iPhone vs. handheld GPS question

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:12 pm

jseymour84 wrote:

Needless to say...

Wow, congrats JS... very nice!

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:32 am

I cached with the Groundspeak app on my Droid for a year before I finally broke down and got my GPSr. I have to say that there are things about both that I prefer. The GPSr is more accurate but not by much. But I really miss the satellite image I got on my phone. So basically, I use both which works great! I think the best thing about a GPSr is that the coordinates are more accurate for hiding the caches, which can be very important.

WGA Member Joined: 2010-03-15 Posts: 29

So I have been playing with my new Oregon 550t and I have some questions and hoping someone can help me out. The camera is awesome and takes great pictures, and the geocaching part is pretty good too. After getting the browser plugin installed I am able to load data onto the GPS one geocache at a time via the download to gps link.

I tried using Maccaching but it doesn't want to talk to my Oregon 550t. Otherwise I loved the fact that I could import my pocket queries into the software.

Does anyone have any recommendations on any other software titles to try? Doesn't matter if it is Mac or Windows at this point. Basic functionality that I am looking for is to download pocket queries and send all that data to the Oregon 550t and then synchronize it back to the app and to geocaching.com after finding the caches.[/list]

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 10:41 am

EasyGPS.

It's what we use on the Oregon 450, Dakota 20, and GPSMAP62s.

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:11 pm

Well, to get the geocaches into your GPS, you don't need anything. Your Oregon acts as an external drive, so just plug it into the computer and copy the GPX file into the proper directory ( \Garmin\GPX ) using the standard Mac file transfer, just like you would copy a file to a thumb drive.

Getting your "field notes" back into the system is even simpler. Just create your field notes in the field while you are caching. When you get back to a computer, plug your unit into the computer (which should again pick it up as an external drive), then point your browser to http://www.geocaching.com/my/uploadfieldnotes.aspx and follow the instructions on the page for Garmin GPS units.

WGA Member Joined: 2010-03-15 Posts: 29

Team Deejay wrote:

Well, to get the geocaches into your GPS, you don't need anything. Your Oregon acts as an external drive, so just plug it into the computer and copy the GPX file into the proper directory ( \Garmin\GPX ) using the standard Mac file transfer, just like you would copy a file to a thumb drive.

Getting your "field notes" back into the system is even simpler. Just create your field notes in the field while you are caching. When you get back to a computer, plug your unit into the computer (which should again pick it up as an external drive), then point your browser to http://www.geocaching.com/my/uploadfieldnotes.aspx and follow the instructions on the page for Garmin GPS units.

It's really that easy? I will certainly give that a shot then this weekend when I run out for some geocaches. It satisfies all the basic functionality that I need, as long as I load enough data to support sponteanous caching (or I could use my iPhone to do searches out in the car when I have a signal and then transfer those caches by hand to the garmin as waypoints).

I really like the idea of just downloading a GPX file onto the Garmin. Now does anyone know of a Mac equivalent for GPS Babel? I noticed that when I try to download a search I just get the option for a LOC file but it would be awesome to be able to download a GPX file as well.