SimonFish123 Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 Hi everyone, When we were first started Geocaching, we were printing out the coordinates and programming them into our Etrex Personal Navigator as we went. When we realised that we could Geocache with our iPhones, we made an immidiate switch. However, we're now in a tricky situation: both GPSes in our iPhones have developed faults, and are now only accurate to several hundred meters. We have decided that we should now probably purchase a proper GPS again. We're looking at the Garmin Etrex range, since they have the 'paperless caching' feature (which I assume downloads the coords, hints and description). I know that the Geocaching website supports downloading a cache to a GPS, but this seems to be for individual caches. Finally, here is my question: can I download a list of Geocaches with hints and description, to a 'paperless caching' enabled GPS? Thank you! Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 3 hours ago, SimonFish123 said: Hi everyone, When we were first started Geocaching, we were printing out the coordinates and programming them into our Etrex Personal Navigator as we went. When we realised that we could Geocache with our iPhones, we made an immidiate switch. However, we're now in a tricky situation: both GPSes in our iPhones have developed faults, and are now only accurate to several hundred meters. We have decided that we should now probably purchase a proper GPS again. We're looking at the Garmin Etrex range, since they have the 'paperless caching' feature (which I assume downloads the coords, hints and description). I know that the Geocaching website supports downloading a cache to a GPS, but this seems to be for individual caches. Finally, here is my question: can I download a list of Geocaches with hints and description, to a 'paperless caching' enabled GPS? Thank you! You can, but you would need to become a premium member. Basic members can only download cache data in LOC format (which does not include full description or hints). Premium members can download lists of caches (either from the search page or generated with pocket queries). The data is encapsulated as a GPX file with extensions created by Groundspeak which include descriptions, hints, caches size, type, difficulty/terrain ratings, the most recent logs and more. If you haven't premium membership there are a few people here that can gift a 1 month membership if you just ask (I'm not one of them). Are you sure that the GPS in both phones went bad. I've never heard of that happening before. I don't have an iPhone (anymore) but you may have inadvertently changed a setting for for the geodetic datum. You should be using WGS84, and if it's set to something else the accuracy could be off by the amount you're seeing. 2 Quote Link to comment
SimonFish123 Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 Thanks for the reply NYPaddleCacher, you've confirmed what I suspected. I suppose if we're going to buy the GPS, we may as well do it properly and upgrade to Premium too. Both phones know our rough location via cellular triangulation and WiFi location, but not to +/- 5 meters as before. I repair iPhones, and I suspect that either the GPS chip or antenna have become damaged (though drops/knocks, etc). It's a good excuse to buy a good piece of kit. Quote Link to comment
+kunarion Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 (edited) 47 minutes ago, SimonFish123 said: Both phones know our rough location via cellular triangulation and WiFi location, but not to +/- 5 meters as before. I repair iPhones, and I suspect that either the GPS chip or antenna have become damaged (though drops/knocks, etc). It's a good excuse to buy a good piece of kit. That seems just like my non-cellular iPad. It had no GPS chip by design, and would update location by wifi. It tended to be between 300 feet and 1.5 miles off of GZ, in town. I guess you've tried everything, but here's a good page about things to try for the rest of us. Your phones are perfect with a plan to use a dedicated handheld GPS. You can load up a phone App's offline cache database as a backup in case there's a cache you intended to load into the GPS but it's not there. You can get live cache info in the phone for use in the GPS (add a new waypoint). You can view live maps, such as satellite maps, and you may find a cache sometimes by comparing landmarks to the icon location. You can log online if there's a signal. It's a nice way to get the best of both worlds. I had intended to use GPS and phone interchangeably, but my brand new phone (HTC U11) is a whole lot more loose than my Garmin Oregon. The phone is all over the place, within reason, but it's indecisive. On the Oregon, I can walk right up and arrive at GZ. Yeah, I know. That takes all the fun out of it. But I have Apps on the phone for instant updates, and as a backup. And I can still use it in a caching emergency. Edited February 18, 2018 by kunarion 1 Quote Link to comment
SimonFish123 Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 You're right, a phone and GPS unit make for good companions. We prefer to log our caches in the field to same on 'admin work' when we get home. Quote Link to comment
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