Not a good start...

[+troutcommand]

Hi....quick intro...I'm Chris in Nova Scotia.

So 1 month ago while on vacation in Cape Breton I used an android phone with an app to find our first cache with the kids....they really liked it, so I start looking into this geocaching business. Ok...sounds relatively easy and fun. I find a magellan explorist 610 second hand in great shape - check. Join geocaching.com - check.....do some reading and research and decide I'm going to get the premium membership because it looks like it makes things a little easier and opens up some more doors - $30.00 - check.

So I sit down on the pc with my gps and proceed to figure out how to get these geocaches in my area onto the device. After going to the help site and reading and going on the forum and searching and trying to load the caches from the map, I got so frustrated. When I clicked the 'Send to GPS' option on the cache pope-up window thing...another window  comes up with the different manufacturer's communication links to download the device communicator. I click magellan, I save it, I run it...nothing happens, try to find the program to run it, can't see and .exe. file...WTF? I see the note it only works in internet explorer. I quite firefox and open internet explorer, try it all again, same result, nothing. Can't really send to my device, spent hours on this last night and ready to give up today and also miffed I paid for premuim and its not really premium.

Tried running queries and that seemed to work.....still can't get 'em on my gps though. Great. Pics below.

Thats my story, don't know what to do next.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2017 by troutcommand

[+on4bam]

Communicator is phased out by just about any browser. This started more than a year ago and in the beginning you could find workarounds for this. No more (besides, it's a security risk as the used technology dates back to the 1990's).

 

To download a single cache, do not use "send to GPS" but click "GPX file". Save to computer and then copy to the appropriate directory on your Magellan or save directly to the GPS.

To save more than one cache, read up on pocket queries, this will allow you to load up to 1000 caches in 1 file.

Another option is to "add to list" on the cachepage and then make a pocket query from that list. after running the PQ, download and save to your GPS.

 

[+kunarion]

16 minutes ago, troutcommand said:

So I sit down on the pc with my gps and proceed to figure out how to get these geocaches in my area onto the device. After going to the help site and reading and going on the forum and searching and trying to load the caches from the map, I got so frustrated. When I clicked the 'Send to GPS' option on the cache pope-up window thing...another window  comes up with the different manufacturer's communication links to download the device communicator. I click magellan, I save it, I run it...nothing happens, try to find the program to run it, can't see and .exe. file...WTF? I see the note it only works in internet explorer. I quite firefox and open internet explorer, try it all again, same result, nothing. Can't really send to my device, spent hours on this last night and ready to give up today and also miffed I paid for premuim and its not really premium.

Tried running queries and that seemed to work.....still can't get 'em on my gps though.

 

Pocket Queries may be the most useful for you.  There's a learning curve.  If you've done one and gotten the Zip file, unzip it and you typically have two GPX files full of data.  One is Geocaches, the other is waypoints for parking and whatever.  An Explorist wants to see caches in one folder, waypoints in another.  So you place the files in the proper places, and go!

If "Send To GPS" works, fine, but otherwise, don't put a lot of time into fixing that.  If you want to load just one cache, click the "GPX File" button on any cache page, and save that file into the Geocaches folder of the Explorist.

I don't have a Magellan GPSr, so I can't walk you through all the steps.  But once you get it figured out, it's actually pretty simple to run Pocket Queries and load caches.

Edited August 31, 2017 by kunarion

[+troutcommand]

Sounds straight forward. So I can copy the GPX from the PC directly to the Magellan if I can find the right folder?

Do I need one of the windows companion applications like GSAK? Which one should I use if so? Can you get along without these?

Thanks.

[+on4bam]

8 minutes ago, troutcommand said:

Sounds straight forward. So I can copy the GPX from the PC directly to the Magellan if I can find the right folder?

Do I need one of the windows companion applications like GSAK? Which one should I use if so? Can you get along without these?

1. Yes

2. No, but GSAK make life a lot easier. It's free to try but will throw a nagscreen at you after a while waiting ever longer if you don't register. Mind you, GSAK has a steep learning curve but once you get the hang of it it's hard to go without it. After 11 years using it I still learn new things about it

 

[+cerberus1]

7 minutes ago, troutcommand said:

Sounds straight forward. So I can copy the GPX from the PC directly to the Magellan if I can find the right folder?

Do I need one of the windows companion applications like GSAK? Which one should I use if so? Can you get along without these?

I do.  Have entered caches manually since I started.   Simply choose (on site) which caches I want to head to.   

Loading a thousand caches in a file that I'd never go after anyway never made much sense (to me).

[+troutcommand]

Thanks for the info everyone, I will report back.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

On 8/31/2017 at 10:55 AM, troutcommand said:

Sounds straight forward. So I can copy the GPX from the PC directly to the Magellan if I can find the right folder?

Do I need one of the windows companion applications like GSAK? Which one should I use if so? Can you get along without these?

Thanks.

You can but it makes things easier if you use a waypoint manager such as GSAK,  EasyGPS (or ExpertGPS, the paid version).  I haven't tried Basecamp with a Magellan GPS so don't know how it might work.  In any case,  after a PQ runs, you can download the results (as a zipfile) and load them directly into the waypoint manager (it'll read the zip file).  Then connect your GPS to your computer and you can send all or a portion of the waypoints using a "Send to GPS" menu option.  The waypoint manager will also allow to receive waypoints from your GPS.  I'd suggest giving EasyGPS a try and if you like it get the ExpertGPS version.  Give GSAK and Basecamp a try as well.  GSAK is a nagware application so after a dozen uses or so, if you find it useful you'll have to pay for a registered version.