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Caches Along A Route With Streets And Trips


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This topic gets enough questions, and I've done enough work that I feel it deserves it's own, new topic. Here we can discuss methods and uses for finding caches along a route using Microsoft Streets and Trips.

 

This thread is a continuation of the discussion started here.

 

I'm taking a 2000 mile roadtrip in about a month. I wanted to find caches that were very near my route. Using Pocket Queries, Watcher, GPSBabel, and Streets and Trips, I was able to identify about 100 caches which were within one mile of my route, out of a total of almost 2000 total caches from my pocket queries.

 

First, I used S&T to help me determine the pocket queries I'd need. The radius function works well for a visual. I tried to place the center of the radius on a town, so I could use a zipcode rather than guessing at coordinates in my PQ. In some cases, I had to request more than one PQ per circle filtered by cache type. Smaller radius circles would work as well:

 

biketrip.jpg

 

Next I went to GC.com to set up my PQs. As I said previously, I filtered for traditional caches only, with terrain and difficulty less than 2.5. This kept the number of caches managable (as a few area are incredibly cache-dense), matched my preferences (as I happen to dislike virtuals), and fit my logistical criteria (as I'll be on a bike, especially difficult or time-consuming caches weren't desired).

 

I needed 12 PQs to cover the nine circles, as one area needed two PQs (divided by micro and non-micro) and one are needed three PQs (micro, regular, and all other) to fit the 500-cache maximum per query. The preview feature on the pocket query page was especially helpful to determine if I'd set them up properly.

 

Twelve PQs needed three days to run, but when I got them all, I merged them using Watcher, then exported them to S&T using GPSBabel. Next I used the data import feature of S&T to put them on the map. (I added custom pushpins so it looked cool.)

 

mapall.jpg

 

You're looking at nearly 2000 caches within roughly 250,000 square miles along a 2000 mile route. That's a lot of data to work with.

 

Using the Find Nearby Places feature on S&T, I searched for caches within one mile of my route. It returned 94 caches.

 

I opened Watcher simultaneously, and ordered both S&T and Watcher alphabetically. It took about 30 minutes to checkmark the S&T caches in Watcher. (Dual monitors is useful here!) This is the kludge in the system. There is no easy way to export pushpins from S&T.

 

I filtered the 94 caches in Watcher and saved it as a new .GPX file. Now I can transfer to my GPS, load to my (non-existent) PDA, or print the cache pages.

 

This next step isn't necessary for routing, but since I had the data, I did it for display. Using GPSBabel again, I exported the 94-cache .GPX file to S&T.

 

maproute.jpg

 

Next, to clean it up a little, I deleted the circles:

 

mapcleanroute.jpg

 

Which gives me my final route, with just those 94 caches within one mile displayed. A significantly more readable map than the one with 2000 caches.

 

My total time invested is somewhere around four hours. The most time-consuming was setting up the PQs. Once in my mailbox, I went from PQ to what you see above in little more than an hour.

 

One minor glitch is that while Watcher sorts caches properly, S&T sorts them purely alphabetical (by GC #) They don't always match up when it comes to 3-letter GC #'s. I encountered this only once in the process.

 

GSAK could also be used in place of Watcher and GPSBabel, since it essentially combines the two. I happen to prefer the UI of Watcher.

 

Any thoughts or ideas?

 

Jamie

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Nice summary. I'd started writing up my own set of instructions at http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net/formats/s_...ipPlanning.html for a similar task.

 

There is one tip I can offer to make this process a little more surgical, but it does require different software for the optimal case, but I'll later explain how to do it with most any software.

 

Use Delorme Street Atlas to create the route. Save the route (it's a .anr file in some obscure place). Use GPSBabel to convert that route to an arc and simplify the arc in the process. The ideal number of route points is based on the curviness of the route, the distance you're sweeping, etc. If you have too many point, it merely costs compute time. If you have too few, the represented route will not accurately fit the road and if you're filtering too small of a distance, you risk losing caches.

 

gpsbabel -i saroute -f /home/robertl/src/geo/route/i65.anr -xsimplify,count=40 -o arc -F mytrip

 

Now, use that file as input to GPSBabel's arc filter. You can, of course, merge files as you go

 

gpsbabel -i gpx -f one.gpx -f two.gpx -f three.gpx -x arc,file=mytrip,distance=1 -o gpx -F mytrip.gpx

 

Poof. mytrip.gpx now contains only geocaches within 1 mile of your trip. You can now feed that GPX file to your favorite GPX consumer. Of course, you can also specify whatever output file type there you want, sending it to mapsend, mapsource, tiger maps, or whatever.

 

"But wait, I don't have Street Atlas" If you have patience, you can do the same thing with most any program; it's just a little more manual. Fortunately, it's a one-time cost for each trip.

 

The highly trained eye realizes the arc files above are merely a sequence of coordinates. (Emphasis on SEQUENCED - think about it.) It looks something like:

 

35.82474 -86.85036

36.09256 -86.76191

36.23041 -86.77073

36.31716 -86.70081

36.41140 -86.72113

 

Use your favorite program to plunk a route on the map, dropping waypoints at significant turns in the route, but trying to approximately trace the road. Again, the precision you should strive for is a function of the width of the swath you're interested in. If you're pulling a 100 mile swipe, including every city square in your route is pointless. If you're pulling a 1 mile swipe and you represent the path from LA to NYC with three waypoints (and you aren't in a helicopter) you're going to miss some. Now use GPSBabel to convert from that program to an arc. The recipie will vary depending on whether you build this as waypoints or as a route, but since I suspect you have Mapsend, I'll offer an example for a route from Mapsend:

 

gpsbabel -r -i mapsend -f route.mapsend -o arc -F blah

 

I keep a collection of "canned" routes laying around for interstates I travel semi-frequently (i.e. family visits, etc.) and use them to plan the caches along the way. I get froggy with the merging/filtering capabilities of GPSBabel and merge the circle around the family's house with the caches along the way, sorted by distance from the family to feed to my GPX2HTML-like program.

 

I hope this helps others.

 

p.s. if the original thread was in "Units and software" instead of "general" I'd have offered this then...

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"But wait, I don't have Street Atlas"  If you have patience, you can do the same thing with most any program; it's just a little more manual.  Fortunately, it's a one-time cost for each trip. 

 

I've done basically the same thing with Streets and Trips and st2gpx to get the coordinates for the arc filter (used in GSAK) The filters can be saved for future use as you suggest.

 

I'm also trying to do the distance filtering within Streets and Trips. If you import the Pocket Queries into S&T then setup a route and use the "Find nearby places" then "Add as Stops" S&T will create a list of caches within x distance you specify of a route. Export this file with st2gpx and you end up with a GPX file with duplicate listings for the caches along the route. I'm still fiddling with filtering and reprocessing the st2gpx data to get a file with the complete info for those caches.

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I'm updating my FAQ with Jamie's graphics (with his permission) and my own version of what he said. The only thing I substitute is EasyGPS and Geobuddy (and a nice little export to ascii program that ClayJar wrote for me) for GPSBabel. I've always been baffled by GPSBabel - not enough GUI for me.

 

The other method - which is more time consuming and doesn't give you one file to load to your GPS - is to use The Geocaching.com maps. Start with a cache at the beginning of your route and click the find...all nearby caches link. On the results, click the Map It icon:

map_it.gif

 

Then you can pan the map along your route - zooming in and out. I've done it and it's OK when you're on a T2 like I have at work. Dialup is painfully slow.

==================

 

One other thing to keep in mind is that the PQ data MAY be out of date by the time you get to your trip.

 

As a premium member, you might consider watching those 94 caches along that route, and setting up a PQ to give a result of all the caches you're watching. The day before you leave for the trip, run the PQ and get the GPX. That way you'll know if any have been archived since your research. Unforuntately, you won't get any brand new ones that might have popped up along the way.

 

Good work all!

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The other method - which is more time consuming and doesn't give you one file to load to your GPS - is to use The Geocaching.com maps.  Start with a cache at the beginning of your route and click the find...all nearby caches link.  On the results, click the Map It icon:

map_it.gif

 

Then you can pan the map along your route - zooming in and out.

 

I think this only works in the USofA. I know we're in the "The Great Grey North" :lol: with the maps shown for Canada with this feature.

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My total time invested is somewhere around four hours.

Yikes! :lol: I can't even fathom having that much free time! Thanks for your work in explaining how you've done this.

 

I've done basically the same thing with Streets and Trips and st2gpx

Where can I find st2gpx?

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As a premium member, you might consider watching those 94 caches along that route, and setting up a PQ to give a result of all the caches you're watching.  The day before you leave for the trip, run the PQ and get the GPX.  That way you'll know if any have been archived since your research.  Unforuntately, you won't get any brand new ones that might have popped up along the way.

This is an EXCELLENT suggestion. Thanks for mentioning it. I often combine and filter data for excursions (MUCH smaller than Jamie's), and have mused that it would be nice to be able to actually get a new .gpx including the exact data set I have created.

 

Until the new custom lists are available, this is a great temporary replacement.

 

*edited typo

Edited by gnbrotz
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One other thing to keep in mind is that the PQ data MAY be out of date by the time you get to your trip.

 

As a premium member, you might consider watching those 94 caches along that route, and setting up a PQ to give a result of all the caches you're watching. The day before you leave for the trip, run the PQ and get the GPX. That way you'll know if any have been archived since your research. Unforuntately, you won't get any brand new ones that might have popped up along the way.

I've considered this. Since the trip itself will take the better part of a month, there is no way to avoid stale data.

 

The maps above were only a runthrough. I plan to get new PQs just prior to my departure and feed them through the process again. Like I said, once I have the PQs in my mailbox, it's only about an hour of work to get the final result.

 

Regarding the suggestion to watch the 94 caches. That's an option I hadn't thought of. Good idea.

 

Robert, I've tried to follow along in your instructions, as I like the idea of this process being a little more automated, however, when you type things like,

"gpsbabel -i saroute -f /home/robertl/src/geo/route/i65.anr -xsimplify,count=40 -o arc -F mytrip"

I don't even know what that means. In fact, I don't even know where to type that.

 

Aside from my technical trepidation, I'm curious as to the precision of the technique. I like that with S&T I have a visual to see how close I am. I'd like to do a comparison.

 

My route purposely avoids interstates, and is therefore more winding than average. I'd like to play around to see how well I can get the data to match what I've already come up with. It'll have to wait until after the summer, though.

 

gbod, I can't fathom not having that much "free" time. If I didn't have time to do those things I wanted, well, then what's the point? I'm quitting my job in two weeks so I have time to take this trip, for example. :lol:

 

Jamie

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idea of this process being a little more automated, however, when you type things like,

"gpsbabel -i saroute -f /home/robertl/src/geo/route/i65.anr -xsimplify,count=40 -o arc -F mytrip"

I don't even know what that means. In fact, I don't even know where to type that.

Since you mentioned running dual-head, I'll take a flyer that you're on XP. Perhaps this will help: http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net/os/Windows_XP.html

Aside from my technical trepidation, I'm curious as to the precision of the technique. I like that with S&T I have a visual to see how close I am. I'd like to do a comparison.

If you represent the route accurately enough, I have no reason to think it won't go down to the meter. The compute time of the arc filter on 2500 caches on such a route would not likely be much fun.

My route purposely avoids interstates, and is therefore more winding than average. I'd like to play around to see how well I can get the data to match what I've already come up with. It'll have to wait until after the summer, though.

If you really are cutting a narrow swath over a large distance and want the ability to set route preference and vias, I'll suggest that manual waypoint placement is unlikely to be satisfactory. If you can tolerate more overspray, it becomes less frustrating.

 

I've planned a few caching trips (admittedly not over a distance this long) and the only time I spend an hour dorking with software is when I'm writing or fixing that software. For my typical travels, I pull the PQ's and have the route out of Delorme before they arrive. When the PQ arrives in my mail, the system squirrels away the original and hands the filtered GPX to other tools

 

Other than the time I spend reviewing caches ("a 49 stage 4.5/4.5 multi with 9 no-finds while travelling? No thank you.") if I spend more than three minutes planning such a trip, there's a problem. Yes, your case is a little harder because you want more control over the route and have more PQ's to merge, but that's a one-time cost and just a matter of scale.

 

Let the computer do the work.

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Jamie

 

If all the command line stuff is a problem you could define an arc filter in GSAK with coordinates obtained manually (pencil & paper :lol: ) from Streets and Trips using it's "Location sensor" feature in the Tools menu. This shows you the coordinates of the cursor on the screen. Start at one end of your route and collect the coords of the significant turns until you have the whole route. Enter these in the arc filter window in GSAK, define the distance off the route and you're done.

 

I've had very good results with the caches obtained by the arc filter matching those obtained using the Find Nearby Places feature on S&T.

 

You mentioned before

I tried to place the center of the radius on a town, so I could use a zipcode rather than guessing at coordinates in my PQ

 

The loacation sensor would also eliminate the guessing here.

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(I added custom pushpins so it looked cool.)

What version of S&T are you using? I use 2002, and would love to do this if possible.

 

Also, might there be a way to have the correct custom icon associated with the correct cache type automatically (perhaps somehow through GSAK)?

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gnbrotz

 

It might be possible for you to use custom icons ( I know it is in 2003 and 2004). When you have the caches imported into S&T go to the menu and select Data, Data Set Properties then open the window under "Symbol" and key "Import Custom Symbol" to search for the icon on yuour computer. You'll have to download an icon from somewhere first <_<

 

As for your second question you'd have to separate your caches by type (in GSAK) then do a separate export/import for each type. Then you could assign a separate icon to each data set in S&T.

Edited by PDOP's
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What version of S&T are you using?  I use 2002, and would love to do this if possible.

 

Also, might there be a way to have the correct custom icon associated with the correct cache type automatically (perhaps somehow through GSAK)?

I'm glad you asked this.

 

While I was fooling around trying to see if it were possible, PDOP's answered your question, but I also got to find out for myself.

 

As PDOP's said, importing icons is farily simple. Under pushpin properties, there should be a pull-down menu to change the icon. One selection should be "Import Custom Icon." I swiped an icon from GC.com. I hope they don't mind.

 

Regarding assigning different icons to different types of caches, I didn't think that was possible. I decided to try it out, and in doing so realized that I neglected to create one of my PQs! I'm glad I caught that.

 

So, I ran the PQ, added it into the whole data set, then used Watcher (GSAK would also work) to divide the GPS file into micocaches, and everything else. I then imported the two GPX files into S&T, and learned that I could change each dataset independently. As there's no icon for micros, I simply used a blue dot. Regular sized caches are marked with the cache icon.

 

maproutedivided.jpg

 

Again, owing to the large scale of this map (or is that small scale?) it's not easily clear, but there are 101 caches along my route, divided roughly equally by micro and regulars, displayed as different icons. Cool!

 

I'll probably bring a map like this with me on my trip, so I can easily see what's ahead.

 

Jamie

Edited by Jamie Z
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st2gpx Same place as GPSBabel  <_<

Thanks for the link.

 

gbod, I can't fathom not having that much "free" time. If I didn't have time to do those things I wanted, well, then what's the point? I'm quitting my job in two weeks so I have time to take this trip, for example.

Marriage, kids, mortgage, and career have a way of eating up free time! Geocaching is one of my few outlets to go out and be alone every once in a while, which isn't very often.

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As PDOP's said, importing icons is farily simple. Under pushpin properties, there should be a pull-down menu to change the icon. One selection should be "Import Custom Icon."

Apparently this was not available until the 2003 version. This is not an option in my 2002 version. Time to shop around.

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Another tip for S&T and icons. If you want to avoid importing the icons each time you start a new file you can save them in a map template file *.stt

 

To do this open a file that you've already imported the icon into and erase the pushpins. You can erase an entiire data set by right clicking on ithe data set name under Pushpins in the Legend and Overview window and select delete. Now save the file as an .sst file (it's available from the dropdown menu in the "File save as" menu). S&T should put it in the right directory automatically (it's in Application Data, Microsoft, Templates under my profile on my system). Now when you open a new S&T file the icons are already in the list when you go to select a symbol for a dataset.

 

Now for a question. Has anybody figured out how to get S&T to remember the directory to look for files? It defaults to the documents folder and I can't find a way to change it.

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Apparently this was not available until the 2003 version. This is not an option in my 2002 version. Time to shop around.

Recently got S&T 2003 for $35 at Costco with a $20 rebate, Greg. A quick check indicates they still have the rebate going. I think you can order that on their website.

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Does S&T 2004 cover the US Virgin Islands? I'm taking a vacation to St. John this summer and apparently being a US Territory and in North America isn't good enough to get St. John included in City Select N. America. Ok, granted, not many people need autorouting to drive to St. John.

 

I tried looking at Microsoft's product info and didn't see a list of covered areas. Could someone check S&T 2004? Thanks!

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Where the pocket queries overlap, how do you delete the duplicates? It's not tough to do manually, I suppose, but did you come up with an automated way to do it?

With Watcher, if duplicate entries exist, it will automatically keep the most recent and delete the old.

 

I believe GSAK works the same way.

 

So the answer to your question is to simply merge them using Watcher or GSAK. Dupes will be fixed automatically.

 

Jamie

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Question for Jamie, or anyone that may know. A few weeks ago, when I first got S&T 2004, I did exactly what you did with the “cache type” icons, but I could not figure out how to get them to automatically resize. Like when I zoom in or out, the icons I have imported stay the same size. When zoomed out, the cover quite a bit of information on the map. Were you able to get them to resize proportionately with the map scale?

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Were you able to get them to resize proportionately with the map scale?

I don't think they resize. Even the "stock" icons stay the same size regardless of the zoom level.

 

The geocache icons I used are 16x16, which seem to be appropriate for my use. I'm mostly interested in seeing the caches zoomed in, so the cache icon doesn't cover much up.

 

Alternately, you could simply use smaller stock icons to have a better view when zoomed out, or you could create custom icons that are smaller, for wide-angle views.

 

Jamie

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Jamie,

 

One other thing you can do with your project...

 

I wanted to be able to access the cache pages offline right from S&T when I was on the road caching. Using an offline set of HTML links instead of the URL links that would normally send me to gc.com.

 

Using GSAK, you can have it create local HTML files on your computer right from your PQ.

 

In GSAK, goto File|Export|HTML files - it will then create all of the HTML files in the PQ and place them in a default directory: C:\Program Files\GSAK\cache

 

Now you need to change the URLs in the S&T file so they open the local HTML files when you CTRL-click on a pushpin instead of opening the default HTML live online.

 

I used GSAK to create the S&T file - File|Export|Microsoft Streets & Trips CSV file.

 

Then I opened that in notepad. Now I just had to replace the front end of the URL to point locally, and the back end to append the .htm onto the URL.

 

Goto File|Replace

 

Find What: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=

Replace With: file:\\c:\program%20files\gsak\cache\

 

Then :

Find What: ,""

Replace With: .htm,""

 

And save the resulting file. Then import that .csv file into S&T and when you CTRL-click on the pushpins they'll take you to the HTML files residing on your computer.

 

No more hunting for the waypoint in Watcher or GSAK. With the newer versions of S&T perhaps there's an easier way - 2002 did have a place where you could create a different URL, but it would only use the lat/lon variables, and you couldn't force it to use the waypoint (GC#s) variable.

 

You might want to keep two copies of the resulting map - one that's live and one that's static depending upon whether you're online or not during different phases of your trip.

 

Brian

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I wanted to be able to access the cache pages offline right from S&T when I was on the road caching. Using an offline set of HTML links instead of the URL links that would normally send me to gc.com.

I had used the CTRL-click links on S&T, but that's a great idea.

 

Trouble is, I won't have a laptop or any of that on the road. This all needs to be done before I leave. It's a great suggestion though, for others that are in the situation.

 

Jamie

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OK...let me go out on a limb here...

 

IF GC.com would post, maybe weekly, a set of gpx's (1 for each state) that only premium members could download...then I could import them into something like S&T...or I could think of LOTS of other things to do with these... It wouldn't take a lot of server time because they would just run 1 query for each state once a week. The only drawback would be the bandwidth for the downloads....HHHMMMM...what ya think Jeremy?

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Here's what I did. Downloaded babel. Clicked on GPSBabelfront.exe

Input file - I put file that I got from my pocket query

Format - Didn't know what to put - tried GPXXML (think I also tried csv)

Output file - Put Streets and Trips and the file was the route I had saved

Format - didn't know what to put - tried csv

Hit Process

 

Said it executed correctly.

Then I went to Streets & Trips and tried import data wizard. Didn't know what file I was supposed to put.

 

 

Spinner -- someone sent me this: Longitude, Latitude, UID, name %longitude_raw%, %latitude_raw%, %GUID%, %name% to put in the templates directory under GPX spinner.

After spinner "spins" I was supposed to rename the "index_by_st" file to a text file. Then open Streets & Trips and use the import data wizard. Change the type of file to text and select the renamed file and then follow the prompts. Whenever I tried to change the file to text, it still showed as an HTML type.

 

Hope this gives you some info to help me

Thanks

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Here's what I did. Downloaded babel. Clicked on GPSBabelfront.exe

Input file - I put file that I got from my pocket query

Format - Didn't know what to put - tried GPXXML (think I also tried csv)

Output file - Put Streets and Trips and the file was the route I had saved

Format - didn't know what to put - tried csv

Hit Process

 

Said it executed correctly.

Then I went to Streets & Trips and tried import data wizard. Didn't know what file I was supposed to put.

Routes and waypoints are different. Pocket queries contain sets of waypoints. Your pocket query is either type "geo" or type "gpx", depending on what you selected when you built the PQ. The output format for S&T should be "s_and_t", the Streets & Trips format. Others will work, but are less effective. Once you're staring at the import wizard, pick up with the instructions I just cited.

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Think I got it. My only problem is I didn't have an output format that said s_t . I had about 22 formats to chose from, but not that. I chose csv and it appears to have worked. The one thing I noticed is it only gives latitude and longitude and cache name. Doesn't give waypoint name (GCxxx). Am I still missing something. I really appreciate everyone's help.

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My approach is very similar to Jamie's except I use GSAK instead of Watcher and GPSBabel. Also, I delete all caches except those on my route, stopping future downloads from adding them back. This allows me to rerun the PQs near to my departure and getting rid of any that becaome archived and adding new ones.

 

K-9 Cachers- You might consider trying GSAK instead of Babel. Exporting files in GSAK is a little more intuitive, in my opinion. Export as a 'Microsoft Steets and Trips CSV File'. Note that this file type is also readable by Excel and Access, if you are interested in creating a database of your travels.

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First, I used S&T to help me determine the pocket queries I'd need. The radius function works well for a visual. I tried to place the center of the radius on a town, so I could use a zipcode rather than guessing at coordinates in my PQ. In some cases, I had to request more than one PQ per circle filtered by cache type. Smaller radius circles would work as well:

I've been wanting to do the samething for quite some time. I never actually set out to do it, though your directions make it much easier to get a feel for what I wanted to accomplish.

 

I have MS Map Point 2004 and not S&T. How did you get the Cool Zipcode/City Radius Circles??

 

Thanks for the tips!

 

Scott<-

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Can someone just give me the simple command line to change a GPX file into a Streets and Trips file so I can have my waypoints show up in S&T. My file name is bigbear.gpx and is in the same directory and the gpsbabel.exe directory.

 

Thanks,

I'm not a big (directly speaking) gpsbabel user, though Its part of the GSAK which I do use. I believe that the Syntax for S&T would be:

 

gpsbabel -i gpx -f bigbear.gpx -o s_and_t -F bigbear.psp

 

To get simple help on gpsbabel Tyep: gpsbabel -h

 

Basically it needs to know 4 things. Input type & file name, Output type and file name. The Help screen will give you choices of the differnt types that you can use fore the input and output.

 

I did a test on a DB in GSAK and then with gpababel and they came up with a bit dfferent file sizes. they contained the same number if items and the data seemed to be the same... Didn't do much else to see why they might have been different.

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My only problem is I didn't have an output format that said s_t .

my version of gpsbabel is: (this came with GSAK)

GPSBabel Version 1.2.3_beta04092004.

 

When I list the help (-h) my version shows:

 

<...snip...>

saplus Delorme Street Atlas Plus

s_and_t Microsoft Streets and Trips 2002/2003

nima NIMA/GNIS Geographic Names File

<...snip...>

 

Its not alphabetical so I missed it the first few times too... Though I agree with the other poster who says to use GSAK, it s much more intuitive, You open a new file, import your GPX file, then select file: Export:MS Streets & Trips...

 

Good luck...

 

Scott<-

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I believe that the Syntax for S&T would be:

 

gpsbabel -i gpx -f bigbear.gpx  -o s_and_t -F bigbear.psp

I think that should be

 

gpsbabel -i gpx -f bigbear.gpx -o s_and_t -F bigbear.csv

 

then follow the directions here to import the data into S&T

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I'm making progress.. Babel works fine although I am only getting latitude, longitude and cache name -- no waypoint. I can export to streets & trips.

I tried GSAK- able to get the file- lots of great information. But I am not able to export to streets & trips. I think I am following instructions... but I get the message "unable to complete conversion... if problem persists contact Clyde"

 

Any suggestions?

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Are you sure you've got the original PQ file in GPX format? It sounds like your PQ file is in LOC format which only has the information you say (Cachename, Lat Long) You see the same thing if you opened the original PQ GPX file in EasyGPS and saved it again.

Edited by PDOP's
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Also, when trying GSAK, under CSV file to create... I am entering the gpx file that is now in csv format.

For select from most recent.... not entering anything... this is not necessarily the same file as above?

Haven't changed anything else below... left with what is said

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In GSAK the proceedure would be "File" "Export" "MicroSoft Streets and Trips CSV File"

 

In the "MicroSoft Streets and Trips Export" dialogue box enter whatever name you like - it doesn't have to be the same as the original GPX file. For example you could enter "myfile" only and GSAK automatically adds the .csv to the end of the file.

 

At this point you can close GSAK , open Streets and Trips and follow the instructions here.

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All this sounds like fun for people who like to sit in front of a computer for hours.

But why reinvent the wheel?

How about if people save the lists they make and post them at a blog site

or somewhere else and share?

I know some of the old caches will be gone, and a few new ones added each

year, but I don't need 100% perfection.

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Hello jimmyreno,

 

You've bumped a very helpful old thread. Thanks, I just gave it a read and it reminded me of some things I'd been meaning to try out.

 

Up until last week, there was no way to legally do what you were asking. Check out the Groundspeak Terms of Use and you'll see that using pocket query geocache data to post on another website is against the terms of use. Concern about stale data is one reason for this.

 

Last week, the new "shared bookmark list" feature began rolling out here on the site. This allows premium members to create lists of caches that can then be shared with others. Eventually premium members will be able to download GPX files containing all the caches on a bookmark list. Thus, if people across the country all created a bookmark list for the best caches in their area, or caches along Interstate 123, you could put together a very fine trip by looking at everyone's bookmark recommendations.

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