Taking Maps with you

[+camp chaos clan]

I have ben geocaching (sporadically) for a couple of years now, and one of my frustrations has been getting to a place and not having a map of the cache area. Sometimes coordinates are just not enough, especially when I take my 3 year old. Is there map software out there for the PDA's

My PDA's are a Treo 650 and a Palm Tungsten E, and my GPSr is a Garmin etrex.

Thanks

Camp Chaos Clan

[+briansnat]

Moving to the appropriate forum

[+Alan2]

I use Mapopolis in my PPC Ipaq 2215. It has all the street and autonavigates. I also use National geographic Topo (for Pocket PC) but you have to remember to load the topo map of the area before you leave home. (or take a laptop with you in the car).

[+camp chaos clan]

I use Mapopolis in my PPC Ipaq 2215. It has all the street and autonavigates. I also use National geographic Topo (for Pocket PC) but you have to remember to load the topo map of the area before you leave home. (or take a laptop with you in the car).

Thanks!

I have looked into both. It seems that mapoplis is good because it works directly from teh PDA, but TOPO looks more user friendly and detailed.

thanks for the info

[beautyisgod]

I use Mapopolis in my PPC Ipaq 2215. It has all the street and autonavigates. I also use National geographic Topo (for Pocket PC) but you have to remember to load the topo map of the area before you leave home. (or take a laptop with you in the car).

 

Mapopolis is the only GPS software for PDA that I know of...it is pretty good...but not as good as my 60CSX GPS

[+Jeeters]

Mapopolis is the only GPS software for PDA that I know of

TomTom also make a Palm version of their software. Mapopolis and TomTom are probably the most popular.

 

See also...

Palm: http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/Palm/pilotgps.htm

PocketPC: http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/PocketPC/wince.htm

 

I use Mapopolis myself on my iPaq and love it. Very fast software when trying to pan around the map or zoom in/out. Other software tends to be slow to do that, especially Pocket Streets & Trips. Mapopolis seems to have been nice optimized for allowing the user to quickly manipulate the map, at least on the pocketpc version.

Edited September 5, 2006 by Jeeters

[+Alan2]

You can also overlay all the cache waypoint onto the Mapopolis maps using GPXTOMAPLET a free program. That way you can tap the icon to see various info about the cache including D/T miles from home, name, cache type, container type, etc. Tap it again and you can auto route to it. Very neat.

 

Don't know if Tom Tom does this.

 

Alan

[+naviguesser74]

You can put geocaches into TomTom on a Palm. See this:

 

http://www.bioneural.net/2006/01/13/geocac...n-for-mac-palm/

[+Kwitzats]

You can put geocaches into TomTom on a Palm. See this:

 

http://www.bioneural.net/2006/01/13/geocac...n-for-mac-palm/

 

Personally I hate mapopolis it is imposible to load the bazillion maps you want into it so you never have to plan before you start a jouney and when seaching for a local point it will search all maps loaded first making it soooo slow. and besides 100 bucks for a years worth of map is insane nowi can only use it for the states i was travelling in at the time since i did not have the forsight to dowload the entire united states before my year was up. on the bright side it does support gpx files and will read them as map items and can warn you when your close to one, so it is good for caching

[+Jeeters]

100 bucks for a years worth of map is insane nowi can only use it for the states i was travelling in at the time since i did not have the forsight to download the entire united states before my year was up.

It's only $34 if you don't want the turn-by-turn directions, just the maps. Navigation with turn-by-turn maps is what cost $100. Which is insanely cheaper than any dash unit you could buy from your auto's manufacturer (they *always* have a comma in the price) or portable car unit from such as streetpilot, etc. Edited September 10, 2006 by Jeeters

[+Alan2]

You can put geocaches into TomTom on a Palm. See this:

 

http://www.bioneural.net/2006/01/13/geocac...n-for-mac-palm/

 

Personally I hate mapopolis it is imposible to load the bazillion maps you want into it so you never have to plan before you start a jouney and when seaching for a local point it will search all maps loaded first making it soooo slow. and besides 100 bucks for a years worth of map is insane nowi can only use it for the states i was travelling in at the time since i did not have the forsight to dowload the entire united states before my year was up. on the bright side it does support gpx files and will read them as map items and can warn you when your close to one, so it is good for caching

 

I bought Mapopolis's disk so I wouldn't have to download their maps. A trick you can use to find the right map where your final destination is to load the state major highways map. Then you find the Place (town) you are going to and only load the county maps for the end and beginning of your trip. The major road maps for the state will route you in-between.

 

How do you set up Mapopolis to alert you when you are close to the cache? I didn''t know it did that.

Edited September 10, 2006 by Alan2

[+Art_Dodger]

A VERY good package I use almost exclusively with my PDA is "PathAway" - It's an extremely full-featured raster-mapping program that allows you to use any maps you like - You can download Google maps, scan paper-based maps, download from any one of hundreds of different map servers. Recently someone wrote another free program called "MapAway" that generates fully calibrated PathAway maps from the Google map server.

 

Because it is raster-based rather than vector-based, you can't generate auto-routes with it, but I generally generate routes in Google-Earth, convert them to Pathaway format and import them into Pathaway. For geocaching, I download extremely detailed topographical maps from our Dept. of Natural Resources map server for free then calibrate them for PathAway. It's an absolute joy to have detailed topos that show every trail & gully. You can import .LOC files or convert .GPX files using GPSBabel and import your geocaching waypoints and you can even have them display as little treasure-chests on your map screen! (A closed chest for the ones you haven't found, and an open chest for those you have. Kinda cool)

 

More info about PathAway can be found at http://www.pathaway.com. Mapaway is free and can be seen at http://www.iippo.net/jb/mapaway/.

 

There's a good review of an older version of Pathaway at http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?a=porta...iews&id=506

 

(And no - I don't work for either of these companies - I'm just a very satisfied customer) :-)

 

Dodger

Edited September 10, 2006 by Art_Dodger

[+Kwitzats]

You can put geocaches into TomTom on a Palm. See this:

 

How do you set up Mapopolis to alert you when you are close to the cache? I didn''t know it did that.

 

I can't seem to get it to work now my self. I know I used to do it, it may have something to do with gpx to maplet software that used to be necessary when the old version of mappopolis would not see gpx files.

[O-Mega]

Before using my Rino 120, I used my Tungsten T3 and Delorme's Street Atlas USA for PDA maps, and its GPS antenna to find my hunting/fishing spots. It did address to address routes too. It worked ok since I had the bluetooth pack for the antenna, I didn't need to have the wire attached to the PDA (bought that too). The 2005 SA USA for PDA version sold seperately but now Delorme's Street Atlas 2007 comes with the PDA/Pocket PC version included. Once the software is installed, you can load Topo maps from TOPO USA too, and though I haven't tried yet, the 2007 version says it imports GPX files directly.

[+SparkyInCali]

Does anyone have a copy of the major highways map for mapopolis pocket pc they can send me.I unfortunately dont have it and dont have the subscription now to download it even though I have most of the maps of the states it makes it hard to cross country route without the major highways map

[+yyzdnl]

Another good auto routing software that takes custom POI's so you can import cache locations is Destinator.

 

http://www.destinatortechnologies.com/index_gb.html

 

Puts me in the nearest parking lot to the cache every time. Great voice turn by turn directions and supports TTS so it will speak street names.

Edited September 21, 2006 by yyzdnl