GSAK -> 60CSx

[+Crew of Misfits]

I'm new to the geocaching world, but I have done a few with my brother. I've got a 60CSx coming that should be here soon. Actually, it's a father's day gift that I apparently spoiled. I was going to buy one and my wife had to tell me not to. Oops. Oh well. But now I have to wait.

 

Anyway, I digress. In the meantime I've been playing with pocket queries and GSAK. I have a couple questions...

 

1) When I send the waypoints to the GPS from GSAK, do the icon show up as caches? Or do they show up as generic waypoints?

 

2) Are found caches automatically shown as open treasure chests (found) after they are sent from GSAK?

 

3) If I receive from the GPS to GSAK, will found caches be idendified?

 

I'm not sure if it's taking the data from the actual GPX file or what.

 

I can't wait to get my hands on the GPS and get out there with the family.

 

Thanks for any help,

Craig

Edited May 26, 2007 by Crew of Misfits

[+Miragee]

Welcome to the Forums, and to the addiction!

 

To get all the information you want in GSAK, you really should become a Premium Member. Then you can get pocket queries, which contain up to 500 caches centered on whichever areas you specify.

 

GSAK can create a "Smart Name" for the waypoint that tells you lots about the cache, like its Type, Size, Difficulty, and Terrain.

 

After you find the cache, you will mark it as found on your GPSr.

 

When I return from a caching trip, I download the tracks and waypoints from my GPSr to my Mapsource maps. Then I can retrace my route and log the caches in order, seeing the open Treasure Chest icon along the track.

 

I pick one of the caches along the trail as a Centerpoint in GSAK, mark each of the caches I Found, as Found, then when I'm all done logging the caches on GC.com, I do a Filter for the caches marked as Found. I move those caches to my Found database in GSAK.

Edited May 26, 2007 by Miragee

[+Crew of Misfits]

Hmm. Thanks for the respose. This might be one of those things people do different ways. Seems like a lot of steps to reach a common goal.

 

It's becomming apparent that it's probably something I'm just going to have to play with when I get the unit.

 

I am a premium member actually. I signed up in advance just to play with the pocket queries and GSAK.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll try this technique when I finally get the unit.

 

If anyone else does things a little different please share.

 

Thanks,

Craig

[+Miragee]

Here is a rudimentary GSAK tutorial that might be helpful.

 

I just load my new PQ in GSAK, filter out the "Last 2 DNFs," then filter for the direction I am heading, send the waypoints to my GPSr, Export for Cachemate on my Palm, HotSync the Palm, and I'm out the door.

[+Crew of Misfits]

Cool. The tut looks nice. I'll have to read through it in depth when I have a little more time. I've been playing with GPXSonar on my phone (WM5), but I have heard a few people talking about Cachemate. I'll have to look deeper into it also.

 

Thanks for all the help.

[+Grenadyr]

I load my PQ's into GSAK to consolidate them and upload them as a POI list into the GPS. This allows me as many as I want for random caching opportunities and doesn't clutter up my waypoint list. If you figure out the whole POI thing as well you can fit quite a bit of information into each entry. My title currently includes the cache code, name, difficulty, terrain, cache size, and travel bug status. The description field includes the first 88 characters of the hint decoded and reversed to make it easier to read in the field. Once I find a cache I just mark the location and set the symbol to the open treasure chest, it marks time and date as well as assigning a sequential number so you can easily keep track of what you found and when. Once I get back home I just pull up each "open treasure chest" waypoint, map it in the gps, and then find the closest POI entry which is always the geocache I found and enter it into the website. I don't think I'm describing it well but it works very well and is quick and easy to manage.

 

Either way with your new gps and GSAK you will have plenty of options to play with... Have fun.

Edited May 27, 2007 by Grenadyr

[+ergomaniac]

You might also want to look into using the custom icons that match the symbols used on the cache pages. GSAK will allow you to configure your icon setup so that you get multi's, traditionals, mystery etc. with the corresponding symbols. You can even have a symbol with a green check mark to indicate a found cache and another with a red X on the cache symbol to indicate a cache that is currently unavailable. It takes a bit of configuring but once you get it setup, it just works! You can do this with waypoints or POI's, just search this forum, there have been some really good instructions given for setting this up. It's really an advantage being able to see the type of cache at a glance rather than just a gold chest.

 

As for the found caches, there is a special pocket query that you can run once a week that will give you your found caches. I run this query and load it into GSAK to keep my "founds" up to date. Some "founds" will not show up in standard queries if they have been archived after you have found them, so this is an easy way to get an up to date list. You can manually set your finds in GSAK but that seems like work to me!

[+Crew of Misfits]

Cool guys. Well it definitely sounds like something I'll need to play with. Thanks for all the enlightenment.