jjmcwill

Awesome! Thank you!

I took my Lowrance Endura Out & Back on its first backpacking trip this weekend to the Waterloo State Recreation Area in southern Michigan. I purchased the e-topo for the area before the trip. Satellite locking and EPE was great compared to my older iFinder H2O. Loved the color and having the eTopo map on the GPS to compare with my USGS Quadrangle map. I'm still learning the menus and controls - especially how to start and stop recording of trails, save and review them, etc. One thing I'm finding an annoyance is the touch screen. Often I put the GPS in a pocket while it's running so that it will record my track so that I can review it later. What I'm finding is that it will get jostled and register touch screen presses. When I pull it back out, the display has changed to something unexpected or additional waypoints have been created, or something else. How can I lock the touch screen to prevent this from happening? Locking the touch screen is a common feature on smart phones. If this feature does not currently exist on the Enduras, hopefully Lowrance would consider adding it to a future firmware update. Thanks

My Out&Back arrived two days ago. I got the firmware updated to 1.3. After reading posts in this forum, I realized the 8GB MicroSD card won't work for maps because they're FAT32. I purchased a 2GB card, verified it's formatted FAT16, then purchased a quad from MapSelect for an area I will be backpacking this weekend. So far, so good. The map displays, and looks almost exactly like the USGS Quadrangle paper map that I own, albeit with kind of jaggy lines. Thanks to all for help and advice! When I get some time, I'll try to use it to find some caches. The next most important thing to me is track recording, uploading to my PC, and sending to "MapMyHike.com"

My Lowrance Endura Out&Back just arrived yesterday. I plan to pick up a memory card today and hopefully take it backpacking this weekend. Yay! Will the unit pull power from the usb connector if it's connected? I used to use my Lowrance iFinder H2O with a cigarette lighter adapter in my car. It didn't do turn-by-turn, but it was still great to have a detailed visual view on the GPS without draining the batteries.

EnduraExpert - thanks for your prompt, informative response. This is terrific. I just ordered an Out&Back through REI. (I still had some leftover dividend money and a gift card). I'm looking forward to receiving it. I will probably have a MicroSDHC card awaiting its arrival. :-D The Endura line of GPSr's will do 100 trail and 10,000 trail points per trail for a total of 1,000,000 trail points. Max number of Geocaches is 4000, Waypoints is 4000, Routes is 500, waypoints per route is 250. I have added a link to the product comparison page: http://www.lowrance.com/en/Endura/Model-Comparison/ Let me know if you have any other questions.

This is not listed in the manual, so hopefully someone here can answer this. What is the maximum # of points per logged trail on the Endura GPSs? My iFinder H2O defaults to 2000 points per trail, but supports 9999. Thanks, Jeff

I have a Asus Eee PC 901XP, reloaded with EeeBuntu over here. I pulled and built gpsbabel from source. No problems. I have a Lowrance H2O GPS, and regularly record hikes, bikes and runs as tracks, convert them to GPX via gpsbabel, and then upload them to mapmyride.com mapmyrun.com, etc. I'm VERY grateful to have access to gpsbabel on Linux. I write OpenGL engineering graphics software for a living, so dealing with programs and the command line are easy for me. I know I don't represent the average user.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've added the battery voltage monitor to the main navigation page. I rotate out several sets of NiMH batteries, and always put freshly charged ones in when the battery meter on the Satellite's page of the H2O reads near 1/4 on the "E.....F" gauge. The voltage monitor field I added to the man navigation page showed a voltage of 2.5 volts, which seemed nominal for a pair of NiMH batteries, which are rated at 1.2v as opposed to 1.5v for Alkalines. Yesterday, I did a 5 mile hike around a park near where I live in Troy, MI. Again, battery voltage read about 2.5 volts. The "meter" on the satellite tracking page of the GPS read about half. Weather conditions were cloudy with one short period of drizzle. The H2O lost track several times. I came home, did the soft reset, put in a fresh set of alkalines. I then went back out with my GPS and my mountain bike (in the dark) and retraced the same route. The GPS remained a solid lock the entire time. So, was it the soft reset or a fresh set of alkaline batteries? I'll continue to experiment. Maybe some of my NiMH batteries need to be replaced with fresh ones.

I saw this too. It's ridiculous. With my iFinder H2O, I could easily add whole states to my GPS. Set it and forget it. The pricing of $5.00 per Quad in insane. No way I'm going to pay that! Do Delorme maps work in the Enduras?

I was backpacking with friends in north west Michigan this weekend. Camp is located at: +44° 5' 59.58", -86° 27' 17.16" This is the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness area north of Ludington, MI While hiking the trails there, my iFinder H2O continually lost the GPS signal lock, often taking many minutes to reacquire. Even then, I was seeing estimated positional error as high as 800+ feet! I had tracking enabled, and the resulting track was a useless collection of wildly varying, disconnected lines. This area of Michigan has hiking trails that cross mature dunes, but it's not like I was in anything like a slot canyon. When the trail did dip between two hills, it would emerge again within a few minutes of walking. Even when we made it back to the parking lot, the GPS continued to have an EPE of 800 feet. Can anyone explain why the GPS was having such a hard time acquiring an accurate lock? Was it due to topography/terrain? Lack of satellite coverage in the area? Something else? Would an external antenna help? Offtopic for Geocaching: The trail leading from the parking lot to the site has several forks which aren't shown on the published trail map. Hiking the trail, it's not obvious which way leads to this particular camping location, which is revisited by a group of us backpackers each year. I was hoping to get a solid track that I could turn into a route that other GPS users could use to hike into the site during future visits. Wish such poor tracking from my GPS, my hopes of plotting an accurate route are slim. Thanks

Go to maps.google.com and click on the "My Maps" tab. You should be able to add your found caches as "favorite places", and then publish your map to the web if you wish to do so. This is a brand new feature from Google. I haven't tried it, but am considering using it for at least one other project.

"Unknown Cache" Got it. Thanks!

Ummm, okaaaaaay. Care to enlighten me? I'm on the query generator page, and I don't see anywhere that I can select puzzle or mystery cache as the cache type.

Hi, I was wondering if it was possible to run a PQ that finds only puzzle caches. Is this possible? Thanks, Jeff

I bought a Lowrance ifinder Go GPS new from EBay for $56.00. It's a nice, cheap backup for my IFinder H2O with topo maps. There is a discussion in the GPS Units and Software forums detailing how to upload waypoints to this GPS and the IFinder Go2, located here Unfortunately, the Lowrance made PC-D15 Serial PC data cable is quite expensive. It retails for $34.95. Tigergps.com sells it for $28.74. I think it's silly that the data cable cost is half what the GPS sells for. Using publicly available information on the internet HERE, I built my own data cable, which allows me to upload waypoints to the GO. See an image of the connector I devised below. I did this by creating a small circuit board using home hobbyist etching techniques. The springy contacts were created by carefully disassembling the internal contacts from a $3.00 card edge connector. One connector yields 44 of these contacts if they all come out correctly. (some did not until I figured out a method of extracting them reliably). Etching the circuit board takes the longest amount of time, waiting for the acid to remove the unwanted copper material to leave the four traces where the cable gets connected and the spring loaded contacts are soldered on. I can do approximately 12 of those little cable ends from one blank circuit board. Is anyone else interested in an inexpensive, hand made data cable? I'm not interested in making dozens of these, and I'm not out to make money off of this. I see a lot of forum posts from folks on tight budgets who would like to try the sport, but can't afford the more expensive GPS models. Still others are, like me, interested in a backup GPS to loan to friends and family but still want waypoint upload capability. I would be willing to make up some of these and sell them to forum members for $8.00 each, or maybe in trade for a Geocoin. That about covers the cost of purchasing the PC serial connector, cable, and materials to make the special connector. I would be willing to make 2 or 3 cables here and there during the weekend and as demand/interest dictates. They would be six feet long and have a connector as shown in the photo above. Otherwise, the cable would be functionally equivalent to the PC-D15 cable from Lowrance. You can use it to upload waypoints to the IFinder Pro, IFinder Go, and IFinder Go. You can also use it to receive NMEA positional data from the GPSrs listed above. Send me a private message if you're interested. If I get a LOT of interest, I'll make the cables on a first come, first served basis.

I think cachemate also comes with cmconvert, which compiles/runs under Linux. I use both cmconvert and gpsbabel on my Debian Linux box all the time.

I purchased an iFinder Go off of EBay this week. I plan to use is as a backup to my Lowrance iFinder H2O, and as a loaner when I invite friends and family to join me. First, a little about me: I've only been geocaching for 2 months. In that time I've logged 21 finds and 2 DNF's. I prefer caches that take me hiking through parks, forests, or other heavily wooded areas. Urban caches and lamppost caches don't really interest me. I have a degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering. I work as a Senior Software Engineer for a company that develops and sells software used by Automotive, Mechanical, and Aeronautical engineers. I have a lot of geek toys and computer hardware. When I'm not working or geocaching, I'm hiking, mountain biking, canoeing, or working in my garden. Here is a link to a photo of the iFinder Go next to my Handspring Visor PDA with Magellan GPS Companion GPSr, and my iFinder H2O. Photo The iFinder Go is quite a bit smaller than the iFinder H2O. The screen on the Go seems tiny in comparison to my iFinder H2O. However, I find that the Go fits more readily in a jacket pocket. That may make it more suitable as a grab-and-go GPS, and I may stuff it into my Camelbak when mountain biking instead of taking the larger, heaver H2O. Startup time on the Go is pretty good. It obtained a fix within 12 to 15 seconds, which was comparable to the H2O. The Go comes programmed with base maps showing major roads & highways throughout the US. The maps cannot be updated or replaced. Unfortunately, the Go can take a long time to render the base maps, especially if land detail is set to Medium or High. Zooming between 5mi and 6mi levels, for instance, took 6 to 8 seconds until the screen had fully updated. By comparison, I have the entire State of Michigan loaded onto my iFinder H2O via MapCreate 6 and a 1GB SD card. Zooming between 5mi and 6mi zoom levels takes 3 to 3.5 seconds. I turned off the base maps on the Go so that only my waypoints were drawn. This improved zoom update speed dramatically. Speaking of waypoints, you CAN upload waypoints to this GPS! Get a serial data cable sold separately, or build one. There's a thread here on Groundspeak with all the details. Use gpsbabel to convert your .loc or .gpx files to NMEA format. Connect to the GPS on Windows using Hyperterm. Select the NMEA sentences generated by gpsbabel and copy them (CTRL-C). Switch to Hyperterm and paste them (CTRL-V). You'll get no verification from the iFinder Go, but if you list the waypoints using the Find button you'll see that, indeed, they have been transferred. Once waypoints are entered or uploaded, selecting one as the destination is fairly straightforward: push the find button and select a waypoint either by name, or ordered by nearest first to farthest. I spent several hours in the field today geocaching with this device. I noticed that the GPSr occasionally experiences what I can only explain as "jitter". These are moments when the GPS gets momentarily confused about what direction I am facing relative to the waypoint I'm seeking. On the screen, the waypoint icon will dance around. If I stop moving for a few seconds, the jitter will go away. I also had one instance where the iFinder Go's location was more than 200 feet off course. At the time, I had both the Go and my iFinder H2O turned on. I was navigating primarily with the H2O because I didn't know where the waypoint was relative to a river and I wanted to consult the topo maps. The Go was tucked into a front pocket of my jacket while I navigated with the H2O. When I found the waypoint, I pulled out the Go to compare coordinates. The Go said I was still 200 feet away from the waypoint. I walked around in a 10 foot circle, but the discrepancy remained. Standing still for 5 or 10 seconds didn't help, either. Finally, I powered off the iFinder Go and then powered it back on. After reacquiring a GPS lock, the iFinder Go agreed with the iFinder H2O's position to within about 20 ft. I can't explain that behavior, but I have to admit it's a bit disconcerting. Has anyone experienced similar behavior with this same GPS or any other make/model? Summary: This unit sells new for $70.00 - $80.00, but without the cable. The waypoint upload data cable costs around $28.00, but if you're not afraid of a soldering iron, you can hack one together using about $5.00 in parts, or by pillaging the cable from an old serial mouse. The GPS draws base maps slowly, but they are usable. Turning off the base map rendering improves performance once you're close to your destination and don't care about them anyway. Finally, the (unofficial) ability to upload waypoints to this GPSr has to make this one of the best deals on the market an entry level GPS receiver.

Waypoints can be easily uploaded to the iFinder Go. Use gpsbabel to output NMEA sentences from a gpx file. Connect to the GPS using the data cable (sold separately) and Windows Hyperterm. Be sure to configure Hyperterm to send Carriage Return/LineFeeds on each line, and to pause 100ms between each line. Copy the NMEA sentences from gpsbabel's output and paste the into the Hyperterm window. All said, it took me about 2 minutes to do this, and it worked perfectly.

Everyone knows that you can use the NMEA protocol and a data cable to send waypoints to the IFinder Go and Go2. See this forum topic: Download waypoints What I'm curious about, is whether there's a way to get the GPS to push its current waypoints back out. Say I've logged a bunch of waypoints while out hiking, or taking photos. Like more expensive GPSr's, it would be great to be able to download them instead of having to read the coords off of the GPSr's display manually. It's not a big deal to me. I now have a Go as my 3rd GPSr, added to my iFinder H2O and my Magellan GPS Companion module for my Visor PDA. My H2O is my main GPSr. The Go is a backup/loader when caching with friends/family whom I haven't yet managed to get completely addicted to the hobby.

Officially, the ifinder Go and Go2 only support sending NMEA data out of the GPS to be used by some other mapping program. However, others have discovered that you can upload waypoints into these models as well. See this forum thread for discussion: Uploading Waypoints I just purchased a Go off of Ebay to use as a loaner when I bring my 17 year old daughter, my wife, or a friend along with me. My main GPSr is an ifinder H2O. The Go hasn't arrived yet, but I've already collected links and software to support waypoint uploads. Hope this helps.

Looks like a rebadged Lowrance ifinder. not sure which one. It's probably the Hunt or the Explorer based on the fact that it has a compass and altimeter.

PM Sent

MySpace Link But I don't really use it. I have my own blog (photos mainly) at My Blog

I just bought a Lowrance ifinder H2O Plus from Cascade GPS. www.cascadegps.com I ordered on Wednesday and received it on Friday. I think Cascade GPS is in Washington, and I'm in Michigan, so I was very impressed with the delivery time.

Dinoprophet, When I saw your post about an island hopping multi-cache, and it's in my area, I got really excited. Imagine my disappointment to learn it's been archived. I'd love to see some caches in the Oakland county area with higher terrain difficulty ratings. Jeff