What To Get To Make The Best Out Of What I Have.

[+Jeonlyep]

I'm new to this GPS and Geocaching thing. I have an Etrex (yellow) not legend or summit, just a plain Etrex. I also have a cable to connect it to the computer.

 

What I am wanting to find out is what program should I look into getting? I want to be able to get routes off of the map for driving, and to have caches downloaded to the GPSr for finding.

 

I've been looking at ExpertGPS, and GSAK.

 

I like expert for the fact that I can get aerial photos with waypoints laid over the photo, and can do the same with topo maps. But I haven't figured a good way to get a route from a map to the GPSr with that program. The instructional video that came with my unit shows them entering waypoints from a map using Mapsource, but I haven't looked into that program yet.

 

Last night I downloaded GSAK, I am still playing with it to try to figure it out. But am not thinking that it does much for mapping, just Geocaching. Am I wrong?

 

Or am I asking too much from my GPSr?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated, and all thoughts are welcome.

 

Like I said I am new to all of this, so my terms and thoughts may be incorrect as to what I really meant, if more info for what I am looking for is needed, please let me know.

 

Thanks to all.

 

Daryl

Edited December 21, 2004 by Jeonlyep

[+NightPilot]

I like USAPhotomaps for seeing routes on the map or aerial photo, and it will import .gpx files for displaying caches as well as send the routes to and from the GPS. You can make a route by clicking points on the road using either the map or the photo and send that to your GPS, or you can download routes from your GPS and display your trip on the map.

 

For geocaching, GSAK is the way to go. It will open the pocket queries and let you manipulate the caches in a hundred different ways, and then send them to your GPS and to almost any other program you can name.

 

USAPhotomaps is donationware, and GSAK is shareware, but you can use both without paying if you're cheap and can live with a (very) few nag screens.

[+Renegade Knight]

For routes on trails I've found National Geographic Topo easy to use and set up a route and download that into the GPS.

[+Marky]

ExpertGPS is an awesome program. Not only can you plot geocaches on top of aerial photo and topo maps, but with a bit of calibration magic, you can plot geocaches on top of scanned park maps. It's this third feature that I find very useful.

 

My terraserver page does some interesting things if you plot geocaches onto the photo or topo maps, such as showing parking coordinates and multi-cache stages (if they are formatted in a standard way). It doesn't offer much in the way of routes or printing capabilities, etc. However, it is free.

 

--Marky

[+Jeonlyep]

but with a bit of calibration magic, you can plot geocaches on top of scanned park maps. 

--Marky

Marky, can you explain this alittle more?

 

Thanks

 

Daryl

[+embra]

You may find that both ExpertGPS and GSAK are useful tools for the purposes they serve. You would have to create routes manually in ExpertGPS, but there is a way to bring in autoroutes to ExpertGPS from Wayhoo.com (I think...the site was down when I posted so I couldn't verify that it still does this.)

[+Jeonlyep]

I've got to say that the more I play with ExpertGPS, the more I like it. The more I play around with it the more it seems to be able to do.

 

Thanks all, Daryl

[+zygote2k]

I think you should get a hammer.