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I need one pocket querry with 1000 results


Harv

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When I lost my GPSMap 76 last month, I upgraded to a GPSMap 60c. The primary difference, as far as Geocaching is concerned, is that I can store 1000 waypoints now.

 

I'm pretty basic in the way I use Geocaching.com...I pay a membership to get a file I can upload to my GPS that has the geocaches that are closest to my house. Caches are kind of dense along the I-15 corridor in northern Utah, so it doesn't make sense for me to try to monitor multiple areas. I just want the 1000 closest to my house. Going from 500 to 1000 caches is going to increase the radius from my house by a few (very few) miles, but that's exactly what I want.

 

I know that I can do four or five pocket queries of 500 caches each in some sort of expanding pattern from my house, and then buy a program that will let me merge them together and select the 1000 closest to my house, but that is really more complicated than I want. Geocaching.com setting the PQ limit to 5 queries of 500 each seems a little lazy. I only need 1 query each week, so why can't I do 1000?

 

Please, Jeremy and crew. Consider this. You've added feature after feature (Waymarking?) when all some of us really want is an improved Geocaching experience.

 

Thanks.

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... I know that I can do four or five pocket queries of 500 caches each in some sort of expanding pattern from my house, and then buy a program that will let me merge them together and select the 1000 closest to my house, but that is really more complicated than I want. Geocaching.com setting the PQ limit to 5 queries of 500 each seems a little lazy. I only need 1 query each week, so why can't I do 1000?...
You want the site changed so you don't have to run two queries. Are you sure that it's TPTB that are lazy? :D
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You want the site changed so you don't have to run two queries. Are you sure that it's TPTB that are lazy? :D

Hmm. It's not clear to me at all that I can get the 1000 caches closest to my home with only two queries. Yes, I can get 1000 caches that way, but not the 1000 I want.

 

I shouldn't have used the word lazy. But as a programmer myself (see, I have an excuse for having no tact), I'm aware of some of the shortcuts we take sometimes. We don't want our servers to get hammered, and we know we need to limit bandwidth, so we go for the easy way of solving that problem. The kind of flexibility I'm asking for in the PQ limits (and others have asked for in recent threads) would take more work and more thought/design to implement. And it's not the kind of feature where people ooh and aah like with Google Earth integration. So features like this get put off.

Edited by Harv
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Hmm. It's not clear to me at all that I can get the 1000 caches closest to my home with only two queries. Yes, I can get 1000 caches that way, but not the 1000 I want.

Create one "nearest query", with caches placed before a certain date and one "nearest query" with all caches after that date. You'll have to experiment which date gives you around 500 results for the first query.

 

And if you also exclude found caches your query range will expand over time due to found and/or archived caches.

 

This should give you almost the same result as the 1 1000 caches query.

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Create one "nearest query", with caches placed before a certain date and one "nearest query" with all caches after that date. You'll have to experiment which date gives you around 500 results for the first query.

...

This should give you almost the same result as the 1 1000 caches query.

Thank you. I'll give that a try. I think that's the same thing Stunod suggested. I guess the trick is finding the right date to make the radius of the two circles close, and then coming back to adjust as necessary so I don't get a lot of drift over time.

 

...And if you also exclude found caches your query range will expand over time due to found and/or archived caches....

Ha ha ha! I *wish* I had enough time for geocaching to make that statement true. The fact is that new geocaches are placed in my area at a much faster rate than I find them or they are archived. At least that's been the case for the last several years.

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Jeremy has said many times that the 500 limit is here to stay (bandwidth, details, etc., etc.).

 

But - How about another option that might actually make some sense to this discussion? Since the GPX files and the details included are the culprit in the bandwidth, what about about an option that if you choose a LOC file instead of the GPX, the query results were 1000 instead of 500? It would still count toward your 5 PQ for the day, but this would give cachers the opportunity to get 5000 caches daily, but only LIMITED information about them.

 

My largest GPX from a PQ recently sent was 463 points at 2.44MB. I just did a "save as" as saved it as a LOC file. Size was 124KB. In many instances, I'd be willing to get the files as LOC or even a "reduced GPX" with a very limited number of caches if it meant more per PQ.

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Jeremy has said many times that the 500 limit is here to stay (bandwidth, details, etc., etc.).

 

But - How about another option that might actually make some sense to this discussion? Since the GPX files and the details included are the culprit in the bandwidth, what about about an option that if you choose a LOC file instead of the GPX, the query results were 1000 instead of 500? It would still count toward your 5 PQ for the day, but this would give cachers the opportunity to get 5000 caches daily, but only LIMITED information about them.

 

My largest GPX from a PQ recently sent was 463 points at 2.44MB. I just did a "save as" as saved it as a LOC file. Size was 124KB. In many instances, I'd be willing to get the files as LOC or even a "reduced GPX" with a very limited number of caches if it meant more per PQ.

 

I like your idea, but I need the details that are in the GPX. I wrote a program that converts the GPX to a format I can load on my Palm so that I can see the cache notes, hint, and most recent log entries.

 

Maybe the best way to deal with the 500 cache limit is to allow us to set the desired results to be greater than 500, but with the understanding that every time the results cross a 500 cache threshold, we will get an additional email and lose another credit that day toward our 5 query max. So, my pocket query with id=16667 will send two emails with 16667a.gpx and 16667b.gpx if I ask for 1000 results.

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I like your idea, but I need the details that are in the GPX. I wrote a program that converts the GPX to a format I can load on my Palm so that I can see the cache notes, hint, and most recent log entries.

 

Then you go back to my first statement:

Jeremy has said many times that the 500 limit is here to stay (bandwidth, details, etc., etc.).
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They should just make it a 2500 caches and/or 5 pq a day, whatever comes first. It's stupid the way it is, as those 2500 caches a day are now send anyways, but take 5 pq and a lot of work for us 'customers' and probably induce even more server load and/or bandwidth usage as well.

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I could be wrong, but I think part of the issue is with file size.

The bandwidth used to send 500 caches x 2 vs 1000 caches is essentially the same, but some of my 500 cache PQs are running close to 3 megs zipped. make that 1000 caches and you would have a 6meg attachment, which is bigger then the 5meg attachment size many ISPs will allow. So then you have to add in the time and expense of constantly trying to explain to people who may not be very computer literate why their PQs aren't getting delivered. Just do a little search and look at what a major hassle it's been trying to explain things to people when various ISPs have had issues with mail from GC.com (AOL, Charter, and Yahoo are all recent ones).

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I could be wrong, but I think part of the issue is with file size.

The bandwidth used to send 500 caches x 2 vs 1000 caches is essentially the same, but some of my 500 cache PQs are running close to 3 megs zipped. make that 1000 caches and you would have a 6meg attachment, which is bigger then the 5meg attachment size many ISPs will allow. So then you have to add in the time and expense of constantly trying to explain to people who may not be very computer literate why their PQs aren't getting delivered. Just do a little search and look at what a major hassle it's been trying to explain things to people when various ISPs have had issues with mail from GC.com (AOL, Charter, and Yahoo are all recent ones).

 

That makes sense.

 

How about direct file download? :D

 

Just kidding, 1k per PQ isn't a ‘must have’ for me. Just fewer to set up when I'm doing something like the whole state.

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They should just make it a 2500 caches and/or 5 pq a day, whatever comes first. It's stupid the way it is, as those 2500 caches a day are now send anyways, but take 5 pq and a lot of work for us 'customers' and probably induce even more server load and/or bandwidth usage as well.
However, many people only get one PQ a week and happily live with only 500 target caches. Many of these people would choose to get a 2500 cache PQ weekly, even though they really have no use for it.
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They should just make it a 2500 caches and/or 5 pq a day, whatever comes first. It's stupid the way it is, as those 2500 caches a day are now send anyways, but take 5 pq and a lot of work for us 'customers' and probably induce even more server load and/or bandwidth usage as well.

I continue to be amazed at why it is that some folks NEED to get 2500 caches a day in a download. Not like you could find that many. I know caches get archived and disabled and the like but that could happen 2 minutes after a PQ too. The purpose of a PQ was never to build, create and maintain your own personal offline database. Oh well - to each his own.

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I just want the 1000 closest to my house.

 

...

 

Please, Jeremy and crew. Consider this. You've added feature after feature (Waymarking?) when all some of us really want is an improved Geocaching experience.

*Total Caches Found - 129

I am continually amazed how the newer cachers with only a handful of finds are so vocal about needing larger PQs, yet the power-cachers among us with thousands or even tens of thousands of finds, seem to get along just fine with the existing mechanism :D

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Oh, and you don't need to BUY a program to merge the PQs. There are several free programs out there that can do it. As a programmer you would probably like GPSBabel the best, since it can be run from a command line.

 

His GPSr came with a program that will do that for him. Might take 3 steps but it's still pretty simple!

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I continue to be amazed what people expect from Geocaching.com. When I wanted these capabilities, I spent $15 on a program that lets me combine my PQs and generate GPX files with whatever number of caches I want. It also lets me rename the caches so I don't have to worry if my GPSr can handle the 7 character GC names. I've been able to find out from users here and on that products site how to set up my PQs to efficiently cover the area I'm interested in. I've even learnt techniques to keep my database up-to-date despite the fact that archived cache aren't returned in the PQs.

 

P.S. In preparing this response and I checked and saw that that program now cost $25 to register instead of $15. I also see that if I want to upgrade to the newest version it will cost me another $15. If I have to pay $15 every two years to upgrade it would be worth it. I guess if Jeremy charged an additional $7.50 per year for a premium membership, I should expect him to provide the features in this program :D In anycase, as Mopar stated, if you are a programmer you could accomplish the same things using a free program like GPSBabel.

 

P.P.S I like Waymarking and some of the other features that Jeremy has spent my premium membership money on.

Edited by tozainamboku
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I continue to be amazed at why it is that some folks NEED to get 2500 caches a day in a download. Not like you could find that many. I know caches get archived and disabled and the like but that could happen 2 minutes after a PQ too. The purpose of a PQ was never to build, create and maintain your own personal offline database. Oh well - to each his own.

Well, you can stop being amazed, because I'll be happy to explain it to you.

 

Large numbers of caches in an area downloaded into your GPSr aren't because you expect to look for all of them. It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

 

When I go out of town I frequently bring 500 caches with me in my GPSr, but rarely do I find more than 2 or 3. The reason is I'm not always caching near my hotel, or at a specific place at a specific time. I'll ride around the city doing my job, and at some point decide that I have a few minutes before the next appointment and try to find a nearby cache.

 

Same thing for riding around most of the time at home. If I'm planning a specific caching trip I can pick out the caches I want and go for them. If I'm out running an errand and see that I'm going to be close to a cache, I might just go for it. If not for the 500 caches in my GPSr I wouldn't have had that chance.

 

Getting 2500 a day seems excessive, but it lets me get one PQ for home, one for the office, one for my trip this week, one for my trip next week, etc., and be building up the database of logs for each cache. It's often helpful to have more than just the previous 5.

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I continue to be amazed at why it is that some folks NEED to get 2500 caches a day in a download. Not like you could find that many. I know caches get archived and disabled and the like but that could happen 2 minutes after a PQ too. The purpose of a PQ was never to build, create and maintain your own personal offline database. Oh well - to each his own.

Well, you can stop being amazed, because I'll be happy to explain it to you.

 

Large numbers of caches in an area downloaded into your GPSr aren't because you expect to look for all of them. It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

 

When I go out of town I frequently bring 500 caches with me in my GPSr, but rarely do I find more than 2 or 3. The reason is I'm not always caching near my hotel, or at a specific place at a specific time. I'll ride around the city doing my job, and at some point decide that I have a few minutes before the next appointment and try to find a nearby cache.

 

Same thing for riding around most of the time at home. If I'm planning a specific caching trip I can pick out the caches I want and go for them. If I'm out running an errand and see that I'm going to be close to a cache, I might just go for it. If not for the 500 caches in my GPSr I wouldn't have had that chance.

 

Getting 2500 a day seems excessive, but it lets me get one PQ for home, one for the office, one for my trip this week, one for my trip next week, etc., and be building up the database of logs for each cache. It's often helpful to have more than just the previous 5.

Even more amazed than I was. - lots of server load and work and bandwidth just to grab 2 or 3 caches when you have a spare few minutes. Five logs has always seemed like more than enough for me.

 

It would, of course, be highly convenient to have the entire up-to-date database to pack around with me where-ever I roam but I can't. So I work with the tools made availble to me and try to target areas best as I can. Get my PQs on the fly. If I happen to miss one, not big deal - maybe next time.

 

Just because I don't understand it doesn't make it wrong - to each thier own. As long as you are having fun. :D

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OK, so maybe "newer" wasn't the right word. How about low-volume. :D

129 finds in six years has been just right for me. It allows me to hunt a cache when I have time, but still have a life. :lol:

 

Actually, if you'll think about it, my casual attitude toward geocaching is a good indication of exactly why I want my PQ search to be simpler. If it gets too complicated, it's just not worth it to me.

 

And Groundspeak probably gets about as many dollars from me as they do from you. So, I can't make a feature request unless I have a lot of finds? It was a simple feature request. I never meant to start a holy war. :lol:

 

Large numbers of caches in an area downloaded into your GPSr aren't because you expect to look for all of them. It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

Yes, exactly! You get it. And 500 caches just doesn't cover my local roaming area anymore.

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Oh, and you don't need to BUY a program to merge the PQs. There are several free programs out there that can do it. As a programmer you would probably like GPSBabel the best, since it can be run from a command line.

 

His GPSr came with a program that will do that for him. Might take 3 steps but it's still pretty simple!

 

Thanks Mopar and ODragon. I'll look into those. Come to think of it, there was a CD that came with my GPSr that I never opened.

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It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

 

When I go out of town I frequently bring 500 caches with me in my GPSr, but rarely do I find more than 2 or 3. The reason is I'm not always caching near my hotel, or at a specific place at a specific time. I'll ride around the city doing my job, and at some point decide that I have a few minutes before the next appointment and try to find a nearby cache.

Sounds like you would be better off with a Treo or other web-enabled cell phone so you can punch in your coords and the site will tell you what's close. Heck, you could even get new-cache notifications sent directly to your phone and maybe even get a FTF in a far-away town because you happened to be close :D

 

You could also get one of the popular RAZR cell phones and buy the Geocache Navigator software for it and cache with just the GPS in your cell phone.

 

Getting 2500 caches a day doesn't sound like the right solution because your GPS can only hold 500-1000 caches and you might be in an area you didn't prepare for. Being able to get online on the spot with a GPS-enabled cell phone sounds like a much better option.

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Large numbers of caches in an area downloaded into your GPSr aren't because you expect to look for all of them. It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

Yes, exactly! You get it. And 500 caches just doesn't cover my local roaming area anymore.

 

Ok - the seriously. Look into GSAK and using two PQs with the "date placed" groupings. You'll get 2500 caches every day - 5 TIMES the 500 limit.

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It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

 

When I go out of town I frequently bring 500 caches with me in my GPSr, but rarely do I find more than 2 or 3. The reason is I'm not always caching near my hotel, or at a specific place at a specific time. I'll ride around the city doing my job, and at some point decide that I have a few minutes before the next appointment and try to find a nearby cache.

Sounds like you would be better off with a Treo or other web-enabled cell phone so you can punch in your coords and the site will tell you what's close. Heck, you could even get new-cache notifications sent directly to your phone and maybe even get a FTF in a far-away town because you happened to be close :)

 

You could also get one of the popular RAZR cell phones and buy the Geocache Navigator software for it and cache with just the GPS in your cell phone.

 

Having a web enabled phone sure would cool :lol: Of course I don't have a one, so like Starbrand said, "I work with the tools made availble to me..."

 

Getting 2500 caches a day doesn't sound like the right solution because your GPS can only hold 500-1000 caches and you might be in an area you didn't prepare for. Being able to get online on the spot with a GPS-enabled cell phone sounds like a much better option.

I think there are some gpsr units that have the possiably to hold thousands of waypoints on the expanded memory.

Or you could upload just part of the caches to the gpsr, and send the whole thing to the pda, allowing you to use the ones on the gps to find the nearest 'sample' cache and then looking up that cache and checking 'nearest' caches. (I've done that a few times when the file was large and got 'cut off' by the waypoint limit on my gps unit)

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It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

 

When I go out of town I frequently bring 500 caches with me in my GPSr, but rarely do I find more than 2 or 3. The reason is I'm not always caching near my hotel, or at a specific place at a specific time. I'll ride around the city doing my job, and at some point decide that I have a few minutes before the next appointment and try to find a nearby cache.

Sounds like you would be better off with a Treo or other web-enabled cell phone so you can punch in your coords and the site will tell you what's close. Heck, you could even get new-cache notifications sent directly to your phone and maybe even get a FTF in a far-away town because you happened to be close :lol:

 

You could also get one of the popular RAZR cell phones and buy the Geocache Navigator software for it and cache with just the GPS in your cell phone.

 

Getting 2500 caches a day doesn't sound like the right solution because your GPS can only hold 500-1000 caches and you might be in an area you didn't prepare for. Being able to get online on the spot with a GPS-enabled cell phone sounds like a much better option.

Oh man, I TOTALLY agree!!! If you gave me a Treo and paid for the monthly bills I'd eliminate all of my PQs immediately. :)

 

But if I need to pay for it myself I'll have to pass. I'd like to, but can't go that route quite yet. I'll stick with the $30 a year membership, and the paid version of GSAK (which I use lots and lots, it's awesome), and that gets me what I need.

 

I actually have never run 5 PQs in a day, and probably never 5 in a week, but was using that as an example of why someone would need a lot of PQs even though they don't intend to find more that many.

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500 caches just doesn't cover my local roaming area anymore.

Another thing to consider is to build your database using the date method described, and then load your GPS using filters provided with GSAK.

 

If you only load the closest 1,000 3-star or less caches, and also remove multi-caches and puzzle caches, you'll have coverage over a MUCH larger area than if you include the ones you probably couldn't/wouldn't do on the fly while working.

 

Save the harder, more time consuming, caches for the weekend when you know you'll have the time and proper clothing to go for these.

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Even more amazed than I was. - lots of server load and work and bandwidth just to grab 2 or 3 caches when you have a spare few minutes.

It sure beats zero caches. The site provides the service for the money I give them. They've decided the level of bandwidth they'll let me use, so using it to get the caches I can seems reasonable to me.

 

Five logs has always seemed like more than enough for me.
Most of the time I don't need any logs, but every once in a while someone has given better coords, or added a little info that ends up turning a DNF into a smiley. :) It's sad reading that information after I get home and I'm logging my DNF knowing that if I'd have brought the logs with me on the hunt I would have had another find.

 

It would, of course, be highly convenient to have the entire up-to-date database to pack around with me where-ever I roam but I can't. So I work with the tools made availble to me and try to target areas best as I can.
I know what you're saying, but I see the PQs as a tool made available to me, so I use them pretty much as I've described. Maybe not as efficient as some would like, but it's what they're there for.

 

Just because I don't understand it doesn't make it wrong - to each thier own. As long as you are having fun. :)
That's a good attitude, and I share it. I'm not trying to suggest anyone is wrong either, just helping folks better understand why some of us enjoy getting a lot of PQs and finding not a lot of caches.

 

I'm having a BLAST at this. :lol:

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Oh, and you don't need to BUY a program to merge the PQs. There are several free programs out there that can do it. As a programmer you would probably like GPSBabel the best, since it can be run from a command line.
His GPSr came with a program that will do that for him. Might take 3 steps but it's still pretty simple!
If he's just loading them to his GPSr, I don't think that he needs to merge the files at all.
I continue to be amazed at why it is that some folks NEED to get 2500 caches a day in a download. Not like you could find that many. I know caches get archived and disabled and the like but that could happen 2 minutes after a PQ too. The purpose of a PQ was never to build, create and maintain your own personal offline database. Oh well - to each his own.
Well, you can stop being amazed, because I'll be happy to explain it to you.

 

Large numbers of caches in an area downloaded into your GPSr aren't because you expect to look for all of them. It's because you don't know where you'll be when you find yourself with a few minutes to go caching.

 

When I go out of town I frequently bring 500 caches with me in my GPSr, but rarely do I find more than 2 or 3. The reason is I'm not always caching near my hotel, or at a specific place at a specific time. I'll ride around the city doing my job, and at some point decide that I have a few minutes before the next appointment and try to find a nearby cache. ...

Your response reminded me of a PQ I build just the other day. I'm going to find myself in the LA area soon and will likely have a day or so to go caching. I targeted the PQ to just those caches that I will likely be interested in finding and was able to get them all in one PQ covering the area from Burbank to Newport Beach. The trick is not having your PQs return caches that you won't be interested in finding, for whatever reason. Edited by sbell111
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