New and Totally Frustrated

[Sarteel]

I am new to GeoCaching and I really want to find them but I'm frustrated by a few problems.

I live in a city and there are no beautiful mountain trails or picturesque parks in the area.

All the caches are either Urban type which are camoed or they are hidden in the trees in the parks.

 

I have the Geomate.jr, so I can only see the caches around my home.

(Oh yeah I know, I can reset my "home" to another location and look around there but that's a pain.)

 

I can't pick and choose the places I want to go and download only those coordinates.

And I can't download ANY coordinates from geocaching.com into the Geomate.jr

 

But the biggest problem is that all the information about the locations of the caches are on the website.

The coordinates are on the website but I can only collect them if I write them down on paper.

 

Lots of the caches around here cannot be found unless you READ the notes about cache.

How can I look for these caches in the field without the computer.

 

SO... let's say that I want to look for a cache - without reading about it on the website:

I look at my Geomate.jr and I see that there is a cache 250 feet away from me "in some direction".

The direction pointer is unreliable and I might not know which direction I'm going.

I walk this way and that way watching the distance to see if it decreases.

And then I look up and discover that there is a wall in front of me.

If I could see the computer and look at the satellite view I could see that I need to approach the cache from the road on the other side of this wall.

[+Mudfrog]

First off,,, Welcome to geocaching!

 

Second, don't let this get to you. We started off with an old Garmin unit that was very basic with nothing more than an arrow that pointed towards the waypoint you had your goto on. We had the same troubles you are facing now (no mapping, no cache description) so had our frustrating moments as well. All this being said, i can safely tell you that you'll soon get the hang of it and will develop work arounds to make things go smoother.

 

One thing that was a necessity for many of our cache finds was to decide where we were going and then print out the cache pages of those that we thought we might go for on that trip. Yes, a pain, but as you already know, the info is invaluable at times. If you're wanting to save ink and paper, you can use the printer friendly option on gc.com and maybe just print the first page. I did this for a couple of years before finally getting a pda to store cache info on. And speaking of that, a laptop, pda, internet tablet, ipod touch, etc,,, can be preloaded with cache information before leaving the house as well. (i'm thinking you would have to become a premium member and utilize pocket queries for this)

 

On the getting to ground zero using the arrow,, that's hit and miss and something you'll have to just deal with. I can't begin to tell you how many wrong turns and dead ends we drove into because of this.

[+StarBrand]

The jr has caches for all over the country and will show anything near you without resetting the "home" coords. Most users are reporting the device works very well to lead them to caches. Maybe your has a defect?

[+Arrow42]

I am new to GeoCaching and I really want to find them but I'm frustrated by a few problems.

I live in a city and there are no beautiful mountain trails or picturesque parks in the area.

All the caches are either Urban type which are camoed or they are hidden in the trees in the parks.

 

I have the Geomate.jr, so I can only see the caches around my home.

(Oh yeah I know, I can reset my "home" to another location and look around there but that's a pain.)

 

I can't pick and choose the places I want to go and download only those coordinates.

And I can't download ANY coordinates from geocaching.com into the Geomate.jr

 

But the biggest problem is that all the information about the locations of the caches are on the website.

The coordinates are on the website but I can only collect them if I write them down on paper.

 

Lots of the caches around here cannot be found unless you READ the notes about cache.

How can I look for these caches in the field without the computer.

 

SO... let's say that I want to look for a cache - without reading about it on the website:

I look at my Geomate.jr and I see that there is a cache 250 feet away from me "in some direction".

The direction pointer is unreliable and I might not know which direction I'm going.

I walk this way and that way watching the distance to see if it decreases.

And then I look up and discover that there is a wall in front of me.

If I could see the computer and look at the satellite view I could see that I need to approach the cache from the road on the other side of this wall.

 

I think you have stumbled upon why no serious geocacher will relay on the Geomate.jr... at-least not as their sole geocaching gadget.

 

You can go old-fashioned... you can print out the cache pages before you goto a particular area. As I understand it the Geomate.Jr will find any caches near your location, not just near your home.

 

Do you have a Blackberry, iPhone or similar cellphone? There are a number of third party applications for many smart phones that let you bring the caching data with you out in the field.

[+Apt.Dweller]

I found that one of the fun things about the Geomate was that I didn't have a lot of information. I pick a city, drive to that location and turn on the Geomate. I never know what I'll be in for, but it's usually fun.

Don't get discouraged, the Geomate works fine.

 

Larry

[+Cherokee Bill]

IF you do not want to carry dozens of printed pages of G-cache info with you, then go paperless. Just do a SEARCH here on paperless caching. I use an old Palm 515M, which I got off E-bay for $30 including all acessories. Works GREAT for me (paperless)

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

Answers you have gotten already are good, sound advice.

 

We are (1) old fashioned, (2) cheap (flat broke, whatever), (3) technologically deficient, (4) whatever else fits into this category. BUT, we do print out which caches we want to go after (just the cache page, not the logs), mount same on a clipboard and go.

 

We have a ball, and while we aren't super special at it, we do pretty darn good. Having the cache page with us allows for notes in case it is a DNF (for later use in returning) and notes for when we get home to log in after doing 10+ caches (just to keep things straight for our declining brain power).

 

Luckily, we do not live in an area that relies heavily on micros. In fact around here, there are very few micros or nanos.

 

In short, don't let your lack of "good" equipment deter you. You can do it, others have. You can still have a ball and become pretty proficient with what you have to use.

 

EDIT INFO: We where also "lucky" enough to help our newlywed kids move to SD, which provided us an opportunity to greatly expand our area of geocaches hit in new areas. If you travel for any reason whatsoever, made sure to included geocaching in your agenda. Opens your mind up to how people in other areas hide and discover.

Edited October 3, 2009 by Gitchee-Gummee

[Sarteel]

The jr has caches for all over the country and will show anything near you without resetting the "home" coords. Most users are reporting the device works very well to lead them to caches. Maybe your has a defect?

 

OOOPS! WRONG BUTTON.

Edited October 4, 2009 by Sarteel

[Sarteel]

"The jr has caches for all over the country and will show anything near you without resetting the "home" coords. Most users are reporting the device works very well to lead them to caches. Maybe your has a defect?"

=======================================================================

 

If I am in a place that is not my home, and I turn on my Geomate.jr, it tells me how far I am from my "home" and then it tells me the 20 cache locations around my "home" - NOT my current location. If I want to find cache locations in this different area, I must change my "home" location to where I am.

 

1. Push both buttons to set my current location as "home".

2. Turn off the unit and the turn it on. This will re-boot the unit to the new location.

3. Now, with the new location, I see the 20 cache locations around the new home location.

[+Geomate.jr]

G'day Sarteel

 

Just so you know, I actually work for the company that makes the Geomate.jr and I'm here to help! I thought I would jump on this thread to help clear up any confusion or questions you may have.

 

The way the Geomate.jr is like this. When you switch the unit on, it calculates the closest 20 to where you are currently standing and starts by showing you the first closest. You can then go to the second closest by simply hitting the NEXT button (the big one on the left) and keep hitting it until you scroll through all 20.

 

If you want to the Geomate.jr to recalculate that list of closest 20 (say you just jumped in the car a drove to a different spot) then all you need to do is switch it off and back on again - it will then calculate the closest 20 from where you are now.

 

So the closest 20 has actually no connection with the HOME location that you can set by holding both buttons down. The HOME location simply becomes the very first entry in your list. i.e. when scrolling through the list of 20, it will now look like this HO, 1, 2, 3....20 and then back to HO (HOME).

 

I hope this helps? I'll keep an eye on this thread for anything else I can help with, or please feel free to email me directly at warren@apisphere.com

 

Oh, and just one other thing. As for being able to load geocaches from geocaching.com, with the Update Kit, you effectively get EVERY traditional geocache loaded onto your Geomate.jr (with the exception of premium member caches).

 

Cheers

 

Warren

[Sarteel]

Thank you for that useful information.

I figured out that I had to turn it off and back on again

but I thought it was also necessary to set the home location.

The instructions are not clear on this point. Thanks.

Edited October 5, 2009 by Sarteel

[+Rockin Roddy]

Maybe they'll make it more user friendly by updating it to NOT have to turn it off for it to get info for where you are (instead of where home is or where you were). No other GPS that I know of requires ou to shut down and power back up to get local info.