Does more technology lessen the fun?

Mix · Post by **Mix** » 04 April 04 4:26 pm

I currently Cache with just a GPSr and maybe some paper maps. Those of you who use handheld/pdas, laptops with ozzy and other additional technology, is it better or does it ruin the fun. If it is better, why? Ã‚â€œIts EasierÃ‚â€

The Spindoctors · Post by **The Spindoctors** » 04 April 04 5:17 pm

My Palm contains all the caches in a 250 km radius. Reason? Convenience. If I happen to be somewhere in that area I don't need to cover (or print out) a book and carry it with me.

When I'm travelling elsewhere, I drop in the gpx files (using iSilo and GSAK) into the Palm and once again don't need a wad of notes.

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 05 April 04 11:39 am

[quote="Mix76"]I currently Cache with just a GPSr and maybe some paper maps. Those of you who use handheld/pdas, laptops with ozzy and other additional technology, is it better or does it ruin the fun. If it is better, why? Ã‚â€œIts EasierÃ‚â€

Papa Bear_Left · Post by **Papa Bear_Left** » 05 April 04 12:24 pm

Depends a bit on how far the additional technology goes...

Being a gadgeteer, I was using a Palm from Day 1 and just got a cheap laptop, mainly to run a mapping program on for multicaches.

We recently headed towards a cache that we'd decided to do on the spur of the moment (i.e. no looking it up on the map before leaving home) and found ourselves on the wrong side of an estuary; 3km away on the GPS screen, 50km away by road. That's an example of lack of technology lessening the fun. With the laptop, we'd've been on the right side of the river.

Now, once I finish my PVC detector to automate the finding of plastic boxes under rocks, trees or bushes, we'll see if that reduces the fun of the cache hunt...

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 05 April 04 4:01 pm

Bear_Left wrote: Now, once I finish my PVC detector to automate the finding of plastic boxes under rocks, trees or bushes, we'll see if that reduces the fun of the cache hunt...

I can see a market for that...

Mix · Post by **Mix** » 05 April 04 4:30 pm

I can't believe anyone would still print out cache sheets, when a $50 PDA will do the job. Try it, you'll never look back.

What PDA? will a $50 job have the memory it would need?

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 05 April 04 8:10 pm

Mix76 wrote:
I can't believe anyone would still print out cache sheets, when a $50 PDA will do the job. Try it, you'll never look back.
What PDA? will a $50 job have the memory it would need?

Look on eBay for a S/H PDA. Try and find one that will accept a SD or MM card. I have a 64MB card mine.

My iSilo file, with 660 caches and logs is 1.96MB. I also carry images on the SD card

hedberg · Post by **hedberg** » 05 April 04 8:30 pm

We use an old Palm Vx, we got it almost for free. It has 8 Mb RAM and that is enough for a couple of Pocket Queries.

We use the Palm only to have PQs in (and write clues/coordinates in multicaches), and it works great. But we must get a better case to it, the original leather case is not the best one while going geocaching.

Except the PDA we use a Garmin Etrex Legend (we began with a Garmin 12XL), and why we choosed the Legend? The map-feature, the size and shape of the GPS.

Except that we doesn't have a lot of gizmos with us, it seems to be enough. I hear all the time about geocachers that have PDA with GPS jacket, laptop with wireless highspeed connection, Garmin GPSMAP60CS and so on, but it seems like those persons are more like "a slave under technology".

I forgot, we have one more technical item.. We use NCALERT to get information about all the new caches in our area, and it gets to our cellphone as e-mail (the phonecompany transforms it for free into a SMS).

But sometimes I wish that more people were hiding MULTI caches instead of a traditional cache. Traditional caches are quite boring, since you can look it up at GC.com and see on MapQuest were it is. Then you don't need the GPS to get there (if it near a road, city or something like that).
Or sometimes the cache description reveals the hiding place, like "The cache is hidden at this extremely wellknown monument" (and a picture of it). Instead they could have hidden it as a multi cache, first a filmcanister or something else as the first step. Inside step 1 you will find the coordinates to the final cache. Then it's a surprise, "WOW! Is it hidden here, at this beautiful monument, wow! That's cool!"... You don't reveal everything in detail... And yes, we have hidden a lot of traditional, but nowadays we are hiding multi caches rather...

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 05 April 04 8:55 pm

Mix76 wrote:
I can't believe anyone would still print out cache sheets, when a $50 PDA will do the job. Try it, you'll never look back.
What PDA? will a $50 job have the memory it would need?

The Palm IIIXE is available on eBay brand new for around the $50 mark. It has 8MB of memory which is more than enough for holding every cache sheet you'd ever need. In fact, 2MB would be plenty, every cache for NSW takes under 1MB, and the iSilo viewer is only a few hundred KB.
I'm not talking about mapping here. I have yet to see anyone who can do any useful fine resolution mapping with a PDA. But if you do, it costs you $$$. Everyone has the ultimate map right in their car, it's called the street directory. The cache sheets on the PDA display the UTM coords (an option in GSAK), so you can just look them up on the map.

I know some cachers who take the map image from CheatiSearch and save it into their PDA, but those images would only be 100KB each or so. So you could easily fit a weekends worth of caching maps in the smallest Palm PDA.

EcoDave

Mix · Post by **Mix** » 05 April 04 10:12 pm

I'm not talking about mapping here. I have yet to see anyone who can do any useful fine resolution mapping with a PDA.

I would not have thought to map on a PDA, i am looking into 'MacGPS Pro' (yes Mac) for that on my laptop and 'GPS conect' to deal with GPX file upload/download.

Everyone has the ultimate map right in their car, it's called the street directory. The cache sheets on the PDA display the UTM coords (an option in GSAK), so you can just look them up on the map.

Gregory's sort of overlooked Dubbo, but as most caches out here are bush ones topos are fine. 
 
I see (from all posts) that the best high-tech caching benefit is cache pages at your finger tips and I can see the point of that, and will look into it.
 
any other thoughts (no mac bashing) welcome

Richary · Post by **Richary** » 05 April 04 11:23 pm

Tried replying to this thread yesterday but kept getting a session error when I tried to post. Now more people have had their say a lot of what I was going to say has been said.

I love the way we can carry the cache notes around with us. Tieing a GPS card into an Ipaq is a bit of fun. Does it lead me closer? Probably not. Though I can have all the Adelaide metro maps on a standard Ipaq so if something is close I can see which street I should aim for. I'm not for technology while caching, and am quite happy to carry the laptop in the car with the hints and waypoints on it. And look them up. The Ipaq makes it a bit quicker when on site.

The fun is the technology for those of us that enjoy playing with gadgets. For those that just want to find caches and look at the hints before planning where they are going, great. I did that last year on a Flinders Ranges trip for a week where I found 29. Printed the relevant hints out for all the caches I might hit before I left. And wouldn't have found any more with the technology.

For some of us, gadgets are fun. Even if I wasn't using it mobile I love GSAK and Ozi. I can work out where I am going and look up the hints without dialling up. Yes I like gadgets but won't pay for DSL/cable as I have 2 MBPS d/l at work so don't need it.

hedberg · Post by **hedberg** » 06 April 04 1:41 am

Ipaq solution with GPS jacket might be a really pain in the -ss. At an event we hade during the fall, it took one guy that had a Ipaq with GPS jacket, about one hour to import a GPX file to it.

Why?

We (as the organizers) had a laptop, but they must have a special program for it and so on... Therefor first we must use the IR port to transfer the file from our laptop to his laptop. Then he must get the GPX file into his Ipaq. It must be transformed into something else, then all the MAPPING (!) files must be uploaded to the Ipaq also, along with the coordinates.. And he had a lot of maps, so it took about 1 hour, he had to have the car engine running and use the 12V output plug for getting power to his laptop during this time...

And one of the negative things with GPS jackets is, normally built-in batteries in PDA. It means when the battery is low - IT IS LOW! You can't change it as you can with a normal GPS. When the battery is dead, you can't use the PDA to read about the cache. When a GPS goes dead and you don't have any extra batteries, you can still use your PDA and read the hints and so on, you might even find the cache!

SNIFTER · Post by **SNIFTER** » 06 April 04 11:12 pm

I will stick to the original way and print out my sheets as needed. If these PDA's had a bigger screen eg laptop size then it would help but when you are optically challenged, paper is great.

Mix · Post by **Mix** » 06 April 04 11:28 pm

If these PDA's had a bigger screen eg laptop size then it would help but when you are optically challenged, paper is great.

Which is an interesting (to me) question , if your happy to cart your laptop around is the cache info in the gpx format usable or is it more readable after you spin/pluk/html it.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 07 April 04 9:27 am

Mix76 wrote:
If these PDA's had a bigger screen eg laptop size then it would help but when you are optically challenged, paper is great.
Which is an interesting (to me) question , if your happy to cart your laptop around is the cache info in the gpx format usable or is it more readable after you spin/pluk/html it.

I would html it, it makes easier reading that way.

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