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Droid X does it work?


rawkhopper

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My friend has a Droid X and the Official Geocaching App from Groundspeak but in the woods it seems useless. I am not talking about heavy canopy or anything I am talking lightly wooded area and it can be pointing 150ft in the wrong direction and it seems to update that I am getting closer. I have a cheap Garmin Etrex Venture H and it will get me typically within 10 feet and the furthest off I have found is 28ft. The cache that I tested it at I was only 5 ft off and my friends Droid X was telling him to keep on going down the trail 150ft away. I understand being a little off but 150ft is ridiculous. We tested it again in some fairly light cover and again it was off by more than 50ft mine was off by less than 10.

 

Are we missing something? Is it only triangulating with cell towers? Is there a way to force it to use GPS only? This seems like a waste of money to get the Geocaching app if you can only find lamp post caches. Even then it does not seem to do that well.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this unit and have a better outcome? What are some things I can try to make it better?

 

Thanks in advance,

Jamey

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My wife has the latest Droid (not sure if it's an X or not, but it's the one with the slide out full keyboard).

 

We are going this weekend to do some caching and I'm hoping to take it along for 'fun' and see what it's capable of.

 

For caching we use our Oregon 400t (and occasionally take the old eTrex Legend) so we would never plan on using the Droid as a primary device. I could see it being handy however for logging from the field or getting additional info should I have forgotten to bring cache descriptions on my Oregon for a particular cache.

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Just got my Droid X the other day. I downloaded and used the official Groundspeak app. I only did one cache with it. Unfortunately it was a multi. As it went getting to leg #1 the Droid X performed flawlessly. The X had me within 7 feet of gz which I thought was pretty good.

From there I was lost. Reverted back to the Oregon 300 and the next stage option punched in the coords of to the last two stages.

Now can anybody here give me a little assistance on how to finish off a multi cache with the X using the official GS app . Seems like a great tool for traditionals especially urban caches. But for serious caching I'm grabbing the Oregon.

 

Next test is a Wherigo.

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My friend has a Droid X and the Official Geocaching App from Groundspeak but in the woods it seems useless. I am not talking about heavy canopy or anything I am talking lightly wooded area and it can be pointing 150ft in the wrong direction and it seems to update that I am getting closer. I have a cheap Garmin Etrex Venture H and it will get me typically within 10 feet and the furthest off I have found is 28ft. The cache that I tested it at I was only 5 ft off and my friends Droid X was telling him to keep on going down the trail 150ft away. I understand being a little off but 150ft is ridiculous. We tested it again in some fairly light cover and again it was off by more than 50ft mine was off by less than 10.

 

Are we missing something? Is it only triangulating with cell towers? Is there a way to force it to use GPS only? This seems like a waste of money to get the Geocaching app if you can only find lamp post caches. Even then it does not seem to do that well.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this unit and have a better outcome? What are some things I can try to make it better?

 

Thanks in advance,

Jamey

Did he calibrate the compass?

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My friend has a Droid X and the Official Geocaching App from Groundspeak but in the woods it seems useless. I am not talking about heavy canopy or anything I am talking lightly wooded area and it can be pointing 150ft in the wrong direction and it seems to update that I am getting closer. I have a cheap Garmin Etrex Venture H and it will get me typically within 10 feet and the furthest off I have found is 28ft. The cache that I tested it at I was only 5 ft off and my friends Droid X was telling him to keep on going down the trail 150ft away. I understand being a little off but 150ft is ridiculous. We tested it again in some fairly light cover and again it was off by more than 50ft mine was off by less than 10.

 

Are we missing something? Is it only triangulating with cell towers? Is there a way to force it to use GPS only? This seems like a waste of money to get the Geocaching app if you can only find lamp post caches. Even then it does not seem to do that well.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this unit and have a better outcome? What are some things I can try to make it better?

 

Thanks in advance,

Jamey

Did he calibrate the compass?

Didn't know you could. Would that really be a problem if it is still telling me the distance is off by 150ft?

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Just got my Droid X the other day. I downloaded and used the official Groundspeak app. I only did one cache with it. Unfortunately it was a multi. As it went getting to leg #1 the Droid X performed flawlessly. The X had me within 7 feet of gz which I thought was pretty good.

From there I was lost. Reverted back to the Oregon 300 and the next stage option punched in the coords of to the last two stages.

Now can anybody here give me a little assistance on how to finish off a multi cache with the X using the official GS app . Seems like a great tool for traditionals especially urban caches. But for serious caching I'm grabbing the Oregon.

 

Next test is a Wherigo.

Was this in the woods?

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Are we missing something? Is it only triangulating with cell towers? Is there a way to force it to use GPS only? This seems like a waste of money to get the Geocaching app if you can only find lamp post caches. Even then it does not seem to do that well.

 

I don't have the Droid X but do have many other Android devices using clients OTHER than the Geocaching app. Make sure you have GPS enabled and that your device is not solely relying on the GSM network for location information.

 

Of the Android's I have the Acer Liquid is the best and matches my Garmin devices for location (even in challenging environments). The worst of the bunch struggles with less than 20m accuracy. That device will go nameless.

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Are we missing something? Is it only triangulating with cell towers? Is there a way to force it to use GPS only? This seems like a waste of money to get the Geocaching app if you can only find lamp post caches. Even then it does not seem to do that well.

 

I don't have the Droid X but do have many other Android devices using clients OTHER than the Geocaching app. Make sure you have GPS enabled and that your device is not solely relying on the GSM network for location information.

 

Of the Android's I have the Acer Liquid is the best and matches my Garmin devices for location (even in challenging environments). The worst of the bunch struggles with less than 20m accuracy. That device will go nameless.

How do you know if it is using GPS or GSM? Can you turn off GSM?

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Just got my Droid X the other day. I downloaded and used the official Groundspeak app. I only did one cache with it. Unfortunately it was a multi. As it went getting to leg #1 the Droid X performed flawlessly. The X had me within 7 feet of gz which I thought was pretty good.

From there I was lost. Reverted back to the Oregon 300 and the next stage option punched in the coords of to the last two stages.

Now can anybody here give me a little assistance on how to finish off a multi cache with the X using the official GS app . Seems like a great tool for traditionals especially urban caches. But for serious caching I'm grabbing the Oregon.

 

Next test is a Wherigo.

Was this in the woods?

 

Yes but not dense canopy

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Just got my Droid X the other day. I downloaded and used the official Groundspeak app. I only did one cache with it. Unfortunately it was a multi. As it went getting to leg #1 the Droid X performed flawlessly. The X had me within 7 feet of gz which I thought was pretty good.

From there I was lost. Reverted back to the Oregon 300 and the next stage option punched in the coords of to the last two stages.

Now can anybody here give me a little assistance on how to finish off a multi cache with the X using the official GS app . Seems like a great tool for traditionals especially urban caches. But for serious caching I'm grabbing the Oregon.

 

Next test is a Wherigo.

Was this in the woods?

 

Yes but not dense canopy

Ok I went back out with my friend. His Droid X was set with the GPS on. The app will not let you start the app without it, and we switched to use A-GPS but still had poor results. Standing 20 feet from the cache on the side of a road gaves us erratic behaviour. Sometimes it would say 36ft this way then 150ft that way and if you switch to map mode it was dancing all around the cache. Not consistent enough to find it though. I turned on my eTrex Venture HC and it settled down about 10ft from the cache.

 

Is there a way to average the reading together? The Droid seemed to update the location about 5 times a second sometimes and I am wondering if you can average them it might settle down enough to actually find a cache.

 

Anyway still looking for Droid X users that cache with the Groundspeak App

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I've got the Droid X and have used it for a month now. My compass is always off by 10-15 degrees even after calibrating it. I've had it walk me right up to some cache and be off by 20 feet on others. i have a garmin i take as a backup but have only had to use it one time out of 32. I'm happy with the performance for a device that isn't dedicated to GPS.

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I've got the Droid X and have used it for a month now. My compass is always off by 10-15 degrees even after calibrating it. I've had it walk me right up to some cache and be off by 20 feet on others. i have a garmin i take as a backup but have only had to use it one time out of 32. I'm happy with the performance for a device that isn't dedicated to GPS.

Did you do anything special. My friends Droid X shows you bouncing around all over the place. The compass point the wrong direction is minor if you can't figure out if you are 20ft off to the north or 35 feet off to the south. There must be something wrong with his GPS as it seems others are doing much better than he is.

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