Transferring Web Page Info To A Pda

[+Low Bat]

After reading about paperless caching I still have questions. Since the .gpx files generated by pocket queries are not as detailed as the descriptions on the web pages, one would assume that you must go to each individual web page to transfer the detailed info to a pda. Did I miss something; is there a way to transfer all the web page data from multiple pages simultaneously?

 

I haven't got a pda yet, but I now receive pocket queries and testing what they can do. I already have MapSource 6.5, and I want to use as few software applications as I can. Basically all I want to do is load the web page information into a pda to match the waypoints I get from pocket queries, without having to do so one at a time.

[blocko1000]

I use cachemate and it gets all the information from the website for each individual cache plus the 5 most recent logs for it. In order to transfer the gpx files to your pda you will need to use cachemate or gsak or some other program made for that. It gets plenty of information on there for you.

[+robert]

Depending on your PDA, I would suggest either GPXSonar (PocketPC) or CacheMate (Palm). You can also use GSAK to change the GPX file to an HTML that you can view before you get your PDA.

 

[+Greymane]

If you download the caches into GSAK, then export to HTML, it creates a CACHE folder (in PROGRAM FILES > GSAK). Copy this to the PDA and open the index.htm file. This will give you an index page allowing you to look at the cache pages (yes, it sends these over) by name, hider, distance from home, bearing from home, and several other choices.

[+NightPilot]

About the ony things you don't get off the web page in the .gpx file are the pictures and maps. It's not possible to get the maps, because they're dynamically drawn on a different site. If you absolutely have to have the pictures, then you have to go to each cache page individually using Plucker or something similar. That isn't feasible, or necessary most of the time. With the .gpx file you have everything you need for most caches. A few might require an image, but you can get those individually if you have to. You can go to the page with your regular browser, right-click on the image you need and select 'save image', and save it to your hard disk and transfer it to your PDA individually if necessary. You also don't get all the ads that are all over geocaching.com, but I don't consider that to be a bad thing. I have them blocked in Firefox anyway.

[+sbell111]

...A few might require an image, but you can get those individually if you have to. You can go to the page with your regular browser, right-click on the image you need and select 'save image', and save it to your hard disk and transfer it to your PDA individually if necessary. ...

Wow. I'll count that as another reason that I don't use Cachemate.

 

I use Spinner and Plucker to get the pages to my Palm. Well, actually, that's not completely true. I use Spinner and Plucker's palm application, but I don't use Plucker's desktop app. It was too slow and I couldn't get it to get me the cache pages' pictures. Therefore, I use Sunrise Desktop. It processes the data MUCH faster and gives me all the pics.

 

While your at it, give Cache Log Book a try. It is a great little app to keep track of your hunts on your pda.

[+NightPilot]

I was talking about Plucker, not Cachemate. Sending Sunrise Desktop individually after every cache page to get the pictures is a waste of time, IMO, and the easy way to get the few pictures you need is to get them separately. I'm not taking about the standard icons and graphics, but the extra pictures on the pages. You don't get those in pocket queries, nor do you get the cute little icons for cache types, difficulty ratings, etc. GSAK puts those in. There are no images of any kind in .gpx files.

Edited February 17, 2005 by NightPilot

[+sbell111]

I was talking about Plucker, not Cachemate. Sending Sunrise Desktop individually after every cache page to get the pictures is a waste of time, IMO, and the easy way to get the few pictures you need is to get them separately. I'm not taking about the standard icons and graphics, but the extra pictures on the pages. You don't get those in pocket queries, nor do you get the cute little icons for cache types, difficulty ratings, etc. GSAK puts those in. There are no images of any kind in .gpx files.

It takes less than a minute for Sunrise to work through a PQ and get all the pics in the cache descriptions. Obviously, this doesn't give you the pics from everyone's logs, but I don't need those.

[+Marky]

It should be fast, as it a large percentage of images on the pages are repetitive and would only be grabbed once. The percentage of cache pages that have images is probably less than 10% and even some of those are repetitive. What you will probably miss though is the uploaded image links (if the cache hider didn't specifically add img tags in the cache description to display the images on the page). This is not that big a deal since the number of caches I've seen that do this I could count on one hand, making this less than 1/10 of a percent of the caches (1 in 1000).

 

--Marky

Edited February 17, 2005 by Marky

[+NightPilot]

If you use GSAK, the repetitive images are cached on your PC, not downloaded from the website. If you restrict Sunrise (or the Python distiller that Plucker uses) it only takes a couple of minutes to do 500 caches. But if you don't restrict at all, it takes a long time. I tried it today, and I lost track of the time, but it was well over 5 minutes, using a fast broadband connection. It's possible that it does pull the images from geocaching.com, via hyperlinks in the .gpx files, but I can't tell for sure - I don't know which caches have pictures. But I did notice the the .pdb files was about 10MB, compared to the normal < 3MB for about 400 caches. Something extra is in there. I normally have it restricted to the local directory, because I don't want all the extra stuff. I did that back when I had a dialup connection, and pulling stuff from web pages took forever, and I've kept it that way.

[+sbell111]

I don't restrict it to the site and Sunrise takes less than a minute. Plucker took years and years.