Geocaching Australia

<B>Just curious as to whether anyone has any handy GSAK Custom URL codes that they use in conjunction with other mapping sites.
<P>
STREET-DIRECTORY.COM.AU</b>
<P>
The following will let you view a cache location on www.street-directory.com.au.
<P>
Street-Directory=http://www.street-directory.com.au/aus_ ... 0-%20%name
<UL>
<LI>By changing the Level= number between 1 and 7, you can get a better zoom on the map (1 = wide area, 7 = itsy bitsy detail).</li>
<li>You can play around with the star= value to get different markers on the map.</li>
<li>You can change the configuration of the heading= value to change the title you see on the map.
<li>The CountryName= value needs to be a State in Australia. At the moment there's no special GSAK tag for State exporting, so I've left it as Vic as that's where I am. I tested it for other caches in other states, and it still works.</li>
</UL>
I've asked Clyde to consider including this in the next build of GSAK, as well as the ability to set the default mapping option to something other than map quest, especially for Aussie cachers.
<P>
If anyone knows any Australian Topographic Map websites that can be GSAK Custom URL'd, I'd be happy to see the instructions. Topoweb.lic.nsw.gov.au doesn't seem to do it too easily.

This could be useful, I'm currently in Melbourne (from Adelaide) and looking at finding some tomorrow. No decent online maps with me, have the CFA which doesn't cover near Melbourne and the 1:250000 Auslig which is way too not detailed. So that would be nice...

Question: what format for the lat/long and what coord system?

Decimal Degrees using WGS84. It's the default URL format out of GSAK, but you can just enter it into a browser yourself.

An example is below (coincidentally, a good starting point for doing a number of my caches )
<P>
Spirit of Travel Bugs (Port Melbourne)<BR>
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... ?wp=GCMEBT
<P>
http://www.street-directory.com.au/aus_ ... Melbourne)

I've posted these previously on the GSAK thread, but they probably got lost within the other 22 pages...

I use Multimap as it seems to have fairly good coverage of Australia (and the rest of the world)...

My custom links are:

Multimap (Close Up)=http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi? ... height=600

Multimap (Wider)=http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi? ... height=600

Hope this helps those who have not seen it b4...

I use the following to bring up a larger street directory map.<p>

MapOnly=http://www.street-directory.com.au/aus_ ... e=&xyfile=
<p>
The one thing to note about these maps is that the scale across is not equal to the scale up and down. they have been adjusted acording to the latitude by dividing by cos(latitude) I think my math is right

Partic wrote: STREET-DIRECTORY.COM.AU</b>
<P>
The following will let you view a cache location on www.street-directory.com.au.

Thanks for that. That is pretty cool.

Andrew

I use http://www.maporama.com for all my online mapping. I've got no idea how to write a script to access it through GSAK, but you can enlarge the map to what I think is the biggest online map available. If someone knows how to write a script for it, I'd love to use that with GSAK.

geoaching.com.au now uses the OnEarth Beta to show satellite images of cache locations!
<P>
Very cool, but does anyone have a link to the metadata to be able to customise a GSAK URL. There are a number of options available for the OnEarth URL Protocol, but the OnEarth site does not currently have the Metadata link available to look it up.
<P>
Thanks in Advance.
<P>
Big Red: I'm looking at Maporama now for you.

Big Red Expeditions wrote:I use http://www.maporama.com for all my online mapping. I've got no idea how to write a script to access it through GSAK, but you can enlarge the map to what I think is the biggest online map available. If someone knows how to write a script for it, I'd love to use that with GSAK.

Looks as though Maporama uses a session variable format, while also not being able to have Lat & Long passed to it via the URL without going for one of their commercial products. As such, aside from being able to get Lat & Long for a location (yes, I know - you'd think you could do the reverse), it's not looking like you could GSAK it.

has anyone from Tas tried using "the list" in Gsak?
you can create maps from coordinates here;
http://www.thelist.tas.gov.au/listmap/l ... 6,27,28,30
The maps are customizable with different layers & would be great for tasmanian maps, but my url'ing knowledge is limited.

Energizer61,

The LISTmaps server used GDA94 as the coordinates system, while Geocaching, and GSAK, uses WGS84. As such, to throw the coordinates from GSAK to LISTMap would need a conversion to be done first so that they could be put into the URL.

Partic

Partic wrote: Street-Directory=http://www.street-directory.com.au/aus_ ... 0-%20%name

Thanks for the URL Partic. I have played around with the actual map image file URL and if you want to you can reference the image file directly using this URL:<br>
http://www.street-directory.com.au/aus_ ... e=&xyfile=
<p>
I have added this URL to GSAK, done a test export to html and then run it through Isilo (which I use to view web pages on my Palm) and it all works fine. Worth noting I added http://www.street* to the inclusions list for off site linking in Isilo.
<p>
Hope this helps.
<p>
Mike.

Be careful with linking in map sites when iSiloing. Eventually, the server may notice you hitting them hard and cut you off. It also slows the process down quite a bit if you're converting lots of listings.


- R

Partic wrote:Energizer61,

The LISTmaps server used GDA94 as the coordinates system, while Geocaching, and GSAK, uses WGS84. As such, to throw the coordinates from GSAK to LISTMap would need a conversion to be done first so that they could be put into the URL.

Partic

Arent GDA94 (a datum not a coordinate system) and WGS84 almost identical (centimetres different) - irrelavant for handheld GPS users...and most others as well....or do you mean the site uses MGA94 (projected coords using GDA94 datum and a relevant speroid) that are in metres not degrees?
Cheers
Greg

Though the two datums are almost identical, it's the format of the special tags in GSAK that mean you can't pass the coordinates in the right format to the browser.

The LISTMaps use MGA (Map Grid of Australia) coordinates, rather than WGS84 Geocgraphicals. GSAK only passes the Geographicals to the URL at this stage, and not the MGA.

You can convert between the two here:
http://www.deh.gov.au/erin/tools/index.html