Just been given a pocket PC

[+The Mad MG's]

We've been successfully caching since February with our Garmin venture hc and been printing copiously the cache pages, but have recently been given an old ipaq rx1950 to help with our little adventures.

 

So heres where I'm up to. I've used EasyGPS to load a gpx file to the garmin GPSr and gpxsonar to the PDA.

 

To be honest its all we seem to need in the field, but would of liked spoiler pics for the more trickier of puzzles or images of clues needed. I like gpxsonar though for the re-centering of position and then searching for the next cache

 

I keep seeing articles about cachmate, but as a none user I can't see the added benefit of the cost.

So basically I'm asking is there a better way to cache with what I have with a PDA, satnav and venture hc?

[+Big Wolf]

Suggest you use a program called spoilersync to get the photos.

 

 

Dont know if GPXSonar links to this but Cachemate certainly does so that within the cache page you can click a link to see the photos in your browser. Also as far as I can see Cachemate is still being developed whilst it looks like GPXSonar is not.

Edited September 27, 2008 by Big Wolf

[+dino-irl]

There's a free trial of Cachemate IIRC so might be worth trying that out for a while. I've used both and although they both had a lot to recommend and some +/- over the other I ended up using Cachemate as my preferred app

[+the_dog]

 

So basically I'm asking is there a better way to cache with what I have with a PDA, satnav and venture hc?

 

Sound like you have a set-up very similar to mine. I also have gpxsonar, and have used spoliersync to generate spoliers from a gpx file containing over 14,000 caches. The result is less than 1,000 spolier photos, and it really wasn't worth the effort. (This is just my opinion, if I can't find it in under 3 minutes I'll generally move on.)

 

Mostly, I use GSAK to output a TomTom file that includes the hint (%hint), and also send the hint to my GPS. Very occasionally I'll boot up the PDA to view the cache page.

 

Paul

[+Jacobite]

I use GPXSonar which works with spoiler sync. I know most cachers use cachemate, but it's really up to yourself what you preffer. Give cachemate a go, and see what you think.

[+hiho9]

i use gpx view

[+The Mad MG's]

Thanks for all the advice and tips. I downloaded SpoilerSync and its working perfectly with GPXsonar. Hopefully that will decrease our number of DNF's

 

Thanks Sean

[+Guanajuato]

Thanks for all the advice and tips. I downloaded SpoilerSync and its working perfectly with GPXsonar. Hopefully that will decrease our number of DNF's

 

Thanks Sean

 

I'll just chip in to suggest trying out geoscout. The thing I find great about it is the ability to plot the cache location on a map, so you can plan a route more easily.

[+Mad H@ter]

I'll just chip in to suggest trying out geoscout. The thing I find great about it is the ability to plot the cache location on a map, so you can plan a route more easily.

I've not seen or heard of geoscout but it does look interesting if a bit on the pricey side at $40. What is of most interest is the mapping you mention, I could not see this mentioned on their website so a bit more info on the maps would be of great interest to many I'm sure.

[+Guanajuato]

I'll just chip in to suggest trying out geoscout. The thing I find great about it is the ability to plot the cache location on a map, so you can plan a route more easily.

I've not seen or heard of geoscout but it does look interesting if a bit on the pricey side at $40. What is of most interest is the mapping you mention, I could not see this mentioned on their website so a bit more info on the maps would be of great interest to many I'm sure.

 

I'd not realised the price of Geoscout had gone up so much - I'm sure it was about £8 when I registered, but that was a year (possibly more, time flies) back! The website is Here. The mapping IS very helpful. I did an urban(ish) cache without the mapping and ended up on the wrong side of a fence just over arms length away.

 

The mapping works in one of 2 ways - it can download from google maps or 1:50000 tiles from Streetmap. Alternatively, you can scan any map and create the appropriate tiles - so you can scan an OS landranger and crop each grid square as a separate image, named the same as the grid square. The accuracy of the maps can be a little off - it depends on exactly where the crop happens. It's as much as indicating one side of a road when its the other, so not perfect. I'm not entirely sure of the full legality of downloading the tiles, but in my mind its no different from viewing them on your screen and IE/Firefox caching the tiles.

 

Other people swear by MemoryMap, but that costs an arm & a leg, as does Anquet. I've got an older copy of Anquet, but the PocketPC implementation on it is cack! From their website (Here) the newer version is much more useful!

[+Von-Horst]

I'm not entirely sure of the full legality of downloading the tiles

 

It is probalby copyright infringement and is illegal. Scanning OS maps is certainly copyright infringement - you are COPYING the maps, after all.

 

On the other hand, it is virually impossible to catch you at it unless you start telling people what you have done and/or making the copies available to the public...

 

Mike

Edited September 30, 2008 by Von-Horst

[+Dead Poet's Society]

I use an application called Smache by Cyancanyon (www.cyancanyon.com)I've never heard from anyone else who uses it and it is not listed on the geocaching .com website. However I think its great and it does exactly what I want it to do. It runs well on WM5. What's more its free. Try it!