Can I add all geocaches in BC onto my gps?

[+Drows]

Hello,

 

I've just bought a GPSMAP 62s, and still trying to figure it out. But I'm wondering if there is a way to just upload all the Geocaches in the province of British Columbia onto my GPS with minimal effort. I know that I can add them one by one, or even pocket queries. But still is going to take a long time. Sorry for asking, as I'm sure the answer is posted somewhere; I'm just busy figuring this GPS out and was hoping that while I do that someone might post whether it's possible or not.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Drows

[+The A-Team]

First of all, your GPS can only hold a maximum of 5000 geocaches at any one time, so you won't be able to fit all 31000+ BC caches in there anyway.

Second, why would you want to do so? Unless you're traveling all over the province every day, you won't need all the caches in there on any given day. All you need are the caches in the area(s) you're planning on visiting. Keeping a ton of extra caches in there will just lead to stale data, where caches may have been disabled or archived since you loaded them in.

 

Maybe you can describe in greater detail why you'd want all of those caches in there?

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

Why?

 

You'd be sitting with a lot of stale data in your unit. Caches are placed, disabled and archived all the time. How much fun would it be to look for one that was archived (and removed), or just plain disabled (as in missing...), but your unit won't show you that because you loaded the data months before that action occurred. Nor would it show you those caches placed since you finished loading up the entire Province.

 

That's the primary reason that Pocket Queries are so cheap. 5/day at 1,000 per take.

New data is good -- stale data takes you on "wild goose chases".

 

Usually, data that is over two weeks old is considered as stale.

 

 

It is possible to do that? Sure. The internal memory has space for 2,000 caches/waypoints -- that's what the specs say. SD cards will supply memory space for unlimited caches/waypoints (multiple cards, if necessary). However, there currently is no method for loading geocaches based solely and totally on political borders or subdivisions.

 

The real question is... do you want to waste the time doing all of that, when much of that data will be useless when it comes time to access it? I suspect that there is something over 20,000 geocaches in BC.

 

EDIT: A-Team says over 31,000. No reason to doubt that...

Edited April 27, 2013 by Gitchee-Gummee

[+Drows]

Thanks for the fast reply. Really just as a lazy option to grab them all at once to be honest. Good to know that it can only hold a max of 5000. Is that a hard fast rule for all GPS devices or is it memory related? Not that I will be finding 5000 at time soon, just thought it would be nice to have all of the caches on the GPS unit, so that I have one less thing that I have to plan on trips. Interesting point about the information becoming old.

 

Speaking of that, is there any way to update information on caches that I already have on the GPS? Or would I have to delete the file and download a new one?

[+FunnyNose]

Hello,

 

I've just bought a GPSMAP 62s, and still trying to figure it out. But I'm wondering if there is a way to just upload all the Geocaches in the province of British Columbia onto my GPS with minimal effort. I know that I can add them one by one, or even pocket queries. But still is going to take a long time. Sorry for asking, as I'm sure the answer is posted somewhere; I'm just busy figuring this GPS out and was hoping that while I do that someone might post whether it's possible or not.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Drows

 

If you do date based PQs of the entire province, run them through GSAK you can make a POI file of every single cache.

 

If you use the PqSpliter located here it makes it real easy to do.

Edited April 27, 2013 by FunnyNose

[+The A-Team]

Speaking of that, is there any way to update information on caches that I already have on the GPS? Or would I have to delete the file and download a new one?

There's no way to just update them. You'd have to replace the old data with new data. If you're using pocket queries, you'd just have to delete the old files from the GPS, run the pocket queries again to get fresh data, and load the new files into the GPS.

[+FunnyNose]

First of all, your GPS can only hold a maximum of 5000 geocaches at any one time,

 

Putting caches in a POI file for a Garmin I have not run into the upper limit yet.

 

When I went to The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland last summer I had almost 67,000 caches loaded on my unit.

[AZcachemeister]

First of all, your GPS can only hold a maximum of 5000 geocaches at any one time,

 

Putting caches in a POI file for a Garmin I have not run into the upper limit yet.

 

When I went to The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland last summer I had almost 67,000 caches loaded on my unit.

 

Sounds pretty spiffy!

 

Does that method include the descriptions and logs?