App Feature Idea - "Waypoints" Tab

[+korysan]

It would be great to have a "waypoints" tab featured at the bottom of the app. This would allow a user to save waypoints that aren't necessarily associated with any geocaches. Each saved waypoint could be labeled and have notes (or even pictures) associated with them. Often times I am exploring new areas to seek out hiding spots for geocaches. When I find a cool spot, sometimes I will use the closest geocache to it and add a "waypoint" to save the location in my app. This isn't exactly intuitive, but it's the best idea I've come up with for that purpose. Having a separate database of saved waypoints could be helpful for testing out coordinates for a new hide before its published. With further development, there could even be a feature to "load" saved waypoints when publishing a new cache and entering its coordinates. It would also be neat to have some type of alert to inform the user if a waypoint is too close to a nearby geocache to use as a hiding spot. 

 

Thoughts?

[+cerberus1]

I'm not sure I like the "alert for too close to another" idea.   If you didn't do a multi or puzzle, (I feel) that's on you. We've seen more than a few instances of people battleshipping caches.   Puzzle and multi finals would be easy to bypass, without actually doing them that way.

But I like the idea of a separate waypoint tab, rather than from accessing a cache page.  I mark n save waypoints for everything from parking, to good hunting/fishing spots similarly with a handheld GPSr while caching. 

[+noncentric]

An interesting idea, but not something that I'd consider a high priority. If I wanted to save a waypoint using the app, then I'd take a screenshot of the compass screen, which shows "current location" coords in the lower left corner. Then take additional photos of the area and potential hiding spots. Then review via the phone's Gallery or Photo or Camera app.

I don't see that it takes more than a few seconds to type coords into the "hide a cache" template, so not sure it's worth the development/testing time to create an uploading capability either. There are a lot of "GPS" apps out there, and some of those might have the ability to record waypoints and save them with additional notes.

While I think the alert is interesting and I think it would be helpful, the 'battleshipping' that cerberus1 mentions above could make it problematic. Perhaps if users were limited to 3 checks per day, but even then (1) cachers would complain that 3 is not enough and/or (2) persistent cachers would stilll be able to battleship a final location, it might just take them a bit longer.

[+korysan]

I had not considered the "battleshipping" tactic.. so perhaps leaving that element out of this particular wishlist item would be best

While I do not feel this is a high priority item that needs to be addressed immediately, I do feel that this is a naturally advantageous feature to integrate at some point. I take tons of pictures on my phone, and sifting through them to find the few pictures of a neat place/hiding spot can be quite cumbersome.