A bit of bad luck means some advice needed.

[+Paul & Ros]

For the last 3 years we have been happily caching using a Garmin Geko 201 plus an old Palm M515 with a GPS backpack fitted to it which I got cheap from that auction site.

 

 

The Geko found the caches while the Palm ran Fugawi to help us navigate to the general area and Plucker to go paperless with the cache pages.

 

 

We were very happy with this set up until this week when we had a double whammy of bad luck. The GPS add on for the Palm stopped working so fugawi is currently no more use to us than a paper OS map and today, whilst out caching, we managed to lose our Geko somewhere within just a few feet of here : http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...c2-5ff920ae3414.

 

 

So - It looks like we are going to have to invest in some new equipment and rather than just replace what we had it seems like a good time to try and get something which will do everything we need in one unit. As we have never had a tom tom style sat nav for the car it also seemed like a good idea to try and get something which would do non cache related navigation as well.

 

 

 

Any ideas then for a single piece of kit (and any additional software) which will :

• Work as an in car sat nav for getting from A to B.
  
• Run Fugawi UK v2 (I think this runs on PPC as well as Palm).
  
• Run plucker or something similar enabling us to read gpx based files on the move.
  
• Work as a "follow the arrow" GPS to allow us to find caches.
  
• Not take forever and a day when switching between applications.
  

Not fussed about it being brand new if something older and second hand will do the job.

 

 

Any advice gladly received to enable us to get back up and running.

 

 

Paul

Edited August 27, 2007 by Paul & Ros

[+Delta68]

Sorry to hear about your recent loss. We lost a camera out caching and we were gutted!

 

Anyway, to answer your question we use a Mio P550

 

Software:

TomTom 6 (whole of europe edition) to get from 'A to B'

Memorymap OS edition - whole of uk , for the final leg

Beeline to list waypoints etc and to display the gpx details as a web page. This also has an arrow but we don't use it.

'Switch' an essential little app for switching between apps

Port Splitter - So I can run beeline,MM and TT all at the same time

 

I have the three external buttons on the P550 assigned to switch,beeline and memorymap

 

 

oh and

GSAK on the home PC

 

Use Lordelphs Lovely Icons for MemoryMap

and this: http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=1483 to export GSAK to TomTom points of interest.

 

 

It all took a while to set up but it's worth it in the end

 

Good Luck!

[nobby.nobbs]

a decent pda like a ipac. and maplins sell a bluetooth gps receiver for something like £70. sends the gps info to the pda then get the software listed and you're away.

[+jennie.m]

watch out that fugawi will work on your PPC, it will run on the mio p350, but you won't be able to add waypoints either by typing in the co-ords or by sending them from the pc (so pretty useless for caching). I use memorymap with lordelphs icons, and the linked html files.

[+The Blorenges]

Mio 550

Memory Map with GSAK (Lordelphs icons....) and Cachemate. Also use the 'goto' feature of Memory Map (Cachemate also has a 'goto' feature).

 

TomTom for A to B

 

Switch program to switch between apps because Microsoft Pocket PC software is unable to close it's own programs down!!

 

Franson GPS gate program to create a virtual comm port so all apps can see the GPS

 

External battery box with 4 x NiMH to power it after the 4 hours it gives me.... Unfortunately pocket PC's are not like Palms.... their batteries don't last long!

 

I've actually stopped using my Etrex Vista C and instead use the Mio with the Memory Map goto.

 

Chris

[+Paul & Ros]

Thanks for the posts so far.

 

 

I was looking at prices for P550 and P350 (plus sat nav software to run on them) when I saw the Garmin iQue 3000 for under £70.

 

 

It looks like this comes with sat nav software out of the box and the Fugawi software I already have should run on it as it ran on my old palm M515.

 

 

Only bit left to find is the "follow the arrow to the cache" software.

 

 

Anyone else used this PDA to cache with ?

 

 

I know the P550 is better but there is a big difference in cost here. This PDA is much cheaper, cheaper even than a direct replacement for my poor Geko. Should I bite the bullet and go for a Mio or will the iQue do what I need ?