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[Request] Pocket queries


_eda_

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Before 2 days I bought the PM account. Filtering in pocket queries is very good, but 500 results are not enough for me. If I go to any large city and want to download all caches in there, I have to create more queries with small differences (e.g. in date, difficulty, etc). This takes much time, and the results are not reliable. I'd prefer to make just 1 query with more results per day, than 5 queries with insufficient results.

 

Please, think about allowing more results in 1 query, in database is no big time difference when the limit is higher.

 

Thanks.

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If I go to any large city and want to download all caches...

You need to be realistic about what you want to search for while in that city. You're not going to look for all (for example) 3,000 caches in that area. Filter your PQs to only return traditional caches with a difficulty <3 and a terrain <2.5. When traveling in a new area, I'm unlikely to have the desire or time to search for anything more complex than that, so there is no need to even download them. Besides, most GPS's can only hold 500 to 1,000 caches at a time anyways.

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If I go to any large city and want to download all caches...

You need to be realistic about what you want to search for while in that city. You're not going to look for all (for example) 3,000 caches in that area. Filter your PQs to only return traditional caches with a difficulty <3 and a terrain <2.5. When traveling in a new area, I'm unlikely to have the desire or time to search for anything more complex than that, so there is no need to even download them. Besides, most GPS's can only hold 500 to 1,000 caches at a time anyways.

 

I only want to search all 2500 results with 1 query. Yes, from that all I will find cca. 5-10, but I don't know exactly where I will be there next day. Yes, I can divide in 5 queries, with different origin, difficulty etc, but it takes a lot of time, and the results must overlap to be sure that I have all. This I've done for my home location, but can't do every time for every place where I go next day or (sometimes) in few hours.

 

It's worthless restriction, which I can't realize, in these days, when computers' performance is very high ;)

 

My GPS can hold 10000 waypoints, so there is no problem. ;)

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If I go to any large city and want to download all caches...

You need to be realistic about what you want to search for while in that city. You're not going to look for all (for example) 3,000 caches in that area. Filter your PQs to only return traditional caches with a difficulty <3 and a terrain <2.5. When traveling in a new area, I'm unlikely to have the desire or time to search for anything more complex than that, so there is no need to even download them. Besides, most GPS's can only hold 500 to 1,000 caches at a time anyways.

 

I only want to search all 2500 results with 1 query. Yes, from that all I will find cca. 5-10, but I don't know exactly where I will be there next day. Yes, I can divide in 5 queries, with different origin, difficulty etc, but it takes a lot of time, and the results must overlap to be sure that I have all. This I've done for my home location, but can't do every time for every place where I go next day or (sometimes) in few hours.

 

It's worthless restriction, which I can't realize, in these days, when computers' performance is very high ;)

 

My GPS can hold 10000 waypoints, so there is no problem. ;)

Do your queries by date placed instead of by radius around a location. No overlap whatsoever.

 

Play with it a bit to get about 500 caches in each date range. You can use all 5 of your daily queries very effciently to get 2500 unique caches in an area.

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I used to believe that there were good reasons to limit each PQ to return 500 caches. But with the advent of the My Finds PQ, where some people may get over 20000 caches returned by one query, I don't see this as a problem anymore. Certainly by using the date placed range in you PQs you can split any large query up to multiple queries than each return 500 or fewer caches, but this requires a bit of effort to set up. Yes, GSAK has a macro to determine the date ranges to use but you need to have the caches in your GSAK database to begin with so that's a catch-22. It takes a bit of effort to figure out date the first time and there is a need to keep adjusting the dates as new caches fill up the last PQ.

 

As there doesn't seem to be any real reason left to limit PQs to 500 caches, I would like to see the PQ rules changed to say you can get up to 2500 caches returned per day using any combination of up to 5 PQs. For example you could get one 2500 cache PQ or you could get one 1000 cache PQ, two 500 cache PQs, and two 250 cache PQs. If you look at your PQ page you will see that the site knows the maximum number of caches returned by each PQ. It is show in parentheses before the PQ name. It seems it would be easy to for the site to add this number for each day to see the total caches being returned for the day and limit this total to 2500 instead of just counting the number of PQs. If you had more than 2500 caches in an area you would still have to divide up by date, but for me it would mean instead of having to adjust the dates on 9 PQs to cover the area I want, I would only have to adjust dates on 2 PQs.

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I used to believe that there were good reasons to limit each PQ to return 500 caches. But with the advent of the My Finds PQ, where some people may get over 20000 caches returned by one query, I don't see this as a problem anymore. Certainly by using the date placed range in you PQs you can split any large query up to multiple queries than each return 500 or fewer caches, but this requires a bit of effort to set up. Yes, GSAK has a macro to determine the date ranges to use but you need to have the caches in your GSAK database to begin with so that's a catch-22. It takes a bit of effort to figure out date the first time and there is a need to keep adjusting the dates as new caches fill up the last PQ.

 

As there doesn't seem to be any real reason left to limit PQs to 500 caches, I would like to see the PQ rules changed to say you can get up to 2500 caches returned per day using any combination of up to 5 PQs. For example you could get one 2500 cache PQ or you could get one 1000 cache PQ, two 500 cache PQs, and two 250 cache PQs. If you look at your PQ page you will see that the site knows the maximum number of caches returned by each PQ. It is show in parentheses before the PQ name. It seems it would be easy to for the site to add this number for each day to see the total caches being returned for the day and limit this total to 2500 instead of just counting the number of PQs. If you had more than 2500 caches in an area you would still have to divide up by date, but for me it would mean instead of having to adjust the dates on 9 PQs to cover the area I want, I would only have to adjust dates on 2 PQs.

I like this idea. Use a limit of 2500 caches - in some cases I would like to be able to run more than 5 small (~50 cache) PQ's in a day.

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Another solution would be to increase the limit on bookmarks. Put it at 2500 caches. Same with PQs.

 

Then allow bulk additions to bookmarks from lists.

 

The advantages would be you could use a PQ to create a filter. It might only return 50 caches. Preview the list and then add those caches to the bookmark. Change the PQ to return a different set of caches. Preview and add to the bookmark. Repeat until you have either a full bookmark or all of the caches from the filters you wanted. Convert bookmark to a PQ.

 

Of course, you wouldn't be getting any caches that fit the filters you used after the date of adding those caches to the bookmark. You would either have to repeat the process periodically or run PQs limited to after the date of last bookmark addition.

 

A fellow cacher once thought it would be a good idea to combine several filters into one. I have to agree. It would be like doing the above, but each time the query is run. You simply fill out several filters and link them into one query. The query would drop any duplicates. The major advantage would be new caches would be included in the query.

 

But, it's all a pipe dream. I wouldn't look for any "super queries" any time in the near, or even distance, future.

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If I go to any large city and want to download all caches...

You need to be realistic about what you want to search for while in that city. You're not going to look for all (for example) 3,000 caches in that area. Filter your PQs to only return traditional caches with a difficulty <3 and a terrain <2.5. When traveling in a new area, I'm unlikely to have the desire or time to search for anything more complex than that, so there is no need to even download them. Besides, most GPS's can only hold 500 to 1,000 caches at a time anyways.

 

My GPS can hold 10000 waypoints, so there is no problem. :D

 

Wow!!! 10,000 waypoints, what GPS do you own?

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If I go to any large city and want to download all caches...

You need to be realistic about what you want to search for while in that city. You're not going to look for all (for example) 3,000 caches in that area. Filter your PQs to only return traditional caches with a difficulty <3 and a terrain <2.5. When traveling in a new area, I'm unlikely to have the desire or time to search for anything more complex than that, so there is no need to even download them. Besides, most GPS's can only hold 500 to 1,000 caches at a time anyways.

 

My GPS can hold 10000 waypoints, so there is no problem. :angry:

 

Wow!!! 10,000 waypoints, what GPS do you own?

 

If your GPSr has removable memory, your number of waypoints available is only limited by the number of cards you can carry/afford/keep track of.

 

Edited to say that I probably can carry more than I could afford, and I already have more than I can keep track of!

Edited by AZcachemeister
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