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Make a large geocaches database?


Rosie_Posie

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Hello!!! Hopefully someone will be able to help me with this project I am working on.

 

For my final graduate school project I am doing a mathematical analysis of a variety of things related to geocaching. In order to do this I need a list, a very LARGE list (several hundred maybe thousands), of as many geocaches as I can get into this list. Does anyone have any suggestions for the most efficient way to set up a list, preferably excel spreadsheet, with many geocaches, their creation date, difficulty level, location?

 

The problem is I need some other specific information about each cache as well. For example, I need some way to specify the location of the cache that is a little more user friendly than coordinates. I was thinking making separate lists for each county, but I am having trouble coming up with an easy way to determine "all of these are coming from county A" and " all of these are in county B"

 

Any thoughts on the best way to gather this data and turn it into a spreadsheet. In theory I could go one by one, but oh my word that would take a long time!

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Also, I am willing to pay for the premium membership if it will help me with this task. I just am not sure if the premium membership does something that I can't do now that would make it easier. If someone with a premium membership could post and let me know if they think it would help. :-)

 

Can a premium member download lists into excel?

Edited by Rosie_Posie
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Premium Membership will get you Pocket Queries, with County/State, and difficulty/terrain ratings, date placed etc.

 

GSAK will maybe help to display the information, especially if you use a few macros...

(GSAK IS a steep learning curve, if you're not too techie! But plenty on the GSAK forums will offer help/advice.)

 

Groundspeak might have what you are after, and might let you have it, if you ask them...

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So I am trying to get GSAK to do what I am looking for and I have gotten it to take a pocket query and load it into GSAK but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank. BUT when I load a single geocache into GSAK all of the information comes up correctly. What am I doing wrong?

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GSAK is probably your best bet.

What is your field of study and what do you hope to learn about caching? We might be able to help you fine tune your hypothesis and make it more in line with your study.

You might actually find that as a PM being able to look at other people's statistics page answers your questions, although it does states not counties.

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So I am trying to get GSAK to do what I am looking for and I have gotten it to take a pocket query and load it into GSAK but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank. BUT when I load a single geocache into GSAK all of the information comes up correctly. What am I doing wrong?

On mine the last GPX column is right next to the placed date, maybe hide the last GPX column.

Also GSAK comes with sample data and a tutorial if I remember, you might want to take a bit of time and fiddle with it.

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I am getting my Masters in Mathematics. So really I could have done a mathematical analysis of just about anything. I just enjoy Geocaching and thought it would be a good idea to spend the next several months of my life working on a topic I enjoy.

 

I am still early in the process here but I want to do is develop a mathematical model to represent the number of geocaches in an area. I need data for how many caches are in all these different areas so that I can get some numbers like

-average number of caches in an area with high population density

-average number of caches in an area with low population density

-rate caches are being planted in the different areas (high density areas, low density areas)

-How many geocaches can a certain area hold while following all of the rules perfectly (ie. caches are exctly 0.1 miles apart)

-How many geocaches does a TYPICAL area hold, since people do not plant them the perfect distance apart, and there are buildings in the way etc.

 

I want to create a model that when I put in information for certain variables (maybe population density or something, not sure yet) it would tell me how many caches are typically in the area and/or whether the area will be saturated after a certain amount of time.

 

I don't know any of this for sure. I am still bouncing ideas around...

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So I am trying to get GSAK to do what I am looking for and I have gotten it to take a pocket query and load it into GSAK but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank. BUT when I load a single geocache into GSAK all of the information comes up correctly. What am I doing wrong?

On mine the last GPX column is right next to the placed date, maybe hide the last GPX column.

Also GSAK comes with sample data and a tutorial if I remember, you might want to take a bit of time and fiddle with it.

 

Yeah mine are right next to each other too and they both say 4/23/14 for all of the caches I downloaded. Not sure why though because it only happened when I downloaded multiple at a time...

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... but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank.

Are you sure you're loading a .GPX file into GSAK? You can't use .LOC files as they don't contain the info you need.

 

Hmmm that is a good question. The pocket query was not going through to my e-mail correctly but it came up in a separate window so I just "checked all" and clicked "download waypoints." It doesn't give me the option of .GPX or .LOC there. So maybe that is why it is not working...

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I am getting my Masters in Mathematics. So really I could have done a mathematical analysis of just about anything. I just enjoy Geocaching and thought it would be a good idea to spend the next several months of my life working on a topic I enjoy.

 

I am still early in the process here but I want to do is develop a mathematical model to represent the number of geocaches in an area. I need data for how many caches are in all these different areas so that I can get some numbers like

-average number of caches in an area with high population density

-average number of caches in an area with low population density

-rate caches are being planted in the different areas (high density areas, low density areas)

-How many geocaches can a certain area hold while following all of the rules perfectly (ie. caches are exctly 0.1 miles apart)

-How many geocaches does a TYPICAL area hold, since people do not plant them the perfect distance apart, and there are buildings in the way etc.

 

I want to create a model that when I put in information for certain variables (maybe population density or something, not sure yet) it would tell me how many caches are typically in the area and/or whether the area will be saturated after a certain amount of time.

 

I don't know any of this for sure. I am still bouncing ideas around...

So one thing that you've touched on, but you need to clarify in your notes is that the number of caches fluctuate. You'll need to have some snapshot dates, probably at regular intervals. The lovely thing about PQs is once you set them up you can get them to run once a week which is a nice logical interval.

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... but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank.

Are you sure you're loading a .GPX file into GSAK? You can't use .LOC files as they don't contain the info you need.

 

Hmmm that is a good question. The pocket query was not going through to my e-mail correctly but it came up in a separate window so I just "checked all" and clicked "download waypoints." It doesn't give me the option of .GPX or .LOC there. So maybe that is why it is not working...

If you went with 1,000 wpts it doesn't go through your email. You have to go back to the PQ window and download from there.

Link to comment

I am getting my Masters in Mathematics. So really I could have done a mathematical analysis of just about anything. I just enjoy Geocaching and thought it would be a good idea to spend the next several months of my life working on a topic I enjoy.

 

I am still early in the process here but I want to do is develop a mathematical model to represent the number of geocaches in an area. I need data for how many caches are in all these different areas so that I can get some numbers like

-average number of caches in an area with high population density

-average number of caches in an area with low population density

-rate caches are being planted in the different areas (high density areas, low density areas)

-How many geocaches can a certain area hold while following all of the rules perfectly (ie. caches are exctly 0.1 miles apart)

-How many geocaches does a TYPICAL area hold, since people do not plant them the perfect distance apart, and there are buildings in the way etc.

 

I want to create a model that when I put in information for certain variables (maybe population density or something, not sure yet) it would tell me how many caches are typically in the area and/or whether the area will be saturated after a certain amount of time.

 

I don't know any of this for sure. I am still bouncing ideas around...

So one thing that you've touched on, but you need to clarify in your notes is that the number of caches fluctuate. You'll need to have some snapshot dates, probably at regular intervals. The lovely thing about PQs is once you set them up you can get them to run once a week which is a nice logical interval.

 

Yes, I was thinking about that. Maybe coming up with a growth rate and a "death" rate for when caches are archived. And this would be different for different areas I think. Like maybe urban areas have a faster "death" rate because of more muggles?

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... but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank.

Are you sure you're loading a .GPX file into GSAK? You can't use .LOC files as they don't contain the info you need.

 

Hmmm that is a good question. The pocket query was not going through to my e-mail correctly but it came up in a separate window so I just "checked all" and clicked "download waypoints." It doesn't give me the option of .GPX or .LOC there. So maybe that is why it is not working...

If you went with 1,000 wpts it doesn't go through your email. You have to go back to the PQ window and download from there.

 

It was only like 300 and some because I was looking at a specific area trying to test it, but I never got an e-mail for it. So I was just looking at the list of geocaches that it gave me when I clicked "preview." I might have to try it again to figure out why it didn't go to my e-mail...

Link to comment

I am getting my Masters in Mathematics. So really I could have done a mathematical analysis of just about anything. I just enjoy Geocaching and thought it would be a good idea to spend the next several months of my life working on a topic I enjoy.

 

I am still early in the process here but I want to do is develop a mathematical model to represent the number of geocaches in an area. I need data for how many caches are in all these different areas so that I can get some numbers like

-average number of caches in an area with high population density

-average number of caches in an area with low population density

-rate caches are being planted in the different areas (high density areas, low density areas)

-How many geocaches can a certain area hold while following all of the rules perfectly (ie. caches are exctly 0.1 miles apart)

-How many geocaches does a TYPICAL area hold, since people do not plant them the perfect distance apart, and there are buildings in the way etc.

 

I want to create a model that when I put in information for certain variables (maybe population density or something, not sure yet) it would tell me how many caches are typically in the area and/or whether the area will be saturated after a certain amount of time.

 

I don't know any of this for sure. I am still bouncing ideas around...

So one thing that you've touched on, but you need to clarify in your notes is that the number of caches fluctuate. You'll need to have some snapshot dates, probably at regular intervals. The lovely thing about PQs is once you set them up you can get them to run once a week which is a nice logical interval.

 

Yes, I was thinking about that. Maybe coming up with a growth rate and a "death" rate for when caches are archived. And this would be different for different areas I think. Like maybe urban areas have a faster "death" rate because of more muggles?

Overall I'd say the nett number is growing, even with a higher turnover rate for urban areas, the placement rate is higher.

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... but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank.

Are you sure you're loading a .GPX file into GSAK? You can't use .LOC files as they don't contain the info you need.

 

Hmmm that is a good question. The pocket query was not going through to my e-mail correctly but it came up in a separate window so I just "checked all" and clicked "download waypoints." It doesn't give me the option of .GPX or .LOC there. So maybe that is why it is not working...

If you went with 1,000 wpts it doesn't go through your email. You have to go back to the PQ window and download from there.

 

It was only like 300 and some because I was looking at a specific area trying to test it, but I never got an e-mail for it. So I was just looking at the list of geocaches that it gave me when I clicked "preview." I might have to try it again to figure out why it didn't go to my e-mail...

The preview window is great to use to look at it on the map, but the way to download is a screen back from there.

Link to comment
... but all of the caches have a placed date of 4/23/14. And the spot for logs or last found dates are all blank.

Are you sure you're loading a .GPX file into GSAK? You can't use .LOC files as they don't contain the info you need.

 

Hmmm that is a good question. The pocket query was not going through to my e-mail correctly but it came up in a separate window so I just "checked all" and clicked "download waypoints." It doesn't give me the option of .GPX or .LOC there. So maybe that is why it is not working...

If you went with 1,000 wpts it doesn't go through your email. You have to go back to the PQ window and download from there.

It was only like 300 and some because I was looking at a specific area trying to test it, but I never got an e-mail for it. So I was just looking at the list of geocaches that it gave me when I clicked "preview." I might have to try it again to figure out why it didn't go to my e-mail...

The preview window is great to use to look at it on the map, but the way to download is a screen back from there.

 

Ok, so after I submitted the query, it says "Thanks! Your pocket query has been modified and currently results in 381 caches. You can preview the search on the nearest cache page." and that is where I was clicking "preview the search" and it brings me to a page that says "Running Pocket Query" with the list of all the geocaches from my query. At the bottom of that page was where I was clicking "Check all" and "Download waypoints"

 

I am not seeing anything on the first page to let me download. And I just tried a different e-mail and the query still isn't showing up...hmmmm

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If you went with 1,000 wpts it doesn't go through your email. You have to go back to the PQ window and download from there.

It was only like 300 and some because I was looking at a specific area trying to test it, but I never got an e-mail for it. So I was just looking at the list of geocaches that it gave me when I clicked "preview." I might have to try it again to figure out why it didn't go to my e-mail...

The preview window is great to use to look at it on the map, but the way to download is a screen back from there.

 

Ok, so after I submitted the query, it says "Thanks! Your pocket query has been modified and currently results in 381 caches. You can preview the search on the nearest cache page." and that is where I was clicking "preview the search" and it brings me to a page that says "Running Pocket Query" with the list of all the geocaches from my query. At the bottom of that page was where I was clicking "Check all" and "Download waypoints"

 

I am not seeing anything on the first page to let me download. And I just tried a different e-mail and the query still isn't showing up...hmmmm

Go back to the main screen, your profile, then Pocket Queries. There should be Active Pocket Queries, and Pocket Queries ready for Download on little tabs. Pick the Pocket Queries ready for Download then click on the query that you want to work with, save it to a location you can find again.

Open GSAK, on the upper left there should be a little file folder, click on that, browse and navigate to the PQ file you just saved.

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If you went with 1,000 wpts it doesn't go through your email. You have to go back to the PQ window and download from there.

It was only like 300 and some because I was looking at a specific area trying to test it, but I never got an e-mail for it. So I was just looking at the list of geocaches that it gave me when I clicked "preview." I might have to try it again to figure out why it didn't go to my e-mail...

The preview window is great to use to look at it on the map, but the way to download is a screen back from there.

 

Ok, so after I submitted the query, it says "Thanks! Your pocket query has been modified and currently results in 381 caches. You can preview the search on the nearest cache page." and that is where I was clicking "preview the search" and it brings me to a page that says "Running Pocket Query" with the list of all the geocaches from my query. At the bottom of that page was where I was clicking "Check all" and "Download waypoints"

 

I am not seeing anything on the first page to let me download. And I just tried a different e-mail and the query still isn't showing up...hmmmm

Go back to the main screen, your profile, then Pocket Queries. There should be Active Pocket Queries, and Pocket Queries ready for Download on little tabs. Pick the Pocket Queries ready for Download then click on the query that you want to work with, save it to a location you can find again.

Open GSAK, on the upper left there should be a little file folder, click on that, browse and navigate to the PQ file you just saved.

 

Ok so the query is listed under Active Pocket Queries but it says No Downloads Available under the Pocket Queries Ready for Download.

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AHA! I got it to work. Sooo the first time I did this query I messed up the coordinates. I fixed them but then all this time I was trying to get it to resend an old query with new coordinates. Apparently it won't do that and so I just created a brand new query and it worked. So we're all good! Thanks for your help!!

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Hmmm that is a good question. The pocket query was not going through to my e-mail correctly but it came up in a separate window so I just "checked all" and clicked "download waypoints." It doesn't give me the option of .GPX or .LOC there. So maybe that is why it is not working...

You're downloading 20 in a LOC file, right off the search page. You're not getting the GPX pocket query.

 

Here's a tutorial on pocket queries.

 

http://markwell.us/pq.htm

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I am getting my Masters in Mathematics. So really I could have done a mathematical analysis of just about anything. I just enjoy Geocaching and thought it would be a good idea to spend the next several months of my life working on a topic I enjoy.

 

I am still early in the process here but I want to do is develop a mathematical model to represent the number of geocaches in an area. I need data for how many caches are in all these different areas so that I can get some numbers like

-average number of caches in an area with high population density

-average number of caches in an area with low population density

-rate caches are being planted in the different areas (high density areas, low density areas)

-How many geocaches can a certain area hold while following all of the rules perfectly (ie. caches are exctly 0.1 miles apart)

-How many geocaches does a TYPICAL area hold, since people do not plant them the perfect distance apart, and there are buildings in the way etc.

 

I want to create a model that when I put in information for certain variables (maybe population density or something, not sure yet) it would tell me how many caches are typically in the area and/or whether the area will be saturated after a certain amount of time.

 

I don't know any of this for sure. I am still bouncing ideas around...

So one thing that you've touched on, but you need to clarify in your notes is that the number of caches fluctuate. You'll need to have some snapshot dates, probably at regular intervals. The lovely thing about PQs is once you set them up you can get them to run once a week which is a nice logical interval.

 

Yes, I was thinking about that. Maybe coming up with a growth rate and a "death" rate for when caches are archived. And this would be different for different areas I think. Like maybe urban areas have a faster "death" rate because of more muggles?

The death rate is going to be difficult or impossible to determine through a single PQ. In general PQ's don't have archived caches. One can infer the archival of a cache in GSAK by loading PQ's generated on different dates and screening on the last GPX date. Those caches that aren't in the latest PQ are good candidates for caches that were archived.

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Actually it isn't that hard to get a list of archived caches using Project-GC for any area you want. Although since it is a third party service that requires a payment for premium services which this requires some will prefer not to use it. But it is a nice solution.

 

I am guessing that GS gave him full database access so these can be found.

Edited by Walts Hunting
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