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Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 3:05 pm
by theUMP
The good folk at Groundspeak have been caught out by this announcement, as Garmin never said a word about it to them! (And how dumb is that? It could've been launched with a new attribute or cache type and taken off immediately. And I thought they were BFF!)
So, they're thinking about how best to handle it. The requirement for a specific brand of GPSr is a problem under the commercial caches guideline, so the work-around is to have an alternative waypoint as well that doesn't need the Garmin. For a FINAL container, there's no argument: you still need a logbook. If all you have is a Chirp at GZ, you don't have a geocache that'll be published on GC.com
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 3:14 pm
by CraigRat
theUMP wrote:The good folk at Groundspeak have been caught out by this announcement, as Garmin never said a word about it to them! (And how dumb is that? It could've been launched with a new attribute or cache type and taken off immediately. And I thought they were BFF!)
It's quite a head scratcher.
Given it's been allegedly developed specifically for Geocaching, it's a bit odd that they released it all on their own (unless theres something else around the corner we are all unaware of).
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 4:02 pm
by caughtatwork
theUMP wrote:The good folk at Groundspeak have been caught out by this announcement, as Garmin never said a word about it to them! (And how dumb is that? It could've been launched with a new attribute or cache type and taken off immediately. And I thought they were BFF!)
CraigRat wrote:I wonder if it's co-incidental that at the same time with the new Chirp update in my Oregon (4.1) that the Icon is now a generic cache rather than the GC logo?
Together, this is very strange. I have never updated my firmware, but I did this afternoon and happened to notice the same thing. It's now a brown treasure box. I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, so I wonder what prompted Chirp and the change of icon? Maybe a lovers tiff?
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 5:42 pm
by gmj3191
It will be interesting to see whether Garmin make the CHIRP wireless protocol available to other GPS manufacturers so that they can eventually "hear" it too.
If others develop their own proprietary protocols and devices we'll have a helluva mess. In the meantime the easy CHIRP alternative to another clue method is a good idea to keep things moving.
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 6:23 pm
by Zytheran
Big Matt and Shell wrote:That is very cool, it will be a while before I can use it though. The Oregon 300 we have only has about 2500 finds on it and I won't be reinvesting another $1000 in a hurry just yet...
It would appear Oregon 300 supports this feature. I noticed it in the latest software upload.
In the settings menu I can turn 'chirp searching on' and 'Program chirp'
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 6:35 pm
by Zytheran
CraigRat wrote:theUMP wrote:The good folk at Groundspeak have been caught out by this announcement, as Garmin never said a word about it to them! (And how dumb is that? It could've been launched with a new attribute or cache type and taken off immediately. And I thought they were BFF!)
It's quite a head scratcher.
Given it's been allegedly developed specifically for Geocaching, it's a bit odd that they released it all on their own (unless theres something else around the corner we are all unaware of).
Geocaching?? Oh, OK.
I thought it had been developed for hiding weapon stockpiles, locked drug stashes in the city and to help the espionage industry?
Geocaching? Who'd have thunk?
What a fantastic device for
terrorists our brave soldiers.
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 7:07 pm
by CraigRat
Zytheran wrote:
Geocaching?? Oh, OK.
I thought it had been developed for hiding weapon stockpiles, locked drug stashes in the city and to help the espionage industry?
Geocaching? Who'd have thunk?
What a fantastic device for
terrorists our brave soldiers.
Would have been cool if this was some kind of 'beacon' rather than a hi tech way of doing what you can do with a film cannister and a piece of paper!
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 7:32 pm
by Big Matt and Shell
Philipp wrote:If you go to the German garmin site it tells you which devices work with Chirp:
Dakota 20, Oregon 300/400t/450/450t/550/550t, GPSMAP 62s/62st, GPSMAP 78s
cheers
Thanks for that, I hadn't bothered digging after reading the earlier post.
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 8:09 pm
by Map Monkey
CraigRat wrote:Zytheran wrote:
Geocaching?? Oh, OK.
I thought it had been developed for hiding weapon stockpiles, locked drug stashes in the city and to help the espionage industry?
Geocaching? Who'd have thunk?
What a fantastic device for
terrorists our brave soldiers.
Would have been cool if this was some kind of 'beacon' rather than a hi tech way of doing what you can do with a film cannister and a piece of paper!
Who's kidnapped the real CR? Are you hearing yourself?
If they don't kiss and make up soon, there may be an opportunity for GCA to buy 100,000 of these units for next to nothing.
..... unless we don't like Garmin either
mm
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 17 October 10 8:24 pm
by CraigRat
I'm trying to find an 'in' within the software people right now to get them to support our GPX and Opencaching's GPX formats. If anyone has a contact within Garmins Tech area, I'd LOVE to hear form you!
Strike while the iron's hot!
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 18 October 10 8:42 pm
by caughtatwork
Map Monkey wrote:If they don't kiss and make up soon, there may be an opportunity for GCA to buy 100,000 of these units for next to nothing.
..... unless we don't like Garmin either
mm
We love Garmin (well I do now that 4.00 has multi cache support for my Orgeon 450).
100,000 might be a bit out of price capability, but I would love to get a few down here in Australia.
I'm sure we can think of some way to use them at Geocaching Australia
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 19 October 10 5:05 am
by tatty
A new development overnight, was posted by MissJenn (admin at GS)
http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... 19&st=150#
Groundspeak will make it easier to have these new devices as part of the growing repertoire of ways to find a cache.
Here is the current plan:
1) A new attribute for a "beacon" will be added soon. Any caches that use a Chirp (or any future similar device) should use this attribute.
2) If a cache owner puts a beacon in a traditional cache and geocachers have an alternative method to find it without using the beacon, then OK. I remind you to use the coming attribute.
3) If the cache owner insists on not providing an alternative means of finding the geocache, it must be listed as a mystery with the beacon attribute.
4) Cache descriptions may mention the "Chirp" as long as the text doesn't go on and on with "overtones of advertising, marketing, or promotion" as per our long-standing commercial guidelines.
5) We do not plan to add a new cache type just for this.
And a few posts further down from Jeremy
Garmin didn't tell us about this product. We only became aware of it, by accident, two days prior to the public announcement.
Because we had no prior knowledge of the device being released, we have been figuring out how to make them available within Geocaching.com. We'll be supporting them as a new attribute which should be available as early as today.
So it looks like it is finally sorted.
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 19 October 10 7:56 am
by caughtatwork
Geocaching Australia started supporting these devices, and other related devices, yesterday as a new cache type (which they should be).
http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Beacon_Cache
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 19 October 10 12:17 pm
by riblit
If you check the cache attributes, a new one has been added under Equipment, Wireless Beacon.
That's one Jeremy alluded to.
Re: Garmin Chirp
Posted: 19 October 10 1:09 pm
by caughtatwork
Oh, that's a bit boring, really. I think I like the new cache type better (obviously).
We were going to call it a "Signal" cache, but we put that idea aside for obvious reasons