PDA Applications

[+Zac Young]

What are the best (and free) PDA Applications for Geocaching?

also, what would they do?

[+Miragee]

Well . . . first, for "paperless" caching to really work, you have to become a Premium Member of the site. This will cost you $3.00 a month, or $30.00 for an entire year.

 

Then, depending on whether you have a Palm or PPC, there are different applications available. I have been using Cachemate for more than three years and have sure gotten the value out of the $8.00 Registration fee I paid back then. Cachemate gives me the cache description, the Hint, the Past Logs, and a page where I can write about my experience at the cache.

 

Then, to handle the data from Pocket Queries, which are one of the "perks" of being a Premium Member, you need a database program on your computer. GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) is free to use for a few weeks, then you get Nag screens. However, paying the registration fee for that program is well worth it for all the functions GSAK offers. From it you can Export for your PDA, Send the caches to your GPSr, and Export for your mapping software, or for Google Earth.

 

I'm sure others will come along with their list of completely free programs for your PDA.

[+Thrak]

Most folks seem to use Cachemate as listed above. Some prefer to use a combination of Plucker and Spinner for their paperless caching. Plucker is free and Spinner is cheap like Cachemate. Either way you will probably be happy. Both ways are free to try so you can decide for yourself what works best for you. Also, as stated above, GSAK is great. It makes cache loading and management so much easier.

[+Zac Young]

Is the Premium membership worth it?

[+goodwrench00]

Is the Premium membership worth it?

 

YES,YES,YES! I wish I had done it a year ago!!

[+trooperdjb]

The application depends on what platform your PDA is. If you're using a palm device then cachemate seems to be the favorite. If you're using pocket pc running windows mobile then cachemate is still an option but there's also GPXSonar. My preference is Sonar since the pocket querries don't need any processing to load into Sonar. Some have said that using GSAK and cachemate allows for building larger data sets so you don't have to switch but the 500 caches that come in a querry hav been sufficient for me.

[+Tech Nic]

I know we are all looking for the most economical way to do things, including geocaching. I cached with paper for the first 4 months and got 100 caches. I also got a box full of paper, printouts of potential caches that I would look for. I don't know how much worth of paper and printer ink I went through, but I decided to get a premium membership, GSAK and CacheMate, along with a Palm PDA that I needed anyway. Not exactly free, but well worth it.

One thing to remember with paperless caching is that you always get those caches such as puzzle and multi caches that require the task of note taking. So, if you don't want to fire up the PDA every time you need to make a note, be prepared to cache with a pencil and notepad anyway.

[+jeffbouldin]

I started with a Palm Lifedrive with Cachemate and when my Palm died I was lost. Now I have a Dell Axim x51 and have tried GPXSonar, Smache, and Cachemate for Pocket PC. GPXSonar and Smache were free and Cachemate was $8.00. Cachemate is the easiest to use, it also has the most info. Cachemate for Palm is more stable but Cachemate for Pocket PC is laid out more like the Geocaching website and has a few more features. It is easier to navigate. On the smityware website they allow you to generate 5 licenses for each registration so when I went from my Palm to my Dell I didn't have to pay again. I highly recomend Cachemate.

[+sbell111]

I tried Cachemate, but I prefer Plucker. It's format works for me better and it allows me to view any pictures from the cache page on the Plucker page in my pda.

 

I replaced Plucker's desktop application with Sunrise Desktop because it runs faster, doesn't crash with huge numbers of caches, and easily allows me to get the pics (which I couldn't figure out using Plucker's desktop application).

 

I don't use Spinner as I export my database from GSAK as html. This is faster than Spinner and it includes proximity indexes that identify larger cache groupings. This helps me decide where to go caching.

 

Finally, I record all my cache hunts in a palm app called Cache Log Book. It makes it easy to have any needed info about a hunt on hand when I later enter my online logs.

Edited March 28, 2008 by sbell111

[+thsalbert]

I used palm Treo 680 and Dopod 818 pro. Software cachemate, spoilerSync, Garmin Mobile XT with Garmin 10x GPSr. Used for driving and geocaching. I no need to used handheld GPS device. WM PPC was the most stable and reliable combination. I strongly recomend used WM PPC.

Edited March 28, 2008 by thsalbert

[+Kealia]

I tried Cachemate, but I prefer Plucker. It's format works for me better and it allows me to view any pictures from the cache page on the Plucker page in my pda.

 

I replaced Plucker's desktop application with Sunrise Desktop because it runs faster, doesn't crash with huge numbers of caches, and easily allows me to get the pics (which I couldn't figure out using Plucker's desktop application).

 

I don't use Spinner as I export my database from GSAK as html. This is faster than Spinner and it includes proximity indexes that identify larger cache groupings. This helps me decide where to go caching.

 

Finally, I record all my cache hunts in a palm app called Cache Log Book. It makes it easy to have any needed info about a hunt on hand when I later enter my online logs.

 

I second this, although I switched to iSilo from Plucker for the same reasons. Never could figure out how to get pics to show in Plucker (although it happened once by accident and I could never replicate it).

 

iSilo does in about 5 minutes what it used to take Plucker hours to do. I love having full HTML pages including images on my PDS.

 

GPXSpinner is free. iSIlo is $20 after the 30-day trial. It's well worth the extra $12 over CacheMate IMO.

 

Try it out and see what you like.

[+Kealia]

I tried Cachemate, but I prefer Plucker. It's format works for me better and it allows me to view any pictures from the cache page on the Plucker page in my pda.

 

I replaced Plucker's desktop application with Sunrise Desktop because it runs faster, doesn't crash with huge numbers of caches, and easily allows me to get the pics (which I couldn't figure out using Plucker's desktop application).

 

I don't use Spinner as I export my database from GSAK as html. This is faster than Spinner and it includes proximity indexes that identify larger cache groupings. This helps me decide where to go caching.

 

Finally, I record all my cache hunts in a palm app called Cache Log Book. It makes it easy to have any needed info about a hunt on hand when I later enter my online logs.

 

I second this, although I switched to iSilo from Plucker for the same reasons. Never could figure out how to get pics to show in Plucker (although it happened once by accident and I could never replicate it).

 

iSilo does in about 5 minutes what it used to take Plucker hours to do. I love having full HTML pages including images on my PDS.

 

GPXSpinner is free. iSIlo is $20 after the 30-day trial. It's well worth the extra $12 over CacheMate IMO.

 

Try it out and see what you like.

[+JHudsonFCA]

I tried Cachemate and even purchased the registration code for it, then I read in this very thread about plucker and gpxspinner and decided to try them. I like this combination so much that I never actually used cachemate other than playing with it when I first registered it.

Being able to see the images and logs formated in an html page is so much better than the plain text of cachemate. Also spinner can download maps and ariel views and embed them on your cache page.

 

I don't use GSAK either, I just use the google map view on the geocaching.com page to find the caches I want to hunt that day and bookmark them. I then run a PQ from the bookmarks and import that into gpxspinner. I then use the gpx that spinner creates to upload to my gps, then I update the Plucker file on my pda.

[+Zac Young]

Is there a program that processes LOC files on PDAs? You can download the LOCs for free.

[+Miragee]

Can you afford $3.00 per month?

 

The .loc files don't have very much information in them. You really need the .gpx files for "paperless" caching to work.

[+Zac Young]

Yes, I could probably afford the 3 bucks, but I donno if I would do enough caching. It's whether my parents can take me to where I need to go (before I get my license )

 

It would definably be worth it in the summer.