tomtom 1 for geocaching?

[+EMRJPV]

I have a TomTom 1 I got about a month ago at West Marine. The had tham for 149.99. I want to try geocaching and did a few last night. The problem I seemed to be having was that when I would walk about 20-30 ft in any direction the gps coords didnt seem to change unless I was moving quickly. I know the tomtom is geared toward vehicles and roads so I am wondering if I need a handheld-type unit. Do they refresh more quickly or is this common. There wasnt any loss of sat signal or any major cover so I always had good reception. Any help appreciated.

[+StarBrand]

That unit isn't well suited to Geocaching for a number of reasons. First and foremost - it just isn't very rugged.

 

I would suggest a small handheld like the Garmin venture Cx. USb computer connection, color screen, dedicated geocaching mode, rugged, long battry life, routable mapping, expanable memory. Goes for around $170 if you shop around. Good blend of features and good enough to expand if your needs do as well.

[+briansnat]

Good for the car, not good for geocaching.

[+mousekakat]

I disagree. We use a TomTom One for caching without trouble. It does not update as often as we'd like, but we've gone around that by simply restarting it. Actually, we rather love our TomTom One!

 

There is a program called offroad navigator, do a search to find it on the forums here, that makes it even better, but we haven't used it yet.

 

You'll need to tap the screen once, go to browse map, use something to find the exact coordinates via the touchscreen and then start finding your caches.

 

It may not be as ideal as a handheld, but it's a good, solid little unit, and once you get to know it you'll find it works just fine!

[+Nachtraaf]

I started geocaching with an Ipaq HX4700 and TomTom Navigator 5. With a little TT add-on it was possible to make a POI of the entered coordinates. Then it was up to me to go to the POI.

 

So, never say it is not possible. The question is, how difficult do you want to play it :-)

 

I have now a handheld, because my Ipaq is not a device which is not rugged. (Although I still use it for paperless caching...)

 

Greetings,

Hans

[+kevnjenn]

We have a TomTom1 that we bought a little while back. I use it to get us close to the general area of the cache coords, then use our handheld (Legend) to make the find.

[+jaxstraww]

We have a TomTom1 that we bought a little while back. I use it to get us close to the general area of the cache coords, then use our handheld (Legend) to make the find.

 

Speaking of. How does the whole uploading to the TT work? I use the 60Csx for caching but would like something mounted in the car. How do I get the cords into the TT? Does it accept LOC/GPX files? When the cache is in the TT is it my lat/long or is it given a name like the cache name for instance.

 

Trying not to break the bank but would like something that can get me to a destination accurately and something that can take cache cords for "follow the road" use.

[+StarBrand]

We have a TomTom1 that we bought a little while back. I use it to get us close to the general area of the cache coords, then use our handheld (Legend) to make the find.

 

Speaking of. How does the whole uploading to the TT work? I use the 60Csx for caching but would like something mounted in the car. How do I get the cords into the TT? Does it accept LOC/GPX files? When the cache is in the TT is it my lat/long or is it given a name like the cache name for instance.

 

Trying not to break the bank but would like something that can get me to a destination accurately and something that can take cache cords for "follow the road" use.

Your 60csx will do that kind of routing - just purchase the maps from Garmin. Just a bit over $100 to add to the unit.

[+mousekakat]

You can add in latitude and longitude manually. I've never used the GSAK or anything like that, just haven't really had the need to, but I understand that it's doable.

 

When you want to zero in on the cache touch the screen once, then use the arrow on the bottom right to go to the next page and click on browse map when it goes to the next page. I use a key or even a twig as a stylus pen and move the little blue circle around until it is at the coords that the cache is located at and then we go from where the car is parked (which is the last place you should be shown as it has taken you there) and we navigate to the cache. It works fine that way. We have found that if it is slow updating your position, as it sometimes is since it's a car navigator, that we just turn it off and then on again and it updates where we are.

 

Someday we'd like to buy a good handheld, but honestly, this works well for us for now, and we just don't have the extra funds to buy another.

[martygng]

The problem I seemed to be having was that when I would walk about 20-30 ft in any direction the gps coords didnt seem to change unless I was moving quickly. I know the tomtom is geared toward vehicles and roads so I am wondering if I need a handheld-type unit. Do they refresh more quickly or is this common. There wasnt any loss of sat signal or any major cover so I always had good reception. Any help appreciated.

 

Same problem here with a TomTom One. I literally JUST walked in the door after my first geocaching trip ever. We stayed within a few miles of our house. The driving directions the device gave us were humorously terrible.....we knew we were off to a bad start.

 

After parking the car and getting off the road, we realized that this unit simply does not refresh fast enough for off-road usage. We were waiting minutes for it to update our position and direction, even with 7 satellites, full strength, and no cover above our heads! We found 2 geocaches based on detailed hints, but after we couldn't find the third one, which had no hints, we decided to call it quits.

 

Maybe I'm missing an option, but I couldn't find a way to display how far it is to a waypoint. The device would only tell me how far it was to go back to the road and park closer to the waypoint I think. I got this for $150 refurbished at buy.com and I'm ready to send it right back for a refund.

 

I knew going into this that handheld GPSrs are generally better for off-road, but I thought this would suffice, with the additional bonus of road navigation and maps. Do handheld GPSr refresh much faster than car ones? Maybe I'll just pick up a yellow Garmin eTrex on eBay for $70 and forget the car navigation altogether.

 

What a frustrating day...I was up all night figuring out how to get all the waypoints onto the TomTom, and all the GPX files onto my Motorola Q so I could read the hints, and now after actually trying it, I'm pretty discouraged about Geocaching.

Edited October 6, 2007 by martygng

[+mousekakat]

Same problem here with a TomTom One. I literally JUST walked in the door after my first geocaching trip ever. We stayed within a few miles of our house. The driving directions the device gave us were humorously terrible.....we knew we were off to a bad start.

 

After parking the car and getting off the road, we realized that this unit simply does not refresh fast enough for off-road usage. We were waiting minutes for it to update our position and direction, even with 7 satellites, full strength, and no cover above our heads! We found 2 geocaches based on detailed hints, but after we couldn't find the third one, which had no hints, we decided to call it quits.

 

Maybe I'm missing an option, but I couldn't find a way to display how far it is to a waypoint. The device would only tell me how far it was to go back to the road and park closer to the waypoint I think. I got this for $150 refurbished at buy.com and I'm ready to send it right back for a refund.

 

I knew going into this that handheld GPSrs are generally better for off-road, but I thought this would suffice, with the additional bonus of road navigation and maps. Do handheld GPSr refresh much faster than car ones? Maybe I'll just pick up a yellow Garmin eTrex on eBay for $70 and forget the car navigation altogether.

 

What a frustrating day...I was up all night figuring out how to get all the waypoints onto the TomTom, and all the GPX files onto my Motorola Q so I could read the hints, and now after actually trying it, I'm pretty discouraged about Geocaching.

 

You're making this a lot harder than it has to be... if you are new, paperless is not the way to go. Print out the information including the hint, it's a lot easier in the beginning, in my opinion at least! Once you get more comfortable with how things are done and such, then you can go paperless, but we still prefer to use paper and actually have a binder in the car that we keep, along with the corresponding map that we print out that shows the location of the caches in any given area when we are travelling.

 

I don't use any GSAK or other program to enter in the coords into our TomTom 1, we enter them in by hand, either using their program on the laptop or the TomTom itself. If you need help knowing how to do that, let me know and I'll PM you how.

 

Once you put in the coords, it takes you to the closest location you can go by car. Now you need to touch the screen once, then go to "browse map." Once you get there, you'll need to take a key or a stylus pen or a twig, or something... and use it to poke around where you are on the map. You can find where you are by touching the blue arrow at the top right and it will show you a blue circle precisely where you are standing on the map. Poke around there with your "stylus" until you see the coords of the cache show up in the bottom left side of the TomTom screen. If it doesn't, touch the screen where it says "find" and be sure that you have coords checked off, then try again.

 

It normally updates about once a minute, if it doesn't, simply turn it off and turn it back on, when it comes back on it'll have updated.

 

It took us a little while to learn to use the TomTom One for caching, but once we figured it out, we found we really liked it and it works well for us. Some day we'd like to get a handheld, but until then, we havefound that it works just fine, it just took time to get comfortable with it.

 

PM us if you need more help!