Garmin 500 replacement

[+CharlyBaltimore]

We have had a Garmin 500 for a long time.  We use it to take us along a route of caches while traveling.  We have Oregon 450 and a GPSMap62s that we use after we exit our car.  The 500 is on its last legs and we need something similar to replace it.  Any ideas?  We have other Nuvi's but they do not have the geocaching category to put GPX files into. 

[+kunarion]

15 hours ago, CharlyBaltimore said:

We have had a Garmin 500 for a long time.  We use it to take us along a route of caches while traveling.  We have Oregon 450 and a GPSMap62s that we use after we exit our car.  The 500 is on its last legs and we need something similar to replace it.  Any ideas?  We have other Nuvi's but they do not have the geocaching category to put GPX files into. 

 

I haven't had trouble loading a cache or two into a modern Nuvi.  With my old StreetPilot, it was an incredible chore to manually delete a cache, which I didn't discover til after loading about 500 caches as "POIs", and setting up "proximity alerts".  What a bad idea that was.

 

Anyway, place a GPX file into the Nuvi's GPX folder, and you get a GC number, routing, and some info.  Just load some choice caches to get to unfamiliar places.  GSAK or other helper software can load a Nuvi better (and delete the caches later).  You don't need to fill up a Nuvi with cache text that it can't display, plus you can get a real cache title instead of a GC number.

 

My brother has a Garmin Montana that he uses as car navigation.  It speaks loud and clear just like a Nuvi, but it's a fully functioning Geocaching device.  So far my Nuvi with the couple of caches idea is OK, plus I have routable street maps on my Oregon, in case of some cache I didn't load into the Nuvi.  But I've considered the Montana as a Nuvi replacement.  It would be pretty cool for that purpose, except for the price. 

 

Edited May 22, 2018 by kunarion

[+NYPaddleCacher]

9 hours ago, kunarion said:

My brother has a Garmin Montana that he uses as car navigation.  It speaks loud and clear just like a Nuvi, but it's a fully functioning Geocaching device.  So far my Nuvi with the couple of caches idea is OK, plus I have routable street maps on my Oregon, in case of some cache I didn't load into the Nuvi.  But I've considered the Montana as a Nuvi replacement.  It would be pretty cool for that purpose, except for the price. 

 

I'd think that a dedicated auto navigation GPSr would become obsolete with the availability of very affordable small tablets with an embedded GPS.   An android based tablet can run Google Maps or Waze for navigation with turn-by-turn directions as well as many geocaching applications.   Personally,  I'd use a tablet or even my smart phone for auto (route based) navigation, then switch to a device or application on a smart phone which does "as the crow flies" navigation once I got out of the vehicle.  

[+Team Christiansen]

Garmin has replaced their Nuvi models with the DriveSmart models. Really just the same thing with an updated name. I have one. The GSAK macros for the Nuvis work just the same with the DriveSmarts.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Team Christiansen
spelling

[+kunarion]

1 hour ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

Personally,  I'd use a tablet or even my smart phone for auto (route based) navigation, then switch to a device or application on a smart phone which does "as the crow flies" navigation once I got out of the vehicle.  

 

When I got a phone data subscription, that was my idea, too.  Then a couple of times, the phone lost its connection and refused to do a route, once in the middle of town.  A relatively inexpensive Nuvi (or DriveSmart) kept in the car can save a cache trip.  The Nuvi is always ready to make a route, no finding or fiddling with its "App" nor its mount, it's ready to go.  I'm back to the phone as a phone (yeah, with its cool Apps when they feel like functioning), the Garmin handheld GPS for GPS caching, and the Nuvi as the Nuvi.  They aren't obsolete yet.  YMMV.

 

Edited May 22, 2018 by kunarion

[+Viajero Perdido]

6 minutes ago, kunarion said:

YMMV

 

Yep.  Locus Map works perfectly well for me, completely offline, first at doing turn-by-turn navigation down the road, then - if I want - doing turn-by-turn down the trail to the cache as well.  Signal?  Who needs signal?

 

What's handy is, one of the lesser-known mapping companies, Telenav, recently put a small army of people onto improving the routing data in OSM, and they've caught a lot of bugs.  Routing in OSM is now very usable.

 

One nice thing about using a phone app for caching (and navigation) is, you can use the very same app in a large-screen tablet for planning the next day.  I do this all the time.  One app, no relearning between gadgets.

[+kunarion]

41 minutes ago, Team Christiansen said:

Garmin has replaced their Nuvi models with the DriveSmart models. Really just the same thing with an updated name. I have one. The GSAK macros for the Nuvis work just the same with the DriveSmarts.

 

The OP's old Nuvi I think had built-in Geocaching functions.  Load a PQ into that, and it is the Geocaching device.  Or load a PQ into both that and a handheld GPS to get the best of both worlds, street routing with voice prompts, plus handheld hiking for Geocaching.

 

Is that basically the idea today?  If not, do you, for example, load only parking waypoints into the car GPS?  Somehow cross-reference them with the hiking GPS?  I might try a similar plan if it's not too much extra work to load everything.  Whatever the plan is, I think it's useful info for the OP.

 

 

Edited May 22, 2018 by kunarion

[+Team Christiansen]

1 hour ago, kunarion said:

Or load a PQ into both that and a handheld GPS to get the best of both worlds, street routing with voice prompts, plus handheld hiking for Geocaching.

Exactly. That's what I have been doing since I started. The Nuvi (now DriveSmart) with large screen and voice directions gets me as close as a car can get to ground zero, then the handheld gets me the rest of the way. I use GSAK with both. But everything is loaded into the Nuvi, not just parking waypoints, because most caches I look for don't have extra waypoints.

[+CharlyBaltimore]

On 5/22/2018 at 12:15 PM, Team Christiansen said:

Exactly. That's what I have been doing since I started. The Nuvi (now DriveSmart) with large screen and voice directions gets me as close as a car can get to ground zero, then the handheld gets me the rest of the way. I use GSAK with both. But everything is loaded into the Nuvi, not just parking waypoints, because most caches I look for don't have extra waypoints.

This the way we have been caching since we got the Nuvi 500 almost 10 years ago.  We will definitely look into the DriveSmart.  Of course, since I originally posted, the Nuvi 500 is behaving itself.  Still going to check out the DriveSmart.  Thanks for your replies.  Thanks to all who replied to our question.  We appreciate all the ideas.