Garmin dakota 10 FREE paperless geocaching

[Beno Krizek]

Well, after my horrible experience with Sygic Aura (Android navigation) I am thinking about buying Garmin Dakota 10. I have heard many pros about it including paperless geocaching, but I have also read, that paperless is just for premium members.

So now my question is:

Is it possible to do paperless geocaching with Dakota 10 without being a premium member? And if yes, would I be able to send hints, cache description and other things to my GPS without paying?

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

Short answer: No.

 

GPX files, which have the cache description, hints and so forth are Premium Member benefits. Regular Members are limited to LOC files which do not contain that information.

 

Outside of that, I do not see the Dakota 10 in Garmin's inventory, so I am guessing that it is a discontinued model.

You may well be spending good money for an obsolescent unit (not obsolete, because it still works). Support for obsolescent devices is short-lived compared to that of current production models. You would probably be far happier with a current production model.

Unless the unit you are looking at holds a (very) fair price, you should be able to obtain a current model at a near similar price. Don't get locked into the MSRP as sales outlets often have sales at super prices on current models.

[Beno Krizek]

Well I am from Slovakia and in our country Dakota costs about 110 euros. Well that's not so much. I am quite disappointed, don't want to pay for paperless geocaching. So now I am going to reconsider all that.

[+T.D.M.22]

Well I am from Slovakia and in our country Dakota costs about 110 euros. Well that's not so much. I am quite disappointed, don't want to pay for paperless geocaching. So now I am going to reconsider all that.

 

OK then. To add to the first reply. Long answer-it's possible. You could (If your GPSr supports field notes) create a field note for each cache, containing any hints and description. Of course this is a lot of work, more caches you want, the more work you have to do. You pay in euros-I believe a premium membership is about 40 euros-do if you get a GPS under 160(Which shouldn't be to hard) you'll still spend less than 200 euros. That's not too bad.

[+KC2WI]

You can't do pocket queries if you are not a premium member and the geocaching help says you can only download .loc files; but I am pretty sure that I was able to download individual .gpx files to my computer before I was a premium member. In fact I just found one I downloaded/saved/modified before I was a premium member.

 

The non-premium .gpx files contained the description but not all the info that a premium member gets. I distinctly remember that the hint data was not available but was replaced by some text like 'this information is available to premium members only'

 

However, you can add info. The .gpx files are plain text files which you can edit with any text editor.

 

The data is in XML format and free XML editors are available. The advantage is that an XML editor will check syntax, etc.

 

It is fairly easy to figure out the .gpx XML data structure, so you can add hints and other info by typing or copy/paste from the cache page.

 

I am not advocating for or against premium membership here, but once you start doing this for any large number of caches you pretty soon figure out that it is probably not worth the time it takes, just to save the $30 cost of premium membership.

Edited September 1, 2013 by KC2WI

[g0tr00t]

I just ordered the Oregon 450 from here. I should have it next week, its not much more than the Dakota 10. Refurbished with warranty.

 

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Hunting/Handheld-GPS-Accessories/Handheld-GPS|/pc/104791680/c/104729580/sc/104373180/Garmin174-Oregon-450T-Refurb/1266116.uts?destination=%2Fcatalog%2Fbrowse.cmd%3FN%3D1100153%26WTz_l%3DSBC%253BBRprd709846&WTz_l=SBC%3BBRprd709846%3Bcat104373180

 

Sorry, I thought you were looking for a GPS device, misread post.

Edited September 2, 2013 by g0tr00t