friends. My brother-in-law is in the excited newbie stage (even though he's been caching for almost 2 years) and he doesn't cache much unless we're in town visiting. He almost never runs a PQ to prep, and he relies on me transferring to his Colorado 400t from my Oregon 400t. Other than that, I've only used the feature once or twice when I was at an event where a cache had published that morning and I didn't load any PQ's that day. Someone else at the event had loaded PQ's so they transferred the data to me so I had it to find/log a new cache that had been published.

The CO (and the OR too to some extent) are susceptible to this behavior when they encounter a particularly bad GPX file. I had a corrupt GPX file that would cause my CO 300 to do just what you are seeing, except it would do that whenever I went into any cache description. In my case it was even bad enough that if I deleted the GPX files, the GPSr still thought they were there and would show the same list of caches, and would still crash if I tried to display any description. As others have said, some puzzle hiders try to hide information into the HTML code on the cache page. There have been some in my area that would put the coordinates in white on white using HTML, but the CO would strip the HTML leaving the information in plain text in the cache description.

Well, that is how I would probably use it, but if we look at the message I responded to we see: That seems pretty clear to me that they feel that their watching my cache should tell me it needs maintenance or archived because they are watching it and someone else DNF'ed it as well. I have a couple of caches that are good examples of how that logic fails because they are challenging hides that may apply a style many local cachers are not familiar with. My example caches have been drawing many inexperienced cachers recently, so there are many DNF logs for caches which are still in place and in fine condition.

If you're "watch"ing a cache is to indeicate it needs maintenance, why not just log a "Needs Maintenance" log? If it means it should be archived, why not log a "Should Be Archived" log? If you log one of the other 2 log types, I as the cache owner, will get an email and act upon it. If you watch my cache, I won't know that unless I keep track of how many people are watching my caches and then I will still only know that you are watching it. One of our hides is a difficult hide. It currently has more DNF logs on it than "Found it" logs. It doesn't help that there are a large number of cachers with < 20 finds seeking a 3.5 difficulty hide when they are used to finding LPC's, but this cache is indeed still in place. Why do we even have "Needs Maintenance" and "Should be Archived" log types if people are so afraid to use them (but that is a question for another discussion)?

I like having the number there, even if I can't find out who it corresponds to. My wife & I have a cache series of 11 caches we hid this summer. They are all published under her GC.com account, so I am watching them to keep track of their statuses. All 11 of these caches have either 4 or 5 people watching them. I am one of those, and I know who one other is, but that's all I know for sure. Having so many people watching the caches tells me that people are interested in them. For a couple of them, I suspect that they are waiting for the weather to cool a bit (and a few mosquitoes to die) before they attempt to hunt them, and I personally wouldn't blame them. The fact that 2-3 people are following our caches even though they probably haven't even found most of them is a compliment to me. These caches have been out for over 2 months and some of them only have 1 or 2 finders, and the only person to complete the series got hooked after the first cache or to and completed the rest of the series in 2-3 days..

I would guess that you have to have the GPSr attached to start the download because the files are actually stamped with the device info so you can't use them in any other GPSr, only the one which is licensed to the data. I have tested this by moving the card from my Oregon to another GPSr and the images would not display due to a licensing error. It is also supported by the fact that if you bought licenses for 2 different GPSr units, you would have to download the images for each GPSr separately (at first) even though both units might be attached at the time of the initial download. There was no way (then) to add a second GPSr to the "licensed to use" field on a file once it was downloaded. I believe that a more recent update to BaseCamp has changed that and you don't have to re-download the data a second time to load it to a second licensed GPSr.

If your release of Windows 7 supports it, you could download the "XP Mode" add-on from Microsoft and run the Palm Desktop software in the virtual Windows XP environment. That should allow you to use the Palm Desktop software and also use your PDA...

I suspect it may be working, but not exactly as you think. I have my GPX version also set to 1.0.1 and I do get GPX files created with the attributes included. The kicker is that the header in the GPX file is reporting itself as version 1.0 and not version 1.0.1

I don't think I've ever used the site, but I have met Dave in passing a few times. Heck, he lives within about 25 miles of me... I think it's a shame to see the site go, and in some ways, I will miss it too. Thanks for all your hard work Dave, and good luck in your future endeavors!

My thoughts exactly When I saw the thread title, I was puzzling over what it is referring to. I thought similar too, then I remembered that at one time last year a local web site admin was asking me about scraping from that page every few minutes to extract logs from people from their site so they could keep a similar page. Luckily that request never went anywhere, and that site admin isn't running that site any more...