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Cache download limit has been exceeded


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Hi,

sometimes when traveling and having a geocaching app running, I receive the message "download grenze"  or " Cache download limit has been exceeded "

I did not hear of anybody else having that issue and also google gives me just a handful of finds regarding that topic, not a single "official" note.
Is there any official note regarding that mesessage? Is there a limit (daily, weekly, monthly... anything else?) you cannot exceed?

It would be helpful to receive a message prior to not having any caches shown or at least have the chance to know about it.

One thing that helped for a short while was to renew the API-key, but the message came back some later and I can't say why or what made it reappear.

 

Andre

 

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22 minutes ago, hackies09 said:

sometimes when traveling and having a geocaching app running, I receive the message "download grenze"  or " Cache download limit has been exceeded "

I did not hear of anybody else having that issue and also google gives me just a handful of finds regarding that topic, not a single "official" note.
Is there any official note regarding that mesessage? Is there a limit (daily, weekly, monthly... anything else?) you cannot exceed?

It would be helpful to receive a message prior to not having any caches shown or at least have the chance to know about it.

 

Which App?  How many caches is the App "downloading"?  Is it about 6000?

 

When I drive between towns, in The Official App I might be zoomed all the way in, and watch icons scroll past one at a time.  Maybe 20 icons, which maybe the App counts as "Downloads" (maybe it's not supposed to count them until a full cache description is "downloaded", but maybe there's an App issue).  I hope you don't mind my asking.  Are you zoomed all the way out and showing thousands of icons as you fly a plane or something?  I'm not saying it's supposed to work like that or even if that is or is not a suitable way to go Geocaching.  But details may help track down the effect you are seeing.

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@kunarion: My app "Cachebox" has an option to "GC-API"-show caches around my position in a circle of 1,06 km or 2,12 km.  My setting is 1,06 km.

The limit I found in the link HHL gave tells about a limit of 16.000 'full' caches and/or 10.000 'lite' caches ... while I stil didn't get the difference by now.

And I cannot imagine there where that many caches around, while I was traveling in an area that doesn't have that many caches.

 

@HHL  was doch so'n richtiger Suchbegriff ausmacht ;-)

 

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30 minutes ago, hackies09 said:

I cannot imagine there where that many caches around, while I was traveling in an area that doesn't have that many caches.

 

Maybe there's a better setting for travel. If the App is merely displaying the icons, it is not loading either "full" or "lite" data.  If the area has very few caches, it is strange that a limit should be exceeded.  I'm wondering if the App is misbehaving.  If you provide a rough idea about what kind of settings and travel caused the error, I can set it up and try it. I wonder if it's more of a rate of access problem rather than a max data limit.

 

You could try the Official App while driving.  I don't like it for driving (I almost never use scrolling cache maps that way).  But then the problem would be gone.

 

The PC software GSAK doesn't show a map of multiple caches in an area by default.  I had to run a Macro that does it.  I was surprised that I even had to ask how to see all caches (and especially that nobody else was asking).  While trying to figure out why you get just one, I supposed it has something to do with API limits.  But I really can't say.

 

Edited by kunarion
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42 minutes ago, hackies09 said:

And I cannot imagine there where that many caches around, while I was traveling in an area that doesn't have that many caches.

Sometimes the API is either pretty slow or just has a hiccup. If your App just connects in this very moment - the API token will become corrupt. Subsequent calls to the API fail because the corrupt token assumes an API balance of 0 (in words: zero). Try getting a fresh, new token.

 

Hans

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19 minutes ago, HHL said:

Sometimes the API is either pretty slow or just has a hiccup. If your App just connects in this very moment - the API token will become corrupt. Subsequent calls to the API fail because the corrupt token assumes an API balance of 0 (in words: zero).

 

That could explain the "download grenze" error.  It's telling you that a problem occurred.  That could be tweaked in future App updates -- the way the API is accessed, and the helpfulness of the popup error.

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Also, Full data means every aspect of the cache details, including a few logs (likely a setting in the app); the Lite data it the extremely basic information (name, coords, types, DT, etc) - I believe Lite is the minimal use so if the app is constantly asking for a new set of icons around specific coordinates by distance, that uses API traffic, and if there's an overlap that doesn't matter, icons you've already got downloaded will be downloaded again in Lite data.

An API partner programmer might be able to weigh in more on what it's capable of doing, but that's been my understanding with the API since it was introduced many years ago to Geosphere and was the foundation of Cachly.

Not sure if the official app has any 'special' access, but it's unlikely, and my guess is if you have it auto querying as the map moves, with a 1-2km radius, you could be using up your Lite query API limits pretty quick.

 

Unless this is a new issue, and you've changed nothing, then I dunno :)

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11 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

icons you've already got downloaded will be downloaded again in Lite data

No. that was changed a long time ago.

04.15.2019

  • Geocache daily limit per user is now tracked by unique geocache codes (e.g. the same call to GetGeocache on GCK25B will count as one)

 

Hans

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Interesting. Good to know, thanks.

 

But what about this situation:  I query my location, 2km, pull 100 caches Lite data.  Later, I'm at a coffee shop nearby and I don't have that search result any more. Blank map, and I pull another query a couple blocks away returning 100 caches, with a 50 cache overlap to that prior location.  I still get my circular result list, but what's the effect on the API limit? Was it 200? or 150? Even though the API ultimately gave me a total of 200 resulting icons that day so far (100 for both searches).  I haven't run a test like that to verify numbers, since I rarely ever check my API limits unless I'm going on a huge road trip and collecting results for offline use :)

Edited by thebruce0
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39 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

pull 100 caches Lite data.  Later, I'm at a coffee shop nearby and I don't have that search result any more. Blank map, and I pull another query a couple blocks away returning 100 caches, with a 50 cache overlap to that prior location

You'll get 200 caches downloaded (150 distinct icons). Your API quota decreases by 150 (distinct loads).

 

Hans

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3 minutes ago, HHL said:

You'll get 200 caches downloaded (150 distinct icons). Your API quota decreases by 150 (distinct loads).

Excellent, thanks.

 

To me that seems in a way kind of pointless then. One could requery the same set of data endlessly over the course of the day, retrieving the same lite data over and over without increasing the quota? There's got to be some other safeguard against that :)  If the quota is to reduce load, someone could easily  effectively overload the server if they wanted with that little loophole.

Anyway, that's getting getting OT. Good to know the overlap isn't considered in the Lite query; I've always litely wondered ;)

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22 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

If the quota is to reduce load, someone could easily 

The API limit is not to reduce the server load in the first place. It's created to stop people scraping data, plunder GS's database  and harm GS's business model. That's why we also see limits on the number of PQ's and BM lists to create.

 

Hans

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8 minutes ago, HHL said:

The API limit is not to reduce the server load in the first place. It's created to stop people scraping data, plunder GS's database  and harm GS's business model. That's why we also see limits on the number of PQ's and BM lists to create.

True enough. But it doesn't stop people, just dissuades them by extending the required time for a data retrieval of that scope over multiple days. And I wouldn't say it stops people scraping data (that still happens, as we all know). But yes, that's a goal, while I would say reducing server load is a beneficial side effect of the limitation. It's another form of throttling HQ has employed (and there are API throttling limits in place - such as bulk posting logs only up to 100 per minute, a limit Cachly hits, for instance, when posting drafts of a high-log-count long geocaching trip, eg).

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