Can you create a pocket query for multiple destinations?

[+rassilon256]

So I'm going on an overseas trip next week. I'll be heading to a variety of destinations around Los Angeles and San Diego over three weeks. I want to find as many caches as I can (keeping in mind that I don't know where I will have the time, and I will be using public transport and Uber), and minimise phone data use as it's reasonably expensive and I'll need it for other things.

 

I was hoping to use a pocket query for this but it seems all I can do with that is draw a route between LA and SD. I think if I cast the radius for this wide enough to encompass the destinations I'm going to I'll end up with too many results, many of which will be in areas I'm not stopping in.

 

Any suggestions welcomed. I'm an occasional GSAK user if that helps.

[+NanCycle]

So I'm going on an overseas trip next week. I'll be heading to a variety of destinations around Los Angeles and San Diego over three weeks. I want to find as many caches as I can (keeping in mind that I don't know where I will have the time, and I will be using public transport and Uber), and minimise phone data use as it's reasonably expensive and I'll need it for other things.

 

I was hoping to use a pocket query for this but it seems all I can do with that is draw a route between LA and SD. I think if I cast the radius for this wide enough to encompass the destinations I'm going to I'll end up with too many results, many of which will be in areas I'm not stopping in.

 

Any suggestions welcomed. I'm an occasional GSAK user if that helps.

 

Don't know anything about GSAK, but I'd just make multiple PQs.

[+Harry Dolphin]

When I went to Maine to visit my sister, I set up (small) PQs for four counties in Connecticut I wanted to find caches in. Plus one for corrected coords for the Maine State Star. She already had all of Maine set up in her GPSr.

Visits to PA for County/DeLorme Challenges, I set up a lot of fifty to one hundred PQs for every county I wanted to find a cache in.

Imported into GSAK for editing. Works for me.

[+on4bam]

So I'm going on an overseas trip next week. I'll be heading to a variety of destinations around Los Angeles and San Diego over three weeks. I want to find as many caches as I can (keeping in mind that I don't know where I will have the time, and I will be using public transport and Uber), and minimise phone data use as it's reasonably expensive and I'll need it for other things.

 

I was hoping to use a pocket query for this but it seems all I can do with that is draw a route between LA and SD. I think if I cast the radius for this wide enough to encompass the destinations I'm going to I'll end up with too many results, many of which will be in areas I'm not stopping in.

 

Any suggestions welcomed. I'm an occasional GSAK user if that helps.

 

GSAK is the perfect tool to do what you want.

You can get 10 PQs (10*1000 caches) per day and import them into a database, on top of that you can "get geocaches", set wanted options and download another 6000/24 hours. That might be enough to cover the area you'll be in. Biggest task will be to select the caches you want to do (or at least filter the ones out you don't want to do). If you have GSAK with you on your trip and have (free) WiFi along the way you can update upcoming caches and have fresh data on your GPS (phone?)

 

If you like the idea of having caches along the route but want more flexible options you can use the "GetCachesOnRoute" macro in GSAK which gives you the option to adjust every small subdivision of the route before you download the caches.

If this returns more than 6000 caches you can just split up the route.

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by on4bam

[ohgood]

So I'm going on an overseas trip next week. I'll be heading to a variety of destinations around Los Angeles and San Diego over three weeks. I want to find as many caches as I can (keeping in mind that I don't know where I will have the time, and I will be using public transport and Uber), and minimise phone data use as it's reasonably expensive and I'll need it for other things.

 

I was hoping to use a pocket query for this but it seems all I can do with that is draw a route between LA and SD. I think if I cast the radius for this wide enough to encompass the destinations I'm going to I'll end up with too many results, many of which will be in areas I'm not stopping in.

 

Any suggestions welcomed. I'm an occasional GSAK user if that helps.

 

buy a $30 gophone and put its simcard in your phone.

 

make sure you have redundancies also ;-)

[+on4bam]

buy a $30 gophone and put its simcard in your phone.

 

ohgood's solution to all problems, buy a phone. The OP seems to have all tools available without spending extra money.

[ohgood]

buy a $30 gophone and put its simcard in your phone.

 

ohgood's solution to all problems, buy a phone. The OP seems to have all tools available without spending extra money.

 

la to sd is 120 miles, that's a lot of unfamiliar real estate to travel through. thirty bucks isn't much to pay in order to have data access (for navigation/food/services/etc) in a foreign country. nothing to do with which device to use, everything to do with trip planning. :-)

[+on4bam]

la to sd is 120 miles, that's a lot of unfamiliar real estate to travel through. thirty bucks isn't much to pay in order to have data access (for navigation/food/services/etc) in a foreign country. nothing to do with which device to use, everything to do with trip planning. :-)

 

We must be doing terribly wrong then as our holiday trips cover 1000's of kilometers and we get by without data (we do buy a local SIM for our WiFi Hotspot just to check mails when picnicking or when accommodation has no internet). GDAK on the tablet (evening logging ans some data refreshing) + GPS does it all. Navigation, food, services is also handled by the GPS, I'm always surprised how many restaurants/fuel stations/attractions are listed in the OSM maps we use.

Although probably not a problem in SoCal, our last trips involved many "no service" areas anyway (W. Aus, Greenland, TAS, and even parts of VIC).

For our next trip we have all 28000 caches in NZ in GDAK, 2000+ will be loaded on the Oregon 600.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

buy a $30 gophone and put its simcard in your phone.

 

ohgood's solution to all problems, buy a phone. The OP seems to have all tools available without spending extra money.

 

la to sd is 120 miles, that's a lot of unfamiliar real estate to travel through. thirty bucks isn't much to pay in order to have data access (for navigation/food/services/etc) in a foreign country. nothing to do with which device to use, everything to do with trip planning. :-)

 

on4bams suggestion to create multiple PQs (which is what the OP asked about) *is* trip planning. Whether those PQs are loaded into a GPS or a phone is an entirely different issue. I have somehow managed to visit find caches in 23 countries without paying extra for data access by using a handheld GPS.

 

To elaborate on on4bams suggestion, I use a "travel" database in GSAK. Before a trip I will created the necessary PQs and download results to a files on a PC. When I load the first PQ file I'll set the option to clean the database before loading, then uncheck the option for the rest of the files. That will create a single database with the results of all the pocket queries. Plug in GPS and "Send to GPS" will transfer all the waypoints to my GPS. Then, since I have a Garmin, I'll use openstreetmaps for Garmin to create a mapset with all the tiles I'll need for areas I'll be visiting.

 

 

 

[ohgood]

la to sd is 120 miles, that's a lot of unfamiliar real estate to travel through. thirty bucks isn't much to pay in order to have data access (for navigation/food/services/etc) in a foreign country. nothing to do with which device to use, everything to do with trip planning. :-)

 

We must be doing terribly wrong then as our holiday trips cover 1000's of kilometers and we get by without data (we do buy a local SIM for our WiFi Hotspot just to check mails when picnicking or when accommodation has no internet). GDAK on the tablet (evening logging ans some data refreshing) + GPS does it all. Navigation, food, services is also handled by the GPS, I'm always surprised how many restaurants/fuel stations/attractions are listed in the OSM maps we use.

Although probably not a problem in SoCal, our last trips involved many "no service" areas anyway (W. Aus, Greenland, TAS, and even parts of VIC).

For our next trip we have all 28000 caches in NZ in GDAK, 2000+ will be loaded on the Oregon 600.

 

I'd say you definitely have a handle on the processes.

 

the OP could benefit from using data, much like you are.

 

osm maps.... oh yessss! I've also been surprised by the amount of CURRENT points that osm has. it's been pretty handy in the when cell service was just far enough away to be inconvenient.

[+rassilon256]

Thanks everyone for the discussion! Very interesting suggestions.

 

I think I'll just have to pick some likely central points to go with multiple PQs, and see what happens. I haven't got the time or patience for 50-100 PQs though.

 

No idea what a gophone is, but I have in fact arranged for a reasonably good deal on a Vodafone SIM to use in my iPhone on the trip. All the same I'd rather not risk using up my data downloading cache listings when I may not have any use for them. Especially when I have a perfectly good GPSr enabled for caching, which usually only gets used for multis.

 

I did see the "GetCachesOnRoute" macro, but I'm not really sure what advantage it has over the similar function on Geocaching.com. That said, I'm quite inexperienced with GSAK and may be missing the point.

 

In all honesty I'm not expecting to have many opportunities to cache as there are a lot of pre-booked activities. But I likely won't head to the USA again for many years if at all, so I'd like to take the opportunity to grab at least a few caches (and I guess a country and a state souvenir). I'm just looking to get as much information easily available to me as possible.

[+on4bam]

I did see the "GetCachesOnRoute" macro, but I'm not really sure what advantage it has over the similar function on Geocaching.com. That said, I'm quite inexperienced with GSAK and may be missing the point.

 

The advantage is that the route is calculated and populated with boxes. These boxes can be edited (just pull the boundaries) so you can include a wider area in the spots you need them and still only have the default distance away from the route for the rest.

 

 

Advantage is that you can create this kind of route, edit the boxes as needed and download caches immediately via API.

It really pays off to learn to use GSAK as once you're used to it, it makes doing things like what you're trying to do a piece of cake.

 

BTW, after 10 years of GSAK use I still discover new stuff that this software can do and I occasionally discover new macro's too. I don't know how I would plan a 4 week holiday covering 1000's of kilometers without it