PDA

[sbukoskyParticipant]

I’m looking for a low cost PDA for various reasons. One of them is for geocaching data. Would anyone have a recommendation for a minimal device that does the job?

---

Steve Bukosky
Waukesha

[arfferParticipant]

Well, the one I went with does not meet your criteria… works perfect for geocaching, but I spent $200 for it. I selected the Handera 330 (Palm OS) because it has both a CF slot and an SD slot, so not only can I store data on a memory card, but I can plug the flash card from my digital camera right into it, plus I can put a wireless network card into it, a modem card into it, or a LAN card into it. It goes on every cache hunt with us: I download the cache pages to it, have a clue decoder, a database we log every find (name, who found it, what we traded, date, and notes), plus I have some utilities like geo-distance calculators etc.

We bought our son a Handspring Visor Neo for his birthday, and its a great unit. Runs the standard Palm OS, so all the neat Palm geocaching tools work perfect. Its $139 at Staples. I think that’s the cheapest model you’ll find.

[This message has been edited by CacheCows (edited May 30, 2002).]

[GrouseTalesParticipant]

I bought a PDA for Geocaching last week. I bought the Sony Clie PEG-S360. It has high resolution screen, 16 MB memory, accepts Sony memory cards for expanded memory or for listening to MP3’s, viewing pictures off your Sony camera. It also has the rechargable lithium ion battery which is nice. I got it on sale for $154.00 after rebate at Circuit City.

Now I am just looking for some cool programs to use for geocaching. So far I’ve downloaded the “Hint decoder program” and “Geoclipping” program. Both work real nice.

Does anyone have any other “must have” programs that they use for caching that they can share?

Also, are any of you using AvantGo channels on their PDA for geocaching. I made a custom channel for the Wisconsin Geocache search. I can get full details on the first few caches, but caches down the page show not available for viewing. Any ideas how to fix this?

[This message has been edited by GrouseTales (edited 06-11-2002).]

[JeremyParticipant]

quote:

---

Originally posted by GrouseTales:
Also, are any of you using AvantGo channels on their PDA for geocaching. I made a custom channel for the Wisconsin Geocache search. I can get full details on the first few caches, but caches down the page show not available for viewing. Any ideas how to fix this?

---

There is a setting for the channel that gives the maximum size (how much data will be grabbed) before stopping. You probably need to increase this value to get more cache pages.

Also from the AvantGo Mobile Internet FAQ: “Mobile Internet limits the amount of data that can be transferred in a single sync to 2MB and the amount that a user can sync in a day to 20MB. These limits are in place to ensure that every user is able to sync quickly.”

Note that creating and using a custom channel like this can be a real bandwidth drain. Each time you sync up, you will essentially be ‘visiting’ each Wisconsin cache page, if even nothing has changed and you don’t plan on using the data. If everyone did this, geocaching.com would grind to a halt.

[Author]

Posts