Cymbaline

My response to a similiar post here.

I have a Rino 110 (my first GPS) and a Rino 130. The 110 worked flawlessly on the receiving in, "ok" on sending. A friend (also had a 110) and I tested them out near the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta in an NRA. During tests, we would use cell phones to figure out how far we were when the radio's broke up. We figured the "real" effective range was about .5 miles, with occasional bursts of .8 miles. (Edit: Keep in mind that the northern half of GA, while not "mountainous", is definitely not flat either. We were on opposite sides of fairly large hills, along creeks and streams, along the riverbank, etc. I think these figures represent "real-world" use. If you find an FRS radio that *consistantly* works over a 1 mile range in mixed terrain, buy stock in that company and let me know the ticker symbol.) I had major issues with the radio on my 130, eventually having to send it back to Garmin, who replaced the entire unit. The receiver would "fade" in and out, and the microphone quality - which is not the best to begin with on the Rino - was absolutely horrid. Completely "static-y" and garbled on other FRS radios (including other Rinos). Once replaced, though, reception is perfect and sending - while still not perfect - is now adequate. Effective range still appears to be in that .5 to .8 range. The Rinos work absolutely fantastic if you keep in mind how they are designed: A quality GPS with *added* radio cababilities. Sending waypoints and location information is awesome. The radio (taking Rolls Royce out of context here) is "adequate". For longer hikes or with widely (greater than a mile) distributed persons, I also carry a Motorola Talkabout T5900, just in case. But then, you're hitting the effective range of FRS anyways, so... You can have mine when you pry it from my cold, lifeless hands. I can't comment on GMRS as I'm not licensed and have never activated it.

The 76C is, and was originally, designed more for Marine application. It floats, has a marine atlas (?), etc. Oh, yeah, it also has the geocaching functions too. I considered the 76 for the extra memory - it's only a matter of chip(s), wish Garmin would get on-board with that. I also like the slightly larger screen size on the 76. What I didn't like was how it fit in my hand and that the buttons were on top, which obscured the display for me when I do functions (big-medium/small large hands, inherited wide fingers) and that the buttons were on top. Plus, you can't belt-clip it and I'm not a wrap-around holster nor a wrist-strap fan. It really comes down to a matter of preference. I like my 60, AtlantaGal has a 76. She likes hers, I like mine, it's all good. mrmnjewel: Congrats on your purchase! You'll love it! Don't forget the pocket compass - I use the heck out of the electronic compass on the 60CS. (AG doesn't even carry one; that duty falls to me. Heh)

One question to ask is if someone who "doesn't see so well" can use any of the handheld units with their rather small high resolution screens for automotive navigation at all. I am happy that I can, since my glasses are 2.5+ (yes, I wear magnifying glasses all the time). So I allways use screen resolutions other people find hard to read. (CymSnip) For someone who can't read a handheld while driving but who also wants to use GPS for automotive navigation, I would suggest getting a moderate small budget handheld unit for geocaching and stare on it a little longer. Save the money for a second, dashboard mounted unit that has turn-by-turn voice commands. If the intended use is for geocaching and other outdoor activities (except driving) alone, then go and get all the fun you can (and want to) afford in a unit small enough to carry around in the woods. I agree with Jan on this one, especially on the latter bit. In the field, I find that my eyes adjust quicker to the data on the Rino screen than it does with the GPSMAP 60CS. Dunno why, but it does. As such, I carry the Rino with me out of the car almost exclusively. Others have pointed out topo shading is kinda hard to read on the greyscale. I never notice the colors, I look at the lines. Individual preference on that one. Bottom line, as Jan said - if your primary mission is to use it outdoors, get what you afford. Try to take a look at the units in person first. If the greyscale/black & white/whatever you want to call it works for you, then by all means get it. You'll be fine. If your budget allows and you favor the color, then go for it.

Both the GPS 60 and the GPSMAP 60 have a 500 waypoint and 10000 trackpoint capacity. Neither have 1000 waypoint capacity. Otherwise, they are pretty much identical, excepting that the GPSMAP 60 has 24MB of memory for uploading of maps; the GPS 60 has 1MB and no map upload capability.

Looking at the specs, it's a 12 parallel channel, WAAS-enabled receiver. Specs: http://www.holux.com.tw/Temp%20web/GM-270.html So yeah, technically it *should* work. That said, it doesn't look like it has any sort of provided software, but does provide for an "emulated COM interface". I guess you could use it with Delorme or other COM-enabled mapping application on a laptop PC, but those are kind of ackward to carry around in the woods. If you have a CF-slotted PDA of some sort and associated mapping software on it (that would at least display your lat/long), that would be more efficient. Me, I wouldn't use it.

Does this mean you have Mapsource and one of the Garmin Map software products and the datacable and have already sent those maps to the Legend? If so, you're pretty set. You might want to consider a product like GSAK to assist with waypoint uploads, though Mapsource can do that as well. If not.. You might want to consider maps (or not), depending on your usage. Then consider a product like GSAK to assist with waypoint uploads, though Mapsource can do that as well. If you don't have a datacable, get one of those posthaste. Otherwise, you're heading in the right direction. Paperless geocaching via a cheap Palm might be a "next step" for you. Cachemate (see http://www.smittyware.com) can assist with that.

Connect your 276C to the USB cable and turn it on. From your windows desktop, do the following: Start->Run->cmd.exe (or command.com if you're running Win98), OK cd "J:\pathtogsak" (enter) gpsbabel -D9 -i garmin -f usb: >output.txt (enter) where J: = drive gsak is installed on pathtogsak = path\folder where GSAK is installed, i.e. Program Files\GSAK e.g. cd "c:\Program Files\GSAK" (enter) = Enter Key The resulting "output.txt" file in the GSAK install directory you can view with notepad/other editor, and copy/paste it here.

Hmm, I can't replicate this, so if it is happening it is a bug. Are you sure your cache in Cachemate is being updated with the GSAK export? Please check the file CMATE.GPX in the "temp" folder of the install folder of GSAK. This is the GPX file that GSAK generates and passes on to CMConverft. Does this file have the corrected coordinates? If it does, then it would appear your cachemate database is not being updated with the export you are doing from GSAK and we then need to track down why this is so. Sigh. It's working now. I recently upgraded to latest cachemate from a dotlevel behind, so maybe that fixed it. I can't get it to replcate, but I'll keep an eye out for it in case it happens again. Sorry for the false alarm.

EDIT: Hold the phone, premature post. Let me punch it out to the palm first.

Something I've noticed and keep forgetting to mention. GSAK (or CMConvert?) isn't sending Corrected Coordinates to the PDA, but sends just fine to the GPSrS. I suspect this is "working as designed" and not a bug. If that's the case, any chance of having the corrected coordinates sent as well? I can see both sides of doing it, and how to solve it - without taking programming considerations into play. The pro would be the PDA matches the GPSr. The con would be the original coords wouldn't be there if something needed to be done with them. In a perfect world, Senor Smitty could/would modify Cachemate to have a secondary "Corrected Coordinate" field that Clyde could use. Perhaps CWE and BS could have a pow-wow. In the interim.. if it *is* working as deisgned, what's the possbility of adding the corrected coordinates - or the original coordinates, if the coorected are "posted" to the PDA - as a log entry or something? Just a thought..

As others have said.. when you get to 200 feet, take note of the bearing that you need to walk on, and project that with your hand-held compass, and walk that direction the requisite number of feet. When you get there, check the GPS. If it still says 200 feet, something is amiss. Ideally you're now within 50 feet. Now, set the thing down and look around for the cache for a bit. Come back and look at what the GPS says now. Does it say here? Or that-a-way on X bearing for N feet? If so, use the compass again and head that-a-way. Yeah, it's kinda manual, but it works. That said, I use two Garmin units (a Rino 130 75% of the time and a 60CS 25% of the time) that have electric compasses. They work fairly well as long as I remember to recalibrate them after replacing the batteries, but I still carry a hand-held Silva Polaris compass to verify. Usually when I finally find the cache the GPSr will be showing within 20 feet of where the cache is, quite often within 8-15 feet. So it works, albeit a touch slower than you may like or expect. Standing still for 30 seconds at a time allows the unit to "settle down", regardless of manufacturer. It's easier to establish a stationary target than a moving one. Get the unit that works best for your wallet and has the features that you want. That way, you can't go wrong - as long as you don't "follow the arrow" into oblivion.

For some reason I didn't notice this message. Now Perl is a nice glue language letting you do all kinds of things that OS's don't provide. But it isn't required to combine text files "copy" has options for this. copy /a /y active_found.txt+active_notfound.txt+archived_found.txt+archived_notfound.txt+disabled_found.txt+disabled_notfound.txt ame.txt The /a means the files are ascii and may need EOF character removed the "+" show which files to combine, and of course the copy is all one long line. Yeah, I tried that first, Allan. No dice. Something with the multiple "BEGIN SYMBOL" or "END" statements in the file was tripping up my Delorme, so I had to strip them out.. ergo, handy Perl. GPSBabel is still the quicker answer for GSAK users though, unless they wanna be a dork like myself and do it the harder way. As Robertlipe pointed out, not everybody is going to have perl (or cygwin, for that matter) installed on their box.

Thanks. PS - Don't forget you can then use the macro command RUNPGM to acually run the dos batch file at the very end to combine the files. This way the whole process will be done via the macro and you don't have to remember to run your batch file outside of GSAK I had already done that, Clyde, just didn't mention it in my post. I've now got a button on my toolbar that does everything, including RUMPGM at the end. Works like a champ. Thanks for your help!

Um, yeah, that'd do the trick too. The "ame.txt" is the "output-to file" that was generated in the perl script, so it should only be there once, I think. I've not played with gpsbabel command line much, so I was unfamiliar with that option. Yours is definitely much more efficient; mine is just a personal hack for lack of something better to do.

You can do this now with the help if Icon overrides. There is a little bit of work up front to get it right, but you only need to do it once and you can also put the lot in a macro so it then becomes a one click action. We will go through the process for MapSouce, but the procedure is just about the same for the Delorme export Firstly save you current MapSource settings (File=>Export=>MapSource then click on the "save" button) - lets call them "normal" Now, with the MapSource dialog showing click on the "change" button. If you can't see the "Override icons" at the bottom of the screen, click on the "Advanced" icons button. In the type drop down box, select "All waypoints". Then in the icon drop down box select the icon you want to allocate to your required selection criteria (In your case this is found unavailable caches). Now click on the green arrow pointing to the right so that the "All waypoints = xxxx" now shows as the last item in your active box (it may well be the only item) Click on the "save" button to return to the MapSource dialog, then click on the MapSource "Save" button to save these settings - lets give them a name of "unavailable" Now to generate a MapSource file that has all the found but archived/unavailable caches first set a filter that matches this criteria, then do the MapSource export making sure to select the "unavailable" settings from the drop down box. Now to generate a MapSource file that has all the normal icons (excluding found unavailable caches) set the filter as above but also tick the box "Reverse filter" , then do the MapSource export making sure to select the "normal" settings from the drop down box. By using the icon override section you can effectively generate different icons for any group of waypoints that you can set a filter on. For anybody who's interested... Based on a quick macro from Papatom2 (thanks Papatom!) I kinda did like Clyde was suggesting. I used a lot of settings/filters/etc to do exports to generate different pin types. I ended up with 5 or 6 delorme TXT files. I asked a local cacher who knows more Perl than me to come up with a quick script to consolidate those TXT files into one. (thanks Jeshom!) Here's his code and my batch file to run it. I've named it "z.pl" for no particular reason. Should work fine on any platform, and I can tell you it works great with cygwin's perl5 package - from a native DOS window. Change the "cd" directory to whever you have your TXT files saved, and of course if you don't have perl in your path (I don't), add the requisite path to perl.exe. The first parameter after z.pl is the "resulting new" TXT file; all the rest are the GSAK-generated files to take action on. So syntax would be (in windows): "perl z.pl outfilename infilename1 infilename2 infilenameN+1" Perl Code: open OUT, "> " . shift or die "Opening outfile: $!\n"; print OUT "BEGIN SYMBOL\n" . (join '', grep(!/^(BEGIN SYMBOL|END)\r?$/, <>)) . "END\n"; close OUT; DOS Batch: @echo off cd "\Delorme Docs\Draw\subcache" \cygwin\bin\perl z.pl ame.txt active_found.txt active_notfound.txt archived_found.txt archived_notfound.txt disabled_found.txt disabled_notfound.txt copy /y ame.txt .. >nul Anywho... Net result of the code is that you can smash a bunch of Delorme exports into one file. Code provided as-is. Hope this post makes sense. Enjoy.

I second Round Robin's use of PDA screen protectors. They work fantastic. I use them on both of my units, and just cut 'em down to size. I need to replace the one on my Rino - it's been DEETed a few times and is kind of foggy, as well as a few "skid marks" from branches that would have ordinarily scratched the scrren. The screen itself is fine, no scratches. Can't beat the cost, either. Very cheap.

You can do this now with the help if Icon overrides. There is a little bit of work up front to get it right, but you only need to do it once and you can also put the lot in a macro so it then becomes a one click action. (snip of the rest of Clyde's very informative answer - see his post) Thanks Clyde! I'm going to read through that a few times and then give it a shot. Also, someone contacted me via email with a macro they've already put together (Thanks!) so I'll use all the newfound knowledge and see what I can come up with.

Feature Request (minor/really low priority): I use the heck out of exporting to Delorme and Mapsource. Normally, I only export "notfounds", so I only see blue pushpins. Every once in awhile, I'll export my whole big GSAK DB, with everything. This gen's 4 pushpins (found, not found, archived/unavailable, and placed). WAD, and quite well. Request: A fifth pin, "found, but archived/unavailable." Red+Grey = um, Orange maybe? Brown? Purely for fun, not important at all. But hey, if easily doable then cool. If not, no biggie. Thanks Clyde! Keep up the good work!

I second gpsdiscount.com. Fair prices all the time, quick turnaround. Got my Rino 130, GPSMap 60CS, 60 Autonav kit, and a 76CS autonav kit for a gift from them at different times. The free T-shirt with each order isn't bad either.

Hmm, there must be something more in the mix here. No matter how many times I try this scenario the totals are always correct. If any one can reproduce this problem consistently please let me know the steps involved. Clyde, I just reproduced it - twice - and documented it with screenshots. Sending you a zipfile with commentary. Edit: I can reliably reproduce it. Screenshot zipfile and steps/commentary sent; ~ 2MB worth, small as I could get it.

(Disclaimer: I did not read this entire thread, but I did search it.) When (re)loading a directory of queries, I've noticed that the totals aren't updating correctly and/or the filter is (?)/is not being applied. It's not *all* the time, just sometimes - say 40% of the time? It's hard to reproduce, but here's an example. - Filter set to None. - I have "Notfound" database loaded. I get a new query, and place it in two directories - "notfound" and "all". - I reload "Notfound" database with "notfound" directory. (Always update selected) Totals all good. I doubleclick "notfound" totals, filter set, total correct. - I switch to "All" database, filter resets to NONE. - Reload "All" database with "all" directory (always update selected). - Everything loads, *but* totals bar shown are for Notfound - filter bar shows "NONE". - Reslecting "NONE" resets totals bar to show all caches. Sorry, this is hard to describe, and as I said, it doesn't *always* happen, just sometimes. I notice it more often when I get a number of new queries in for different databases and I jump around between them. Usually on reload the filter resets to "NONE", but it doesn't appear to be completely resetting to "NONE." This is on 5.5.1 Build 21.

Divine wins. Hands down, no question. "Error". Gawd, I'm still laughing.

Cool. Thanks Jeremy.

I'm just saying that since one has to purposely select the "print-friendly" version from the cache page, it doesn't do any good to have those links there at all for printing purposes. You are correct, however - the "Disable" link is only on those caches you own. To rephrase my point: Why are there links/link instructions on a page I've specifically requested for printing purposes?" This seems to be a more recent development. I don't remember either of them being there in the past.