Casheing with a Nuvi? Who has tried it?

[+Royalott]

I have used GSAK for managing my cashes. I see that if we have a Garmin Nuvi in our car we can use it for cashing. http://pilotsnipes.googlepages.com/index.html

 

I happen to have one and I followed the directions and the dang thing just works great so far. It is completely paperless!

 

I loaded the cashes on my Nuvi and headed from my home in Waterford Mi to my place in Roscommon Mi taking I-75. I turned the thing on and when I got up the road to the area I started hitting the cashes loaded in my Nuvi it signaled me at every one. I had the nuvi set to signal me at any within 3000 ft of my travel.

 

It gave an alarm and a bar at the top of the screen told me there was a cashe. I touched the bar and it displayed EVERYTHING that is on the web page, discription, and all the comments other finders posted.

 

You click GO and the normal display shows and takes you turn by turn to the cashe area. I guess you then have to go to off road mode to go to the cashe. I have not gotten that far into it yet.

 

I did follow it to a cashe I had already found to try to see how close it would take me and it got me withing 50 ft or so but there was a guy walking his dog and watching me and I just decided to come back later.

 

I doubt I would use it for pinpointing but who knows. It should work great! I have not figured that all out yet but it sure guides you right to the area nicely.

 

I am sure glad I bought a Nuvi last winter

[+Corp Of Discovery]

I agree- it works great. I use it for driving from cache to cache only tho as it's not really made to be used 'in the wild' so to speak.

[+Teddy2k]

I cache with my Nuvi 680 (that has approx. 2500 caches loaded from PQ's) all the time when in vehicle and my Venture HC when on foot. So far, it has been awesome... I was thinking I would need to buy a PDA or a Blackberry to go paperless, but this is even better! Kudos pilotsnipes!!

[+ryetronics]

I don't use a Nuvi, but a Mio C520, which is basically the same thing only a different brand.

 

I also use it with GSAK and pocket queries, and for the more urban style of cache's, it works fantastically. However, for anything in the bush, it will get you within 50 ft. but that's about it. Mine doesn't have any sort of compass in it, so when I stop, often my map starts to spin. When you're against a tree-line and your map is spinning, good luck finding the cache. I've whiffed on 1/1 caches before due to this.

 

I need to get me a proper GPS for situations like that, but haven't yet.

[Keystone]

I am moving this thread from the Geocaching Topics forum to the GPS and Technology forum.

[+Crow-T-Robot]

If your particular Nuvi unit has the capability to access the satellite coordinates, that can get you as close as a handheld GPS to a cache location. If not and you have to rely on the arrow and the unit telling you how close you are getting in terms of feet, I've found the accuracy to be spotty at best. The worst example I have is when the unit was telling me I was 3 feet from a cache, when the actual location was across a road, a pond and a stand of trees...about 100 yards from where I was standing. When I learned how to access the coordinates, I found the spot very quickly.

 

As for the paperless program that pilotsnipes has set up for the Nuvi, it's a godsend. If you want to get out with very little planning, just run a new PQ, upload it to your Nuvi, get in the car and wait for the dings to start caching. I have the alert set to the default of 1500 feet (at 3000 feet, driving down some city streets would cause the thing to go bonkers with alerts). The one minor addition I would like to see is the stats for how many times a particular cache has been found/DNF'd/Notes, etc, that you get on the web page. That's mainly for when I want to drop a TB...I can scroll through the caches until I find one that: 1) gets a good number of finds (not a TB prison, in other words) & 2) alot of DNF's can mean that the cache is in a muggle prone location and might not be the best place to drop a bug. So, something that meets those two requirements would be a good cache to drop a travel bug and/or to pick up a new one.

 

All in all, my Nuvi and handheld work in tandem...but if the Nuvi was more durable (I've dropped it enough to convince myself to get a handheld) and weatherproof, I'd only use the Nuvi.

 

Bruce

[+Headhardhat]

Initially I used a Nuvi 220. It worked but I found it a pain go go back and forth from Pedestrian to Automobile all the time. Plus I could not imagine it very sturdy under wet like conditions. So I keep the Nuvi in the car and work the rest with a Etrex.

 

-HHH

[+Chaircity]

I already had a nuvi 350 when I started caching. Works fine for me if just a little inconvenient to carry. I just use the satellite screen to show the coords. Helps to have a compass too.