Paperless using a PDA

[+jcblough]

I was just curious how effective this was. Looking at it, if you get a cheap palm for $99 then the needed softward - gps swiss army knife plust the palm app, you are in for like $140, but still have no maps. How practical of a set up is this? Does it greatly improve anything to justify the purchase?

[+Renegade Knight]

If it's just caching you want to get the palm for you can get a less expensive used palm that will do the job. Then it's 60 bucks you are out.

 

If you have other uses for the PDA those should drive what you are getting.

 

As for paperless. I enjoy having accesss to the caches on my PDA very much. It's handy as heck.

[+NorthWes]

I second Renegade Knight's comments 100%, having used a second-hand Zire 71 for months now. The Zire's 1mb low-res camera is a useful alternative to my bulky pro-style digital camera. I am in love with carrying the descriptions for a ton of benchmarks around in the 'palm' of my hand... I download bulk .loc files and edit them in GSAK to add extra details, then pop them over to the Palm device and away I go.

 

I've loaded maps (as 'photos') to my blackberry phone; I'm going to do the same thing to the Palm Zire for an upcoming trip to CA for area caching before the Geocoinfest. I upload topo 'snapshots' and found-log photos for my benchmark hunting purposes far more than I've ever needed them for caching. The 'Tube' series of interactive maps for the Palm proved awesome for navigating around New York City on the surface and via subway ('Tube' - get it?); I understand there's an annotated Tube map for assisting London subway users in finding nearby caches. I use my Garmin for the 'interactive' map while caching...

[+Bad_CRC]

I've seen Palm IIIxe sell for 5 bucks on ebay. works GREAT for geocaching. definitely get them for under 20 bucks. You can get a high res color sony clie for under 40 bucks.

 

will handle 1000 cache pages and all the logs.

 

If you are going to be in a specific area, you can download screenshots of google maps pretty easily

 

 

I wish I had known about how easy and cheap it actually was.

[+Fritoman]

disregard this post

Edited December 6, 2006 by Fritoman

[+Lighteye]

I use quakemap to export satellite imagery to my Pam Tungsten T5. Works like a champ !

[+jcblough]

I was looking at the palm z22. I've tried them for organizing once and fell dreadfully short of being organized Then it got stolen out of my cube. So that's a point of concern now. My current "caching pda" is a 60 page notepad ala a log book I keep in my truck's ashtray

[+biosearch]

Having seen some m105 palms on a website for a Florida event (can't remember which) I started looking at them. Two of the units were being given at door prizes there and a total of ten were going to be onsite, put together by a geocaching family in the state.

 

I havn't had a palm before and thought, since you can store ebooks on them, that my daughters might like to have one too. I purchased three off of ebay for a grand total of $20.00, the shipping brought the whole batch up to $48.00 (watch shipping on e-mail, it can kill you, I got one of the pdas for a penny and then had to pay $12.00 in shipping, but I took that into account and still got a pda for 12 bucks).

 

The software is free for geocaching, although if you want the full version it will cost you the unbelievable expensive amount of $8.00 (if you don't pay it to support the programmer you shouldn't be geocaching, imho). The other software that goes with the palms can be downloaded from the palm website even if the palm that you purchase does not have the software with it.

 

There are a number of palms on ebay that do not have the sync cradle, you have to have one. So unless you want to purchase it seperately or if you purchase two and use the sync cradle from one for the other, I'd look for an auction that includes the cradle.

 

I'm looking forward to getting mine and getting this put together. With the prices on ebay I can't see a reason not to do it.

[+sbell111]

A couple years ago, I bought my dad a used palm V for about $20 after shipping. I loaded Plucker and Cache Log Book on it (for free). The total paperless expense for his set-up was about $20.

 

You could add GSAK for free if the nag screens don't drive you nutty or $25 to get rid of them.

 

Either way, paperless caching is much more convenient than the old way. In fact, if you add up the cost of printing out cache pages, I suspect that it pays for itself fairly quickly.

[+basenola]

We used CacheMate on the Palm and it makes managing our searches and finds very much easier than fumbling around with a sheaf of paper. The benefit far outweigh the cost.

[+Delawhere]

What is the difference between Cachemate and GSAK? Do I need both?

 

Thanks

Edited December 7, 2006 by Delawhere

[+WalruZ]

cachemate runs on the palm and shows you the data from the listing page for various caches. A cache page doesn't take up much memory, so you can fit a whole lot of cache pages into what is a very portable device.

 

GSAK can open a zipped pocket query such as you receive in email from running a pocket query. It can then load it to a palm, or a gps, or export it again in any number of formats. you run it on a windows box. it's basically the intermediary between the pocket query output and your palm / gps.

 

I don't suggest pinching dollars when it comes to buying a a palm. The newer ones are much faster than, say, the M-100 series which are imo painfully slow. if you get something from the tungsten series you can also run mapopolis, which will give you maps of your area (no more lugging around piles of maps / mapbooks) and can show you the caches on the map, much like a mapping gps. I use a geko for my GPS and my tungsten for all my mapping needs.

[+1/2 BSM]

I'm trying to go paperless. I have an old Palm III, have purchased GSAK and Plucker. I follow the direction and get to the point of syncing and I'm stuck. Seems there needs to be a pgm on the Palm to receive the info. Am I doing something wrong? Is there an easier way? Thanks a bunch!

Edited December 7, 2006 by 1/2 BSM

[+NightPilot]

The Plucker viewer has to be on the Palm, so you need to install that first. If you have a III, then Cachemate might work better for you, but that's rather subjective. Plucker will certainly work, although it's more work. Get the Sunrise desktop for Plucker if you plan to use it, it's much faster than the Plucker distiller, and will produce the .pdb file a lot quicker and easier.

 

The difference between Cachemate and GSAK is that GSAK is a Windows program which runs on the PC, takes the pocket queries or .loc files you receive from geocaching.com, and does whatever you like with them, including sending the waypoints to your GPS, and making the files for Cachemate. I also use it for archiving waypoints, by downloading them from my GPS into a separate database, so I can save waypoints, just in case, but delete them from my GPS. I can always put any of them back from the database if I need them. Cachemate runs on the Palm, and shows you the cache information while you're hunting. It also lets you log the time and date of the cache, and whatever information you want to log about the ones you hunted and found, or didn't find. That's why you need both - they do different things on different computers.

Edited December 7, 2006 by NightPilot

[+naviguesser74]

It's more money, I know, but results in carrying only one device -- if you get a Palm with BT, you can get a great globalsat GPSr and use the Palm for everything. GeoNiche, for the Palm, is great for geocaching and much more. Way more "customizable" than any Garmin and does all the CacheMate stuff. And, with an SD card, memory is limitless.

[+New England n00b]

I second Renegade Knight's comments 100%, having used a second-hand Zire 71 for months now. The Zire's 1mb low-res camera is a useful alternative to my bulky pro-style digital camera. I am in love with carrying the descriptions for a ton of benchmarks around in the 'palm' of my hand... I download bulk .loc files and edit them in GSAK to add extra details, then pop them over to the Palm device and away I go.

 

I've loaded maps (as 'photos') to my blackberry phone; I'm going to do the same thing to the Palm Zire for an upcoming trip to CA for area caching before the Geocoinfest. I upload topo 'snapshots' and found-log photos for my benchmark hunting purposes far more than I've ever needed them for caching. The 'Tube' series of interactive maps for the Palm proved awesome for navigating around New York City on the surface and via subway ('Tube' - get it?); I understand there's an annotated Tube map for assisting London subway users in finding nearby caches. I use my Garmin for the 'interactive' map while caching...

 

As a premium member, you can generate a .gpx Pocket Query which will give you TONS of information that the .loc files do not give you, with no extra work other than to set up the initial query, which is easy as pie...

 

To the OP:

 

I would also recommend Cachemate for an incredibly cheap (though not free) tool for use while caching. My Palm III died for good a while back, and when I replace it, I will be installing Cachemate onto the new machine. I just need to figure out WHICH Palm I want...

[+PKDepot]

I personally use a Dell Axim x50v which is a pocket PC instead of Palm. I can hook up wirelessly and go right to geocaching.com and see it that way or I can download the caches. I can get a GPS unit for the PDA although I haven't done that yet. It was spendy to get the PDA but since I use it for everything, it was well worth it. I had more trouble with my little Palm III than I could shake a stick at but haven't had issues with the Dell.

[+PKDepot]

I personally use a Dell Axim x50v which is a pocket PC instead of Palm. I can hook up wirelessly and go right to geocaching.com and see it that way or I can download the caches. I can get a GPS unit for the PDA although I haven't done that yet. It was spendy to get the PDA but since I use it for everything, it was well worth it. I had more trouble with my little Palm III than I could shake a stick at but haven't had issues with the Dell.

[+headybrew]

I've begun using my old handspring visor platinum. It's really old and clunky, but it seems to be working fine.

I found a compact USB hot sync cable to replace he big clunky desktop thing that came with it at the .99c store! It's got 8MB or RAM. I've currently got about 1200 cache pages in it with 3 logs each. It says it's still got 2.7MB free.

 

I'm sure a color screen would be nice. Also, being able to recharge it on a cradle or USB would be nice. But for a free find in my closet full'o'junk it seems pretty cool.

 

Just a note: GSAK is not required. It's really cool, especially if you want to keep track of many hundreds of caches in a database on your computer. But if you just want to have the cache page info with you in your pocket, CacheMate has it's own no-frills desktop software to upload the loc/gpx files to your pda.

[+TheBattons]

Having seen some m105 palms on a website for a Florida event (can't remember which)

 

What event? It's CacheApaloooza!

 

Two of the units were being given at door prizes there and a total of ten were going to be onsite, put together by a geocaching family in the state.

 

Actually its 4 being donated, along with a gift certificate for full versions of CacheMate each unit. Also, there are going to be 36 "loaners" for people to try paperless caching. And that family is us

 

We've started refurbishing PDAs for this event, buying them on eBay for cheap cheap, and tearing them down and rebuilding them. There are some very good deals to be had on eBay, if you have the time to wade through everything. And a low-end, "obsolete" PDA works just fine for geocaching. a PDA with 2 megs of RAM can still hold over 1000 caches in CacheMate, assuming you have nothing else on it.

 

CacheMate requires registration if you want to load more than 10 caches into it, so if you are a patient person and do no more than 10 caches a day, you can go the cheap-cheap way, a 2 meg PDA and unregistered CacheMate. Cachemate is a GREAT program though, kick in the $8 as soon as you can.

 

The Plucker method is an alternative, costing nothing, but requiring a bit more work up front. (see link for details)

 

Another great place to pick up deals is here on the forums under "GPS Garage Sale". You can find lots of great deals from people that, many times, have already set the PDAs up for paperless caching. (Insert shameless plug to look for my postings here *nudge nudge, wink wink*).

 

However you do it, DO it! It's inexpensive, compared to the price of paper and ink (how hard is it to milk a squid?!?!).

 

And if you have questions, drop us a line, we'd be more than happy to help.

 

Darrell of "TheBattons"

[+Team Dromomania]

I personally use a Dell Axim x50v which is a pocket PC instead of Palm. I can hook up wirelessly and go right to geocaching.com and see it that way or I can download the caches. I can get a GPS unit for the PDA although I haven't done that yet. It was spendy to get the PDA but since I use it for everything, it was well worth it. I had more trouble with my little Palm III than I could shake a stick at but haven't had issues with the Dell.

 

After my Palm Tungsten broke for the second time I also purchased a Dell Axim which has been great. Only screen washout in the sun has been a problem (just like the Palm). I just directly load the GPX file into the Dell and hit the road. But I miss the Plucker generated web pages. Is there a good program which will allow true web pages on a Pocket PC (with photos, etc).. Also I liked how I could search for the next nearest cache. The wireless feature is neat but you gotta be near a source.

 

Anyway, when heading out of town to attempt a few dozen caches then going paperless can't be beat.