GSAK question

[benny7210]

If a friend of mine emails me a Pocket Quire that he ran. And I load it to my GSAK. Is their a way of filtering out the caches that I have already found?? I hope this doesn’t sound to complicated.

[Cheesehead Dave]

First: Technically, your friend is violating the TOS for pocket queries by sending them to you. PQs are intended to be for your own personal use and are not supposed to be shared.

Second: When you get a PQ, by default, you get the last five logs for each cache in the query, unless it’s a cache that you’ve logged in which case your log will be included. The PQ they sent you will contain all their find logs, and yours would only be in there if you happened to have one of the five most recent logs for a cache.

In the GSAK preferences, there’s a space for you to enter your user ID. Once you’ve done that, GSAK will automatically know which caches you’ve found, and you can easily filter them out by selecting “Caches I’ve Found” when you create a filter.

But unless you’re using your own query, there’s no easy way to do it, short of going cache by cache and changing its status to “Found by me”.

[marc_54140]

So, maybe we need to re-phase the question.

Let’s say three cachers, all from different towns, go out caching together.

Is it possible for one of them to obtain a PQ for all three to share, and yet enable each individual cacher to know which caches he has found already.

That’s does not seem possible. Becasue GSAK knows who requested the PQ.

So….

The best practice seems to be for each of the 3 cachers to obtain his own PQ. But, to insure some compatability, they should agree on some specifics.

1. Picket a cache on which to center the PQ.
2. Decide which caches to include –
such as all caches still active,
but do not select either owned or found options,
ask for all traditional and multi caches (but not others).
3. Other options, such as in WI, within 25 miles, etc.

This should result in the most similar PQ results for all three cachers.

When entered in GSAK however, it will result in (some) different smart names. This is due to each cachers’ home coords. In particular, when a series of caches have the same name (such as Trail of the Serpent…..)
GSAK assigns the final letter to the samrt name based on the direction and distance from the cacher’s home coords. This means it will be different for each cacher.

Did I misss something …………..?

[Team Deejay]

You’re on the right track, Marc.

Have one person get the master PQ. This should be the person with the most finds in the area in question. The other people all get My Finds PQ and send them to the “master”.

Next, load all the my finds PQs into a second database.

Next, in the master database, clear all the checkboxes. Now, copy the second database into the master database, setting the options to ONLY FLAG caches already in the database and IGNORE caches not already in the database.

Now, filter on user flag not set.

Done! Now export a GPX file of the filter and send it to the others on the team. (or don’t send it to them and tell them to follow you to the cache 😀 )

[Cheesehead Dave]

I know of a handy tool which can help to eliminate finds that cachers have in common…

All three people have to have their finds loaded into INATN. Each person then creates a PQ containing all the caches in the desired area and loads that query up into GSAK.

Each person runs the tool and compares their finds with one of the other cachers. Take the result and run a GSAK filter to eliminate those caches. Each person then compares their finds to the other cacher, takes the results, and further filters down the GSAK list.

The resulting list in GSAK (for all three cachers) should contain only caches that none of the three have found.

And, as long as each person does this individually, you wouldn’t be violating the Groundspeak TOU either, as this tool has been endorsed by Groundspeak.

[benny7210]

Thanks to all for the fast responses. I knew their was more than one way to skin a cat….Ooops did say that!! Sorry.. I really like kittys. Just a figure of speech.

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