Pocket Queries for the whole of the UK

[+John NW]

Hi I was wondering if anyone knew what co-ordinates/postcodes were required to use as pocket queries centre points to generate the whole of the UK caches into GSAK using the least number of pocket queries? What do other people use/do?

[+La Fifi]

Hi I was wondering if anyone knew what co-ordinates/postcodes were required to use as pocket queries centre points to generate the whole of the UK caches into GSAK using the least number of pocket queries? What do other people use/do?

 

Try this...

 

http://markandlynn.croaghan.com/index.html

 

Edited to say that you need to be looking at the paperless caching bit....the link from the home page is to a pdf, but I think the links from the geocaching section are broke.

Edited December 2, 2007 by La Fifi

[+housefamily]

I think the accepted way is actually to use a single centre point, and to vary the date ranges. This way you can make sure you cover the most amount of caches, while minimising overlap.

As for what those dates are... I'm sure someone will be along soon to tell you!!

[+Pharisee]

With nearly 23,500 active/temporarily disabled caches in the UK, theoretically, you need 47 PQs, but realistically it's probably about 50 and increasing at the rate of about 1 every 2 - 3 weeks.

 

Use the date range method and aim for about 490 caches per PQ.

 

Unfortunately, you can only create 40 PQs per account and only run 5 per day so it's no longer really practical to do this on one account.

[+slimey]

With nearly 23,500 active/temporarily disabled caches in the UK, theoretically, you need 47 PQs, but realistically it's probably about 50 and increasing at the rate of about 1 every 2 - 3 weeks.

 

Unfortunately, you can only create 40 PQs per account and only run 5 per day so it's no longer really practical to do this on one account.

 

I've got about 23 running, which was the last time I could be bothered to work out all the dates I needed (creating the PQs was enough of a faff even know the date ranges).

 

Given that I like to have a full set in MemoryMap / TomTom, what's the easiest way to do it? I don't care about having the logs, so I don't care about keeping all the caches up to date - I just want to know where all the caches are, what type they are, and whether they're active or not.

 

I've got a "caches placed in the last week" PQ which works reasonably well at adding all the new ones - but how best to keep the database of old ones updated? I'm happy to do it semi manually.

 

I know that GCUK have a download - but last time I tried importing it into GSAK, it blatted all the cache types, etc.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Simon

[markandlynn]

Hmm that pdf link seems to no longer work.. send me an email and ill send you the pdf file while i look at whats wrong.

 

With one account it will take 14 days to get the UK but then you will miss out on archival's.

 

We use two accounts to get the whole UK and with Alan Whites notification system we get all UK archival's so we should never need more than two accounts allthough we have spotted a couple of holes with the current set ??

 

The current exchange rate makes this quite cheap.

 

To keep your pq's down just querry the virtuals and webcams once. Exclude caches found by yourself as these come in your my finds pq.

[+rutson]

...and with Alan Whites notification system...

 

Wassat then? Sounds good...

[Alan White]

...and with Alan Whites notification system...

 

Wassat then? Sounds good...

markandlynn are, kindly, somewhat over-egging the pudding

 

To get archive notifications from anywhere in the UK more quickly I use Groundspeak's notification system. The time-consuming [1] bit was identifying the circle centres as each notification is limited to 80km radius. So I did the work and published it here.

 

[1] Since then, GSAK has provided macro support for coordinate projection, so the whole thing could now be done in much less time

[markandlynn]

...and with Alan Whites notification system...

 

Wassat then? Sounds good...

markandlynn are, kindly, somewhat over-egging the pudding

 

To get archive notifications from anywhere in the UK more quickly I use Groundspeak's notification system. The time-consuming [1] bit was identifying the circle centres as each notification is limited to 80km radius. So I did the work and published it here.

 

[1] Since then, GSAK has provided macro support for coordinate projection, so the whole thing could now be done in much less time

 

Id like to see that gsak macro.

 

Alan made the request to TPTB for instant notification of archivals so he's more guilty than he makes out.

 

System works like this.

 

Using two accounts and dates you PQ the entire UK. This will feasibly work for a while yet but eventually you will need three accounts etc.

 

You set up instant notifications of archival based on the centres detailed in Alan's link one for Traditional caches, multi caches and mystery caches.

 

You will need two accounts to cover the whole UK as there is a limit of 40 notifications on each account.

 

When an archival email comes through either note the GC number and mark as archived on gsak or click on the link in the email and download the gpx file from the cache page and load this into gsak.

 

When you run out of pq's just replace your earliest set of dates with the new one and work round your entire set of pq's.

 

You will need to set up separate pq's to cover letterboxes, virtuals, webcams, earthcaches and events as well but as the numbers are not large it should not be an issue.

 

A side effect of this is that you will never seek a cache that has been archived (the night before) and you get to see why caches are being archived such as the recent Wokingham council ones etc.

[+MartyBartfast]

personally I don't feel the need to have the whole country in GSAK as I don't often venture very far afield, and if I am planning to I can set up a PQ to cover the area I'm going to as a one off, but how about this for an idea.

 

Bill sets up 35 date based PQ's each returning 500 caches centred on the Southern most cache. These would return 17,500 waypoints giving %100 coverage of the South, but getting sparse as they get further North, I would guess they should get coverage up to around North Yorkshire.

 

Ben sets up exactly the same queries but centred on the Northern most cache. These would give %100 coverage of the North but getting sparse as they get further South, somewhere around Northants/Lincolnshire perhaps.

 

Now Both Bill and Ben have a Gmail (or similar) account to recive the PQ's. Bill sets up a rule in his account to forward all PQ Emails from Geocaching.com to Ben, and Ben has a similar rule to forward the PQ Emails to Bill. That way Bill and Ben will receive the results form all 70 PQs.

 

Between them these 70 queries would return 35.000 caches, with some of those in Central England being duplicated. Both Bill & Ben would have 5 PQs to use on an ad-hoc basis for other purposes. If/When the cache density gets such that these 70 queries won't cover the whole country Bill & Ben could invite their special friend Weed to join the scheme with 35 PQs centred on the centre of the country, probably somewhere around Yorkshire, the forwarding rules would need to be crafted to ensure that mails don't enter the system and keep getting forwarded ad-infinitum but that wouldn't be difficult. The additional 35 queries would return something like 50,000 caches.

[+purple_pineapple]

personally I don't feel the need to have the whole country in GSAK as I don't often venture very far afield, and if I am planning to I can set up a PQ to cover the area I'm going to as a one off, but how about this for an idea.

 

Bill sets up 35 date based PQ's each returning 500 caches centred on the Southern most cache. These would return 17,500 waypoints giving %100 coverage of the South, but getting sparse as they get further North, I would guess they should get coverage up to around North Yorkshire.

 

Ben sets up exactly the same queries but centred on the Northern most cache. These would give %100 coverage of the North but getting sparse as they get further South, somewhere around Northants/Lincolnshire perhaps.

 

Now Both Bill and Ben have a Gmail (or similar) account to recive the PQ's. Bill sets up a rule in his account to forward all PQ Emails from Geocaching.com to Ben, and Ben has a similar rule to forward the PQ Emails to Bill. That way Bill and Ben will receive the results form all 70 PQs.

 

Between them these 70 queries would return 35.000 caches, with some of those in Central England being duplicated. Both Bill & Ben would have 5 PQs to use on an ad-hoc basis for other purposes. If/When the cache density gets such that these 70 queries won't cover the whole country Bill & Ben could invite their special friend Weed to join the scheme with 35 PQs centred on the centre of the country, probably somewhere around Yorkshire, the forwarding rules would need to be crafted to ensure that mails don't enter the system and keep getting forwarded ad-infinitum but that wouldn't be difficult. The additional 35 queries would return something like 50,000 caches.

 

that would work perfectly well, but would breach Groundspeak's Terms and Conditions... Namely sharing the PQ/GPX information....

 

Dave

[+MartyBartfast]

 

that would work perfectly well, but would breach Groundspeak's Terms and Conditions... Namely sharing the PQ/GPX information....

 

Dave

 

Good point, I suppose such a restriction is reasonable, but it's been a long time since I 'read' that license agreement.

[+rodz]

 

<snip>

 

When an archival email comes through either note the GC number and mark as archived on gsak or click on the link in the email and download the gpx file from the cache page and load this into gsak.

 

<snip>

 

 

I see that the latest beta version of GSAK has

 

"Changed GetMail to add the ability to download the Header and body of a message for further interrogation"

 

which should allow automatic updating of archived caches in GSAK via the notification emails.

 

Anyone written a macro yet?

[+Team Sieni]

Genuine question .... why?

 

Once you had downloaded them you would have a database that you could query, but then isn't that what GC.com supplies? The advantage of your downloaded database would be that you could use it when GC.com is down or you are offline, and you could issue carry out more complex queries such as "find all caches of difficulty 3, with a prime number of Easting minutes, last found by a cacher with more vowels than consonants in their name". Oh, and you could look at the caches and cackle "mmwahahahaha! all mine!"

 

The disadvantage would be that it would be an almighty faff and you would need to rope in Bill, Ben and Weed. And possibly Lamb Chop.

[markandlynn]

Genuine question .... why?

 

 

Why the whole UK ?

 

Holiday planning on the fly.

 

I see that the latest beta version of GSAK has

 

"Changed GetMail to add the ability to download the Header and body of a message for further interrogation"

 

which should allow automatic updating of archived caches in GSAK via the notification emails.

 

Anyone written a macro yet?

 

That's scraping which also against the TOU you could use it to mark the cache as archived but then you miss the reasin why it's been archived which can be interesting reading.....

[+Flyfishermanbob]

Genuine question .... why?

 

.

 

 

 

Can't speak for anyone else, (and no, I dont try to maintain the whole of the UK.... just Scotland) but the answer is that databases are just that .... data ... what they rarely have is a Graphic interface.... thats where Memory map comes in... visual information of cache location, and one click takes you to the on-line web page . To feed memory Map ,you need GSAK , and hence PQ's

 

 

In practice there isn't a great deal of faff ,having run the Pq's to populate GSAK , and set up 6 notifications based on area..... for "archived " caches,( similar to the method attributed to A .White) I can maintain my database for Scotland with 2 daily PQs...

 

one for 500 caches within 500 miles of the center updated in the last 7 days.

 

one for new caches placed within the last month.

 

Its not perfect , and every 6 months or so I'll re-run the Pqs to update it, but I get a visual tool like this:-

 

 

 

Slainge Bob

[+MartyBartfast]

Genuine question .... why?

 

...

 

The disadvantage would be that it would be an almighty faff and you would need to rope in Bill, Ben and Weed. And possibly Lamb Chop.

 

Like I said I don't, it's not something I feel the need for, but I've now come across two people who pay for 2 premium memberships so that they can run enough PQs to keep the whole country in GSAK

[+John NW]

Thanks for everyones ideas - I will try the date option if I go along that route or use the download all on geocacheuk.

 

Many thanks again

[+Alibags]

As I have said before, it would make sense for TPTB to create a download of all the caches in the UK, made available so that we could each download it, perhaps once per week like our cache finds PQ? Perhaps it could be split up to England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland PQs... anyhow, the point being that instead of ALL the UK members running big sets of monster PQs and clogging the system up, there would be one big PQ we could all use... and imagine how much server resource that would free up.

[Deego]

Genuine question .... why?

 

 

I don't keep the whole of the UK (just 75 miles from home)... BUT the reason I do this is when I cache with somebody else, I have most of the logs in GSAK so I can run a filter to see what caches the people I am caching with have done. This way we can try to target caches neither of us have done before. If I set a PQ up for the area I only get the last 5 logs this wont work then.

[fraggle69]

Genuine question .... why?

 

 

I don't keep the whole of the UK (just 75 miles from home)... BUT the reason I do this is when I cache with somebody else, I have most of the logs in GSAK so I can run a filter to see what caches the people I am caching with have done. This way we can try to target caches neither of us have done before. If I set a PQ up for the area I only get the last 5 logs this wont work then.

 

Only 5 logs? Is that a new thing? I thought you used to be able to download all the logs? Everytime I look into organising/building a nice workable gsak database Groundspeak/gsak change something

Edited December 12, 2007 by fraggle69

[markandlynn]

Genuine question .... why?

 

 

I don't keep the whole of the UK (just 75 miles from home)... BUT the reason I do this is when I cache with somebody else, I have most of the logs in GSAK so I can run a filter to see what caches the people I am caching with have done. This way we can try to target caches neither of us have done before. If I set a PQ up for the area I only get the last 5 logs this wont work then.

 

Only 5 logs? Is that a new thing? I thought you used to be able to download all the logs? Everytime I look into organising/building a nice workable gsak database Groundspeak/gsak change something

 

Alway been 5 logs GSAk just keeps compiling them for you.

 

You do get 20 if you take the gpx from the cache page though.

[+ds-polleke]

I am visiting the UK late september and i would like to have all caches of the region we are visiting.. It will be the london area (well doddinghirst actually but i don't know if any of you know that hamlet) and we will be visiting cambridge..

 

Is there a nice set of PQ's i can run to be able to cache paperless...

 

thanks in advance for the help

[+Primitive Person]

I am visiting the UK late september and i would like to have all caches of the region we are visiting.. It will be the london area (well doddinghirst actually but i don't know if any of you know that hamlet) and we will be visiting cambridge..

 

Is there a nice set of PQ's i can run to be able to cache paperless...

 

thanks in advance for the help

 

For London, I use my home co-ords and then run PQs for several types of caches - traditionals, traditional micros, puzzles, multis. That covers just about everything, although it's biased strongly towards south-west London, as that's where I live, and heads some way out of London in that direction. For something covering London from the middle outwards, do something based on Charing Cross station, which is what all London roadsigns use to calculate distance and is commonly regarded as being the "middle" of London.

 

Postcode for PQ purposes is WC2N 5HF.

 

Lee

[+Eclectic Penguin]

Bearing in mind post codes don't work properly any more. In London is shouldn't be so bad but it'll still search on WC2N rather than the entire post code. Out in the sticks, post code searches can be as much as 10 miles out.