Palm Pilot IIIxe, Paperless Caching, Markwells welcome!

[+Team Panda]

My wife and I went out Saturday for an informal geocaching event and met some wonderful folks, woodwalker9, Little'n, paris1time, and ddkds.

 

We had breakfast together and did a bit of caching had a lot of fun, made some new friends, and I discovered just how handy and convenient paperless caching could be. In fact, I was so impressed I went home, did some research and bought a Palm Pilot IIIxe just for paperless caching.

 

Now all I need to know is what I need to know!

 

I know I need something called GSAK and being a lifelong knife guy, I'm willing to bet this stands for "Geocaching Swiss Army Knife" Is this something I can DL free or do I have to buy it? If I've gotta buy, can you please point me in the right direction?

 

Also, if you can think of anything else I need to make the leap from paper, I'd appreciate any help you can offer!

 

Thanks much and thanks to everyone I met this weekend, I had a BLAST!

[+Roland_oso]

Cachemate for the Palm - $8.

 

GSAK for the PC- Free, but after a trial period you will get a nag screen that is a pain in the rear- so $20 to get rid of the nag screen.

 

and you are already a Premium Member so you are covered as far as getting Pocket Queries.

 

Use GSAK to open gpx file from the PQ

 

And then export it to your GPSr

 

and create a Cachemate file to Hot-Sync to the Palm.

Edited October 16, 2006 by Roland_oso

[+welch]

Do you the palm cable, and the software from Palm, ie 'sync manager'? You'll need those to be able to send files to your computer to the palm. After than you need something to allow you to convert the PQ data and read it on the palm.

 

Geocacher U has a nice piece about how to set up spinner/plucker for paperless caching.

Spinner is used to change the Pocket Query to html, then plucker desktop uses the html to build a file you can view on the palm (using the plucker 'palm'). You could GSAK instead of spinner to build the html. Both are programs you should register and pay for, but will work (and nag you) even if you don't.

 

If other common one people use is cachemate. Apperently, cachemate even comes with its own convertor so you could skip GASK if you want. GSAK is by itself a way to store, filter and merge PQs, it will also allow you send waypoints to your GPS unit!!

[+parker313]

Article on Paperless Caching

This article explains paperless caching, using GSAK and CacheMate. It was the only reference I needed to get going - very thorough

[+clan_Barron]

Article on Paperless Caching

This article explains paperless caching, using GSAK and CacheMate. It was the only reference I needed to get going - very thorough

 

Man that article is old (like me) glad to hear that people still find it useful. I still have my Palm IIIxe and still use it to cache!

[+Team Panda]

Thanks everyone, looks like a lot of homework here!

 

I knew I could count on y'all to come through with the goods!

[+Big Max]

One of the problems I ran into using GSAK and Cachemate was every time I uploaded all the caches to Cachemate it reset all my cache categories to Unfiled. I got around this by sorting out all the unfound caches in GSAK then exporting them to Cachemate and importing them as unfound. After you play with it a bit this should be clearer.

[+Swink Family]

Yes...GSAK and Cachemate...definitly the way to go. Tried several trials, these are the easiest to use. GSAK does take some time to get used to but its worth it. I just set up queries w/the same names as my databases, or visa versa, and when they run just load them into GSAK. Then its just a couple clicks to transfer to the Palm. Which you can set up catagories to separate your cashes. Totally customizable!

Edited October 17, 2006 by Swink Family

[+traildad]

 

Now all I need to know is what I need to know!

 

May I add a question to this topic. I just received my Palm IIIxe from Ebay. ($29 shipped with 8mb, cradle, hard cover, soft case and a software CD). I have read people say that they load 500 or a 1000 cache listings on their PDA and can choose a cache on the move so to speak. My question is if I have a 1000 caches to choose from what kind of search tools do I have. When I am at home I look for caches near to the coordinates of a spot I want to visit. I get a short list and pick which one to go after. Will I have to go through the list in the PDA one by one to find a cache that I like that is near me? How do you all do it? Thanks Ken

[+NightPilot]

With Cachemate, you can open any cache and do a search for the nearest caches. It gets the coordinates from the open cache. Thus it's helpful to have a cache called Home, with your home coordinates, if you want to search for those nearest your home. You can also manually enter coordinates, but it's somewhat cumbersome. In practice, it's not that difficult to search. At home, I would suggest using GSAK for the searches, because it's much easier than doing it on the Palm. You can also use Google Earth, and import your .gpx file from your pocket query, go to the area you intend to visit, and see the caches displayed on the satellite photo. Google Earth is the best tool for geocaching in a long time, because you can see where the cache is using a high-resolution photo, and find the best route to a parking area, and the best way to walk on to the cache, as well as see which tree it's under, or very close to that.