Mapsource Icons And Geocaches

[+infiniteMPG]

I just upgraded my MapSource to 6.11.1 and it's great 'except' for one thing. When I run a pocket query and convert the GPX to a GDB file (via CMconvert or GPSbabel) now many of the geocaches come in with different icons. Some come in with the icon for INFORMATION, some come in with the icon for TOLL BOOTH and some with the icon for STADIUM. I think it's using the toll booth icon for micros and the stadium icon for multi-caches but not sure the exact logic of it. The issue is when I upload this info to my Garmin GPS MAP60C the only icons that it recognizes as geocaches is the actual geocache icon. So when I search for the ones with the other icons I have to search waypoints and not geocaches and I no longer have the ability to mark them as FOUND when I find them.

 

Is this coming from Garmin's MapSource program, from the translation software, from geocaching.com or where and what can be done so a geocache is a geocache regardless of the type????

 

Thanks in advance for your help,

Scott

aka - infiniteMPG

[+sbell111]

You might want to take a look at GSAK. GSAK uses GPSbabel 'under the hood' to perform the actual converting, but allows you to choose the icons that you like, so you can be sure that you assign icons that your GPSr will recognize. Personally, I prefer 'small city' for my unfound caches so they don't crowd out the map.

Edited July 10, 2006 by sbell111

[+Lil Devil]

In GPSBabel you have to use the -N option to suppress the conversion of icons.

 

Personally I prefer to use all the different icons so I can see at a glance what kind of cache I'm searching for. I don't bother with "geocaching mode" because it doesn't provide any real benefits

[+infiniteMPG]

The biggest benifit I get from using the GEOCACHING icon in the Garmin is that you can have a ton of waypoints stored of all kinds of different things and the geocaches are included in with them, but you can do a FIND on just geocaches and as soon as you find the cache you press FOUND, it goes to the next closest not yet found geocache and it marks that last one as found and moves it from the geocaches to just the waypoints. That way you can just see the geocaches you have not yet found by themselves. It saves from having to muddle thru a bazillion waypoints when all you want to see if the next geocache you haven't found. We may have waypoints for parking, trailheads, bridges, POI's, and other things we don't want to have to sort thru to find out if the next waypoint is a geocache or not... efficent? Yeah. Lazy? Probably...

 

And also when you download the data from the GPS back into Mapsource all the geocaches you found now have the icon changed from the closed treasure chest to the open one so to track what you found is a breeze!

 

We'll try the -N feature in GPSBabel as we want all the geocaches to come in as geocaches as we use the description on the Palm TX to see what kind of cache it is

 

Thanks!

Edited August 1, 2006 by infiniteMPG

[+Prime Suspect]

The biggest benifit I get from using the GEOCACHING icon in the Garmin is that you can have a ton of waypoints stored of all kinds of different things and the geocaches are included in with them, but you can do a FIND on just geocaches and as soon as you find the cache you press FOUND, it goes to the next closest not yet found geocache and it marks that last one as found and moves it from the geocaches to just the waypoints. That way you can just see the geocaches you have not yet found by themselves. It saves from having to muddle thru a bazillion waypoints when all you want to see if the next geocache you haven't found. We may have waypoints for parking, trailheads, bridges, POI's, and other things we don't want to have to sort thru to find out if the next waypoint is a geocache or not... efficent? Yeah. Lazy? Probably...

You can do a find-by-icon for any icon. It will show you a list of only those waypoints with the icon you've asked for.

 

The geocaching mode is (moderately) useful because it can automatically tag a waypoint as found, and add it to the calendar, which is handy for people like me who don't get around to logging caches until days later. As for the Find Next, I usually am looking for caches in a specific direction, so it's not of much use to me. YMMD.

[+Maingray]

I love cache icons too on GPSr and in mapsource... "find by icon" on the GPSr is cool, when my son is sick of all the small treasures, and I just have to find the closest regular sized cache right away!