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how does a cobra gps 1000 work


dragonolgoly

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I have been caching with a Cobra 1000 for a few years and find it to be superior to my Garmin map-60 in a few ways and lacking in a few others. Great for close in hunting and placing.

 

As for connecting to the computer you will have to use the CD and cable that came with it. I think you can download a users guide at WWW.cobra.com

Its been a while since I had to load any of the free detailed maps that came with it. :grin:

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I have been caching with a Cobra 1000 for a few years and find it to be superior to my Garmin map-60 in a few ways and lacking in a few others. Great for close in hunting and placing.

 

As for connecting to the computer you will have to use the CD and cable that came with it. I think you can download a users guide at WWW.cobra.com

Its been a while since I had to load any of the free detailed maps that came with it. :)

 

I've been using a GPS1000 exclusively since I started caching, and I've found it to be very accurate, very easy to use, and very durable. The screen is absolutely HUGE and very easy to read, even with my glasses off. And they use plain old SD cards for map storage.

 

For a fraction of the price, their accuracy is nearly as good as most currently available units.

 

With that said, your options for interfacing it with a computer are limited, and your options for loading waypoints from Groundspeak are nonexistent. The communication protocols for the GPS1000 are proprietary, and even though programs like GPSBabel could talk to the reciever if the protocols were available, not enough interest exists to justify the man-hours necessary to reverse engineer the protocol.

 

If you have an older PC, the Rand McNally mapping software will let you load detailed maps which are very accurate as of their release date (mid 90s), however the interface is tedious and time consuming. It requires a PC with a 9-pin serial port, though I have had some luck with USB-to-serial adapters.

 

I have the software, and have used it, and can help you with getting maps onto your receiver. One interesting point is that once the maps are made, they can be copied off of the SD card, copied to another SD card for backup, and also burned to CD. I took a long rainy weekend and built street-level maps for about a 300 mile radius of home and backed them up.

 

If you build maps for other areas, we can swap maps. I tried to find other users and swap maps once before, but there simply aren't enough out there who are interested.

 

The gist of it is, as long as you don't mind entering your waypoints by hand, the GPS1000 is an exceptionally competent receiver. Don't let ANYONE tell you it's no good for caching. I have nearly 400 finds in under a year that prove otherwise. And nobody's ever complained about my hiding coordinates, either.

 

If I can be of any assistance, don't hesitate to ask.

Edited by sataraid1
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I started caching with a cobra 1000, still use it, and see myself using it for a long time. The main problem I had when starting out with the 1000 was that my laptop (in college its my only computer) didn't have a serial port. I got a USB to serial adapter, but the com ports would only work after some updates to the GPS unit itself. There is also an update that made my Cobra a lot more accurate. You can get these updates here.

 

http://www.cobra.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=...&page_id=89

 

Unfortunatly I dont know of any substitutes for the rand mcnally software, so you still have to make maps from that software.

Good luck!

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