GCA caches not appearing in GEOCACHE menu on Garmin Colorado

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vk3jap
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GCA caches not appearing in GEOCACHE menu on Garmin Colorado

Post by vk3jap » 18 October 08 8:31 pm

I've just decided to get into some GCA caches.. so download the GPX files, whacked them in the normal directory for GPS files on the Garmin and booted the unit. The GA caches don;t appear in the GEOCACHING menu on the colorado, but of course the GC (Geocaching.com) ones do. This is a real bummer as you don;t get all the geocaching stuff like - description, logs, hint and the ability to log it paperless etc.

Anyone got any ideas..? I did try opening in a text editor and lobalyl replaced the GAxxx numbers with GCAxxx but still no joy.

:-(

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 18 October 08 9:20 pm

The Colorado and Oregon look for the Groundspeak namespaces to make them geocaches.

That limits geocaches on those two devices to only one geocache listing service being Groundspeak.

vk3jap
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Post by vk3jap » 18 October 08 10:15 pm

Hmm.. well that sucks a bit.

So is there a workaround..? I'd happily mangle the GPX file such that I can have the GCA caches appear in the menu also.

Maybe it's a sed s/GC/GCA/g etc something similar.. what are the tech details as far as differences go - just the GC number format or something else..?

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Post by caughtatwork » 18 October 08 10:40 pm

I believe that GSAK will output GCA caches using Groundspeak namespaces. Try that.

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Post by psychokat » 19 October 08 3:07 pm

GSAK will only show one gca cache even if you load a hundred. But with that one cache you do get the hint, logs and description. You just have to plan which one you want to find before you load up.

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Post by vk3jap » 19 October 08 3:22 pm

Hmm.. well I know GCA is close to the heart of C@W so I'm being careful what I say here.. I used to use GC all the time, but I'm really getting to like GCA, it's just laid out differently.

But - this GPX issues would seem a bit of a showstopper - no..? interested if I'm the only one feeling the pain on this subject. I wish I had a menu option on the Colorado so say "All GPX files in this folder are Geocaches etc"

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Post by CraigRat » 19 October 08 3:50 pm

psychokat wrote:GSAK will only show one gca cache even if you load a hundred. But with that one cache you do get the hint, logs and description. You just have to plan which one you want to find before you load up.
Has anyone raised this over on the GSAK site?
Once your caches are in to GSAK then it (GSAK) should output a 'converted' gpx file that SHOULD work with the devices (as it adds the groundspeak tags to them if I recall correctly)

We CANNOT fix this at our end without getting ourselves into potential issues with GC.COM.

That said, I have written a converter that can be used : http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=10058, see if that helps...

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Post by maccamob » 19 October 08 5:45 pm

psychokat wrote:GSAK will only show one gca cache even if you load a hundred.
You may need to try again. We haven't done a large number of GA caches yet, but have about 50 in our GSAK database, and can load them all into our Colorado 300 from GSAK. You can use the 'Colorado Export' macro to automate the process. There is a version of GSAK with native Colorado support in alpha development, which I understand is likely to be generally available in beta form in November.

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Post by caughtatwork » 19 October 08 8:11 pm

Groundspeak and Garmin got together to create a GPS that had "geocaching" features on it such as the description, logs, hints, etc.

GS uses the GPX fomat to prove cache information.
What is GPX?
GPX (the GPS Exchange Format) is a light-weight XML data format for the interchange of GPS data (waypoints, routes, and tracks) between applications and Web services on the Internet.
http://www.topografix.com/gpx.asp

This part is from a previous post of mine on this subject.

GPX files are generic xml files that contain tags which contain information. Geocaching Australia use the standard GPX file namespaces from topographix. Groundspeak have decided that they will create their own namespaces to contain information that is specific to geocaches and not just generic GPX files.

In order for the Colorado and Oregon to understand that a GPX file is a geocache it reads specific information out of the GPX file. That specific information is the groundspeak namespaces. If the file does not contain the Groundspeak namespaces it is assumed to be a waypoint.

http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... &p=1083345

This is an interesting post from Elias from Groundspeak. While they consider that the namespaces are free for anyone, the CONTENT within those namespaces they consider to be THEIRS.

Geocaching Australia will not use those namespaces as the post from Elias (mentioned above) says:
Quote:
However, keep in mind that the data contained in the GPX files, including the data contained in the Groundspeak namespace elements, is subject to both the Terms of Use Agreement and the Waypoint License Agreement.

Geocaching Australia has no right to offer your data to Groundspeak. Interestingly GSAK creates GPX files using the Groundspeak namespaces, so they work. If Elias' point is right, then by transforming the GPX data using GSAK into a file with Groundspeak namespaces, you are transferring ownership of that data to Groundspeak.

That might be an interesting topic to take up with ClydeE the creator of GSAK.

I'm afraid that unless you petition Garmin to change their communicator to allow "Geocaches" to come from other sites than Groundspeak and they disregard the specifics of the Groundspeak namespaces, we at GCA are not in a position to create geocaches for your Colorado or Oregon using the Send To functions.

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Post by psychokat » 20 October 08 1:21 pm

None of this is a problem for me. Since I don't get a great deal of time to go caching I decide what caches I plan on doing before I load them. There's nothing worse then looking at the gps and see how many caches are nearby that I can't get to.

I love gca caches and not being able to use all the colorado's bells and whistles to do them isn't a problem. Loaded them up as way points and do some print outs. :)

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Post by gmj3191 » 20 October 08 1:47 pm

That's a really interesting thread, even if it is four years old. At one point Elias from Groundspeak says that they have no issue with GSAK using and reproducing the PQ data, and that that is what the facility was meant for.

Based on this thread I would think that the data they were talking about in the GC namespace format was the GC data, and if others chose to put other data into that format then there would be no issue.

At that point in time, it all seemed a bit too hard for Elias to be very specific and it was generally agreed that better legal definitions of copyright and data ownership were needed.

If nothing has happened since this thread, then I can't see any problem with using the GCA data in the GC namespace format, but then again, I'm no lawyer. The use of GSAK however, if it does soon support the newer GPS models, probably obviates the need (and the risk).

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Post by caughtatwork » 20 October 08 1:53 pm

GCA will not use the Groundspeak namespaces.

Just like other software companies they have introduced a specific set of data fields that will work with their solutions only. I cannot be a party to that concept.

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Post by ideology » 20 October 08 6:21 pm

we (dimly) recall working with some of the other geocaching sites and software makers to develop a standard. we eventually implemented a gpx file format and released it under a creative commons license.

vk3jap if you'd like to help we'd appreciate you emailing colorado to ask them to support a more open standard

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Re: GCA caches not appearing in GEOCACHE menu on Garmin Colorado

Post by smerrall » 17 August 09 3:53 pm

This problem annoyed me enough on my Oregon that I had to find out what was causing it. Afetr some investigation I found that GCA caches have no "groundspeak:cache id" tag. This tag is what the Oregon uses to check for uniqueness of caches. A simple GASK macro is all that was requires to change this value within GSAK. Once exported everything works properly with all GCA caches now displayed:

$NewCode=0
$NChar=0
MFilter Expression= Left($d_code,2)="GA"
GOTO Position=Top
WHILE NOT($_EOL)
$Length=Len($d_Code)
$DropCode=Right($d_code, $Length-2)
$NewCode=val($DropCode)
$NewCode=90000000 + $NewCode
$d_CacheID = "$NewCode"
$NewCode=0
GOTO Position=Next
ENDWHILE

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Re: GCA caches not appearing in GEOCACHE menu on Garmin Colorado

Post by caughtatwork » 17 August 09 6:15 pm

Excellent information, thanks smerrall.

The GCA "Send To" link works to send a Geocache to an Oregon or Colorado, but the standard GPX file doesn't.

As mentioned above Garmin and Groundspeak got together and set up a format that excludes GPX files that don't use the groundspeak name spaces.

I'll write this up for a wiki entry which might save someone the hassle in the future.

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