Need Help w/Garmin Venture HC

[lisalisa432]

Hello,

 

I bought my husband a Garmin Venture HC for Christmas. He updated to the preminum on this site so he could get the hints with the caches we were interested in but they are not downloading. What are we doing wrong? I could have sworn that the Venture HC was a paperless Geocache GPS. Am I mistaken. Do the caches have to be printed out in order to get the hints? It's nice that we can download multiple caches at the same time but we really want the hints.

 

Lisa

[+39chevy]

The Venture HC will not do paperless.

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

The Venture HC will not do paperless.

In other words.... it will not show hints (along with other info).

 

I understand that there is a 'workaround' using GSAK, but I am not familiar with it.

[+Huntleigh]

Hello,

 

I bought my husband a Garmin Venture HC for Christmas. He updated to the preminum on this site so he could get the hints with the caches we were interested in but they are not downloading. What are we doing wrong? I could have sworn that the Venture HC was a paperless Geocache GPS. Am I mistaken. Do the caches have to be printed out in order to get the hints? It's nice that we can download multiple caches at the same time but we really want the hints.

 

Lisa

 

I have a Venture HC. While it is a mapping GPS, it is not paperless. It loads the location; the GC code in the "Name" field and the name of the cache in the "Note" field. The Note field is limited to 30 characters.

 

If your hubby is a premium member he can either download a cache's GPX file singularly onto your PC, or run a Pocket Query (PQ) to download a whole pile of caches in one GPX file.

 

You can then use EasyGPS or GSAK to upload the GPX files onto the Venture. Both these programs have settings that allow you to select what goes into the Name & Note fields of the Venture. So you could put the name of the cache into the Name field (both programs abbreviate a long name); and the first 30 characters of the hint into the Note field.

[lisalisa432]

Hello,

 

I bought my husband a Garmin Venture HC for Christmas. He updated to the preminum on this site so he could get the hints with the caches we were interested in but they are not downloading. What are we doing wrong? I could have sworn that the Venture HC was a paperless Geocache GPS. Am I mistaken. Do the caches have to be printed out in order to get the hints? It's nice that we can download multiple caches at the same time but we really want the hints.

 

Lisa

 

I have a Venture HC. While it is a mapping GPS, it is not paperless. It loads the location; the GC code in the "Name" field and the name of the cache in the "Note" field. The Note field is limited to 30 characters.

 

If your hubby is a premium member he can either download a cache's GPX file singularly onto your PC, or run a Pocket Query (PQ) to download a whole pile of caches in one GPX file.

 

You can then use EasyGPS or GSAK to upload the GPX files onto the Venture. Both these programs have settings that allow you to select what goes into the Name & Note fields of the Venture. So you could put the name of the cache into the Name field (both programs abbreviate a long name); and the first 30 characters of the hint into the Note field.

 

Can you walk us through this? We're still having issues with it. We love the GSAK site but neither of us sees how you can select what goes into the Name & Note fields.

[+Huntleigh]

 

Can you walk us through this? We're still having issues with it. We love the GSAK site but neither of us sees how you can select what goes into the Name & Note fields.

 

Once you have downloaded GSAK and installed it and then uploaded a GPX file into you should be ready to go. Clicking on GPS in the menu list and then Send Waypoints... should get you to something like the screenshot below.

 

You'll see that you have to enter "per cent" codes to determine what characters are sent to your GPS. You need "%hint" (blue)to send the hint to the comments field of the GPS and "%smart" (red) to send the abbreviated (smart) name to the name field.

 

If you click on the help button in the "Send Waypoints" dialog it will open a new screen. Clicking into the Waypoint name area of the screenshot shown will give you more information on all the different "per cent" codes or special tags.

 

 

I would strongly endorse forking out an extra thirty buck to get the full nag-free version of GSAK. There is a recent thread on this forum extolling its virtues.