treegnome Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Recently I bought a Magellan Explorist GC, because I wanted to go paperless, and it was the least expensive option. Been out a few times with it, and I'm not happy with it. My aging eyes need larger, brighter font, and the Explorist GC doesn't cut it. Any ideas? How is the font size on the new Garmin eTrex 10 GPS, and do I "have" to use Opencaching.com for my downloads, or can I still use Geocaching.com? HELP!!! Quote Link to comment
+ecanderson Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Recently I bought a Magellan Explorist GC, because I wanted to go paperless, and it was the least expensive option. Been out a few times with it, and I'm not happy with it. My aging eyes need larger, brighter font, and the Explorist GC doesn't cut it. Any ideas? How is the font size on the new Garmin eTrex 10 GPS, and do I "have" to use Opencaching.com for my downloads, or can I still use Geocaching.com? HELP!!! Welcome to the club. I still get buy with cheap dime-store reading glasses, and unless I'm in bright sun, I have to wear them to cache now. I've even found that when searching for some nasty micro in the shade of deep woods, I'm using them to search, not just use the GPS! Trust me, it doesn't get any better I looked at a number of units the last time I bought a GPS, and it's no piece of cake with any of them. Many with larger screens just pack more on the screen with the same icon/feature/font size, and that doesn't help at all to solve this particular problem. For more recent Garmin units, the font size can be adjusted. Setup / Map / Advanced Map Setup / Text Size. Size is separately adjustable for several categories of items. Quote Link to comment
+popokiiti Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 It isn't just the GC for my eyes, so I always have my reading glasses at the ready on a cord around my neck for anything! You can increase the brightness on the unit, which helps me, but to save battery life, I have the screensaver set to a minute. My readers are non-prescription, and I use 1.25 or 1.5. Best to start with the lowest that works for you. Quote Link to comment
+Triple Crown Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 (edited) Recently I bought a Magellan Explorist GC, because I wanted to go paperless, and it was the least expensive option. Been out a few times with it, and I'm not happy with it. My aging eyes need larger, brighter font, and the Explorist GC doesn't cut it. Any ideas? How is the font size on the new Garmin eTrex 10 GPS, and do I "have" to use Opencaching.com for my downloads, or can I still use Geocaching.com? HELP!!! Welcome to the club. I still get buy with cheap dime-store reading glasses, and unless I'm in bright sun, I have to wear them to cache now. I've even found that when searching for some nasty micro in the shade of deep woods, I'm using them to search, not just use the GPS! Trust me, it doesn't get any better I looked at a number of units the last time I bought a GPS, and it's no piece of cake with any of them. Many with larger screens just pack more on the screen with the same icon/feature/font size, and that doesn't help at all to solve this particular problem. For more recent Garmin units, the font size can be adjusted. Setup / Map / Advanced Map Setup / Text Size. Size is separately adjustable for several categories of items. Does this change the font size on the geocache description pages or just on the map screens? The only way I've been able to change the font size on the cache descriptions is with a GSAK macro. I've been using the GarminExport.gsk which has a checkbox for 'use large font' when it sends the caches to the unit. For comparison here is the screenshot from a cache page sent directly to the GPS vs the same cache page sent using the GSAK macro set to Large Font Edited October 5, 2011 by Triple Crown Quote Link to comment
+eusty Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 Nice macro I thought I'd have a look at it, my eyes are ok, but it offers a so much more than the standard transfer! Quote Link to comment
+ecanderson Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 Enlarging the descriptive info is done with the macro as described. The internal Garmin option doesn't impact those. Quote Link to comment
+eusty Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 I'm not worried about enlarging the text, the macro offers lots of other enhancements Quote Link to comment
+Cacheoholic Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 What enhancements? The top screenshot is the normal display you get on any Garmin handheld paperless GPS introduced since the Colorado. The macro only enlarges the text as shown in the lower screenshot. Quote Link to comment
+Triple Crown Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 (edited) What enhancements? The top screenshot is the normal display you get on any Garmin handheld paperless GPS introduced since the Colorado. The macro only enlarges the text as shown in the lower screenshot. Here is a screenshot of the macro control panel. I use the macro to send all my hides & finds as POI's, also I get the last 15 logs on each cache. The macro just gives you a lot of flexibility with what to send to the GPSr. The proximity alarms are cool in areas without a lot of caches, but not so much in areas that are cache saturated, so I don't use them. Edited October 6, 2011 by Triple Crown Quote Link to comment
treegnome Posted October 10, 2011 Author Share Posted October 10, 2011 Thanks for the replies! First time on the Forums. I wish it were as simple as adding reading glasses to my accessories. Unfortunately, I've been wearing progressive lenses for about 10+ years now...can't do anything without them! My former GPS was a Garmin GPS60, which I liked, but died after 5 years. Plus it wasn't paperless. I guess I'll have to ask the stores to power up some models for me before I buy another one! The only other thing I didn't like with the Explorist GC was how it navigated. Hardly being able to see the projected line on the map to the cache didn't help any. I really liked the way the Garmin gave you choices on how to navigate...the compass pointing you towards the cache, showing miles and feet left. Also a highway like page steering you in the correct direction. Anyway, thanks to all who responded. If only I were young enough to only need dimestore readers!!! Quote Link to comment
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