This topic contains 24 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by 
sandlanders 15 years, 9 months ago.
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With a few Wherigo caches now published in the state, I’m thinking there could be some value in a builders’ forum here in TechTalk. There’s also a Wherigo forum itself online that has lots of good info, but it’s a lot to dig through, and this thread could relate specifically to WI cartridges. Posts, or lack thereof, will indicate how popular of a topic this is here…
On the Left Side of the Road...Key learnings:
Having developed 2 cartridges thus far, I’ve learned a few important things.
-The learning curve for the builder is steep, at least for someone with no programming experience. 😯
-Success in the builder/emulator is no guarantee things are going to work in the field. 😡
-The design software is beta (alpha?) and is buggy. Building certain tasks, particularly “take,” require workarounds. 😕
-Wherigo players, at least on the Garmin Oregon, lock up. For no apparent reason. A LOT. 👿
-Unless you build it the right way, it is possible for someone to play a Wherigo cartridge at their desk using the emulator–i.e., without being on site. 🙁 If a true “field solve” is imprortant to you, you have to build one or more tests or locks into your cartridge (too detailed to explain here).
On the Left Side of the Road...True dat!
Very steep learning curve.
Frequent lock-ups.
👿@lostby7 wrote:
True dat!
Very steep learning curve.
Frequent lock-ups.
👿Ditto. I worked on building one for a week or so and had some success but as I got further into it , I became lost. These things are tough to create. kudos to anyone with the time, patience and knowhow to create one. I hope that others learn to build these as I believe that they add another dimension to geocaching.
Unfortunately, the supported hardware for these is “behind the times”. I’m sure it made some sense to select the PocketPC (now Windows Mobile) platform for Wherigo at the time. Unfortunately, the PDA market has become the Smartphone market, and Windows Mobile, while still active, is not a big player anymore. The Colorado/Oregon doesn’t really do the technology justice (no multimedia capabilities). I’ve heard some rumblings about porting over to Google Android, but nothing about Iphone, Blackberry or Symbian. All this added up means that Wherigo will be very limited in popularity for the foreseeable future.
To be honest, I beileve GS was expecting a bigger response to Wherigo from tourist boards, resorts, and the like. The idea was that these organizations would license the technology to provide tours of their respective sites. Imagine a product similar to the taped tours you can rent at various attractions, but downloadable to people’s PDA/phone and including sound, video and other media. When they received a collective yawn from these folks (again, due to the lack of hardware options), I think they have moved on to other projects (such as the Iphone app).
There seems to be only a few caviats to pay attention to when building for the Garmins. For one, it seems that you have to make your trigger “zone” big enough or the player treats it like a point. That may have been the issue with the Berlin WherIgo. (Not sure)
Another issue on the Garmins is a hard limit of 10 visable zones. Also, the OnClick event is not handled at all.
The PocketPC player seems to have few “issues” and more features.On a different note, there is an “open source” player that works on many different devices. I haven’t looked too closely, but at least it opens things up a bit… Link
@Team Black-Cat wrote:
There seems to be only a few caviats to pay attention to when building for the Garmins. For one, it seems that you have to make your trigger “zone” big enough or the player treats it like a point.
This is a problem that required a workaround. I originally created all the zones based on a center point with a reasonably wide radius–say, 30 feet–and set tasks to fire “on enter” into the zone. However, the on enter task only fires when the exact coordinates of the center point were reached, regardless of how big I made the zone.
Therefore, you have to use a “When player is in proximity to zone” command, rather than “When a player enters zone” command, and set the proximity to the radius you want. Then it works fine–but it’s not intutitive.
Also, the OnClick event is not handled at all.
Yes, I learned this one the hard way. 😡 Something else that works in the emulator and not in the real world. Thanks to Lionsfan for the workaround on this one.
On the Left Side of the Road...@Team Deejay wrote:
When they received a collective yawn from these folks (again, due to the lack of hardware options), I think they have moved on to other projects (such as the Iphone app).
Yes, when you mentioned that apparently the player will NOT be part of the next generation of Garmins, that is not good news for these.
I could see Wherigo caches going the way of Project APE caches.
Which is too bad because they are now finally starting to be developed!
On the Left Side of the Road...Cool. Looks like this would work for every modern phone (except the Iphone). Of course, it is still very much a hack, and not quite ready for the average user, but still this shows a lot of promise. Nice find!
YUP!! I understand EVERYTHING you guys just said…… 😯 😯 😯 😯 😕 😕 😕 🙄 🙄 😉 ❓ ❓
@Team Deejay wrote:
Cool. Looks like this would work for every modern phone (except the Iphone). Of course, it is still very much a hack, and not quite ready for the average user, but still this shows a lot of promise. Nice find!
That should be most modern phones with a built in GPS or the ability to connect a GPS. I think you can “manually” move your location also, but that doesn’t even sound fun.
If anyone tries out OpenWig, be sure to post back here. I don’t have anything that will work with it. (CrustMaster 2000 cell phone that barely does the basics.)
In my previous post, I should have said 10 ACTIVE zones instead of visable zones. Making a zone invisable does not make it inactive.
@Team Black-Cat wrote:
In my previous post, I should have said 10 ACTIVE zones instead of visible zones. Making a zone invisible does not make it inactive.
Yep, active vs inactive and visible vs invisible….it can be active but invisible or visible but inactive…or any combination thereof…enough to drive ya nuts.
Old items — the NEw 550T spports it so how is that old? Did i miss something?
@pcfrog wrote:
Old items — the NEw 550T spports it so how is that old? Did i miss something?
The 550 series is already “Old”… now there is a series of Dakotas…
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