Paperless Caching Guide

Paperless caching in the UK.
For the purposes of this document the hardware I shall be referring to are
• Windows PC
• Garmin etrex yellow with PC connection lead
• Palm IIIxe (£17 from Ebay) with HOTSYNC etc.
The software I will be using is
• GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) (£8 registration) www.gsak.net
• Cachemate (£8 registration) from www.smittyware.com
• Premium membership pocket queries from www.geocaching.com
I am making the assumption that all who read this have been able to download install and
register the above software and now have it up and running on their PC and their Palm.
Getting connected. Your palm will need an appropriate port mine is plugged into the serial
port COM1. You need to install the palm software on your PC so that HOTSYNC can do
its stuff..
A lead to connect your GPS is also useful, you can type in waypoints by hand however
downloading puts less strain on the buttons.
Oh and plenty of spare batteries.
GSAK is an off-line database that has powerful search facilities that will allow you to select
and upload cache waypoints to a GPSr and the cache details to a PDA. The database
needs to be populated with information from the geocaching.com website. This data is
best obtained from the website using pocket queries, a premium membership facility.
However, these pocket queries are limited to sending a maximum of 500 caches in each
request. This document will show a method for retrieving the data for all the caches
available in the UK and keeping your copy of the database up to date, at the same time
putting the minimum strain on the geocaching.com server and your Internet connection.
The method involves creating a number of carefully constructed queries as follows:
So what about those pocket queries then? You can only get 500 caches at a time.
I obtain all the UK caches this way.
Dates no 1 obtains a list of caches placed between certain dates. You want all types of
cache and 500 is the limit for all pocket queries.
You want all types of container, mistakes do happen!
As we will use GSAK to do all the filtering we don’t fill in any of the next section.
As we only want the UK caches we have to set UK as the country don’t forget to check the
countries box. (note this is a scrolling box be careful with that mousewheel)
This is also where you can set up searches for other countries (Ireland for example has
200 caches which is well under the 500 limit) but for this exercise we are sticking to the
UK caches.
The next section is where you can search from centre points and caches but as we can
do this better in GSAK and it interferes with what we want to do later we will leave this
section blank.
This is the interesting bit this is where you set up those carefully worked out dates for your
other pocket queries.
I am grateful to all those people in the forums for putting me on the right track and saving me a
lot of work.
You need to check the between box and set the dates appropriate to your pocket query for
dates no 1 we use the dates set above.
Make sure the format you want is *.gpx this gets the most cache details. (this is the
default)
We can now preview the results to check we have got it correct and kept under the 500
limit.
You will definitely need this for checking when the last pocket query goes past the 500
mark.
On the 8th Sept 2004 we needed 9 pocket queries to obtain the entire UK database.
This is the result of the preview of pocket query Dates No 1 it gives us 472 caches just
under the 500 limit.
To keep my workload down I also run a weekly updated list.
This currently obtains approximately 300 updated cache details per week well under the
500 limit for a pocket query.
The settings for this are in the picture above DO NOT set any dates or other filters. For
this one you only need to set the country as UK and tick the updated in the last 7 days box.
This query ensures any changes are picked up weekly.
I also obtain all caches placed in the last week.
Note I request *.zip files. GSAK can extract directly from a *.zip file so you don’t need to!
I update my complete database every month.
I also run a weekly pocket query of all caches not found within 60 miles of home .
The sets of dates I utilise for the UK database are as follows. Please note the advanced
date for pocket query no 9.
01 December 2000
29 June 2002
26 January 2003
23 May 2003
20 September 2003
26 January 2004
12 April 2004
05 June 2004
09-Aug-04
-
28 June 2002
25 January 2003
22 May 2003
19 September 2003
25 January 2004
11 April 2004
04 June 2004
08 August 2004
31 December 2004
494
498
494
497
498
485
489
487
caches
caches
caches
caches
caches
caches
caches
caches
caches
Dates
Dates
Dates
Dates
Dates
Dates
Dates
Dates
Dates
No 1
No 2
No 3
No 4
No 5
No 6
No 7
No 8
No 9
These GPX files arrive as *.zip files in my inbox and are then saved to a folder on my
home computer replacing the previous files by overwriting. I have a shortcut to this folder
on my desktop and drag and drop the files directly from the email.
I then start up GSAK. Go to the file menu click on open. Tick the box for opening an entire
folder of files. Click on find (only need to do this once) locate the folder and ask it to open
the entire folder of zipped files.
You should now get a few thousand caches appear on your screen, hopefully the entire
UK database!
"Use gc.com logon ID: When you create your user ID and password at
www.geocaching.com you are allocated a unique Owner ID. If you are using the GPX files
provided by www.geocaching.com (premium membership), this Owner ID is included in the
owner section of the details. You can find this unique number by opening up a GPX file in
any text editor, and searching for a cache you have placed. Now look for the string
starting with "<groundspeak:owner id=". The number surrounded by double quotes is your
Owner ID. This method takes care of instances where you have changed your user name
(your Owner ID always remains the same)."
This will include the caches you have already found and cache types you may not like.
You can pre filter these in the pocket query set up page…
But…………..
GSAK’s filters are better as these can be tailored to your exact requirements, and,
mistakes may have been made in the cache log! or the cache circumstances temporarily
changed (i.e. a virtual until the container is replaced)
It is now time to start filtering your results with those great GSAK filters.
Using GSAK’s filters you can exclude whatever you like more or less, you can go for
distance, multis, terrain, difficulty, direction, distance from a route. There are too many
options to go into here so look at the GSAK help files on the web site for more details.
When you have filtered out all the stuff you don’t want it is time to send the information to
your Palm and your GPS.
How you do this depends on your kit’s memory capacity however as my GPS holds only
500 waypoints we shall use that figure for this part.
Set a temporary filter so that only around 400 waypoints are available to export. Why 400?
Well if you go for a multi you will need some space to enter new co ordinates. You may
need to enter waypoints for car parks and clues etc. so 100 spare spaces should be
plenty.
If your GPS allows more waypoints I say go for it. As long as you can use the GPS to find
nearest waypoints you should now hardly ever need to key in any more waypoints.
Now go to the export to GPS menu.
This is also where you can get GSAK to help name your waypoints and assign different
symbols to them.
I export using the %drop2%con1 waypoint name as this gets rid of the useless GC prefix
and makes waypoint searching much easier.
I have also used this set up to label different sizes of geocache with different symbols.
You can of course select whichever option you will find easiest the most important thing
here is to make sure you use the same option for the Palm as you do for the GPS
Export the files to your GPS.
Once the GPS download is complete it is time to use the palm.
Remove the GPS filter that restricted you to 400 waypoints and set a filter appropriate to
the memory on your palm. I currently export 2000 records with 4 logs each.
Using the export menu export the log file using CMconvert under the hood. Don’t forget to
change the max number of previous logs to 4 and use the %drop2%con1 or whichever
option you used for the GPS. GSAK and CMconvert do the rest.
HOTSYNC your palm and heh presto it’s full of caches.
You now need to upload the caches into Cachemate.
Which will then import the logs.
Using it all in anger
When you get to your chosen caching location use the GPS to show the nearest
waypoints.
This gives you the 4 figure waypoint names nearest to your current location.
Look these up on the palm and select a cache. This brings up the cachemate screens.
There are 5 pages
Page1
Information on cache name, type, waypoint name, terrain, difficulty, co-ordinates and
bookmarks.
Page2
Description as it appears on the cache page including whether it is active, any TB’s.
Page3
The hint and depending on how you exported this will either be encrypted for if you really
get stuck or decrypted
Page4
Log page this is where you log your find or DNF
Page5
The last 4 logs by other people.
Select your cache on the GPS and the Palm and off you go.
OK you’ve found the cache filled in the log book done your swaps.
Now on to the log page (page 4 above) and tick the found box and press the start / end
time button to help keep them in order (very important on a big caching day)
This is where you need to make a decision do you write a detailed log in the field? Or do
you wait until you get home? Personally we go for the latter and only write down our swaps
leaving the detailed log for when we get home. When we first went paperless we did the
former and noticed that our cache logs were getting shorter and much less detailed thus
reducing the reward for the person who hid the cache.
After a hard days caching we return home and export the logs from cachemate. This puts
them into the Palm’s memo pad in date and time order.
A quick HOTSYNC and we are ready to start logging our finds.
If you have written your logs in full on the palm then the quickest way is to use
http://boulter.com/geocaching/logger/. Alternatively just do your logging the usual way using
your notes from the palm.
I hope this article helps if you have any queries let me know and I will try to help, for GSAK
and Cachemate your best bet is their homepages which have quite comprehensive user
guides.
Enjoy your paperless caching.
Since we started using this method we have managed to avoid missing several nearby
caches as a quick on the spot search in cachemate and on the GPS has shown that we
were literally driving within 0.2miles of several caches.
I hope this article helps some of the newer (and maybe some older) cachers to the game
get on the road to paperless caching, it really is the best way to go geocaching.
Just a note to thank all the people who post in the forums without you this guide would not
exist.