The most recent episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent (not to be confused with Law and Order: Elevator Inspections) had a decent amount about Geocaching in it. (Of course, they also made the common mistake of assuming that GPS receivers are transmitters that can be used to track people in real time.) Just thought that those of you who are interested in Geocaching might be interested in the fact that it appeared on a popular TV show.

And, for the record, they did not speak ill of it; it was simply used to help identify when a person was at a particular location. There was some other procedural silliness with it (not the best episode ever), but all too often hobbies the likes of us have come across on TV as vaguely criminal.

Yeah, I suppose so. Fixed.

Excellent Stuff.

I'm just starting to get into Geocaching, so maybe, just this once I'm ahead of the 'popularity' curve..

Cheers,

Paul.

Yeah, I just had to pause the show and explain to my wife that I knew what geocaching was on the first scene. Usually it takes a few scenes to figure out what's going on in that show, but I knew as soon as I saw the lady writing in the notebook over a dug out box with a gps in hand that it was geocaching.

Dang, you guys finally got me very curious about this... I had a buddy who moved away to Georgia and left a treasure hunt for us with little clues hidden all over the city. Ever since then, I've been itching to do something like this. After reading the thread (finally) that Mark made with the web based script, I think I want to take the dive.

Do you guys have any recommendations on equipment? Are the geocaching.com forums trust worthy and would you buy from them? eBay? I don't need one that replaces my PDA or phone, just something that won't suck.

I have a Garmin iQue 3600 and love it. Since I don't geocache as much as I drive in the car I got a GPS more tuned to street navigation. It also works good for geocaching with a few free add-ons. Most GPS only devices are not as hackable or expandable as a PDA/GPS or pocket PC/GPS solutions.

If you have a PDA already maybe something like this will do the job….

http://www.garmin.com/products/gps10/

http://www.garmin.com/products/cfQue/

Don't read this if you're flame happy.

Most (all?) PDA style solutions lack the battery life and especially the accuracy required for geocaching, or at least for anything other than the most trivial of caches. They have different design parameters and trade offs.

-ml

Agreed, pretty much any inexpensive handheld will give you enough functionality to find geocaches. All you really need is the compass and the distance to the waypoint. Everything beyond that is gravy.

When I started, I just picked up a Magellan Meridian for $100 on ebay to get started. Works great. Granted, I probably have to circle and hunt for a bit longer because it's not quite as accurate as some, but I've never had trouble getting to the caches. Perhaps one of these days I'll upgrade to something a little nicer, but for now it does the job.

I agree with the battery life and if it is not very rugged but you'll have to be more specific than….

different design parameters and trade offs

…. to change my mind about the accuracy. With an external antenna ($19) I get an accuracy of usually 7 feet.

I’ve found every “trivial” cache I was after, except one . Granted I’ve only logged about 50.

I agree the battery will only last about 6 hours if you “conserve” power however one cache hunt usually does not last that long and the PDA is back in the car cradled talking me to the next cache while recharging.

I am amazed that Garmin haven't yet done an eTrex model with Bluetooth. It seems like such an obvious product.

I bought the Fortuna attempt at a combined normal handheld GPS and Bluetooth device. It is totally compromised in both its areas of functionality.

It appears at first that it can do most of what the basic eTrex units can do, until you realise it can only do one thing at a time. It can record a track, follow a route, record trip data etc

But it can only do one of these things at a time and if you switch from recording a track to say look at the navigation screen you lose the track data, doh.

I have ended up buying an eTrex Legend now, just as soon as I get the cables sorted out to wire it to TomoTom on my PDA the Fortuna will be going on ebay.

I also don't understand why Garmin's new color eTrex units don't have a serial port (they only have USB). I was seriously considering the color Legend, until I realised there was no way of connecting it to my PDA.

Yea, iQue uses WAAS and 12 channels

But yours is perfect, I'm sure. They can't all be bad.

No need to be smart. Just asking you to be specific.

Ouch. More abuse.

I really did mean that I thought the Garmin iQue gizmo must be near perfect. Garmin makes the handheld dedicated ones, and knows their stuff.

Ouch.

I'm sorry Mark but that was down to a the choice of words on your part. It really did sound like you were have a dig at both the Garmin and Redrum's believe in its accuracy.

I know that wasn't how you intended it, but that is how it reads.

Isn't English a fun language

Anyone else want to poke some more needles in?

Fsck if I care anymore.

They do have their advantages though. The one thing I will miss about my Bluetooth PDA/Bluetooth GPS combination, when I switch to my wired PDA/eTrex solution, will be the ability to lift the PDA out of its docking cradle in the car and still use the GPS.

If my wife is driving it is very useful for me to be able to grab the PDA, make some changes to the routing and then pop it back in the cradle. I'll lose this ability when I dump my bluetooth GPS.

I won't however miss the awful combination of TomTom and the bluetooth stack on my PDA though...

P.S. the Fortuna adds insult to injury on the battery life from, it manages to run down its batteries even when plugged into the 12V power in the car

I won't however miss the awful combination of TomTom and the bluetooth stack on my PDA though...


The integration of the GPS/Palm is what sold me, but no bluetooth. Garmin now has a Pocket PC version that has bluetooth, but I’m happy. I don’t know about Tom Tom but the integrated navigation with the address book and the ability to find phone numbers and all sorts of points of interest with the find menu still impresses the crap out of me.

I was thinking of getting a geocache only model but I like the Swiss army knife approach myself.

Without the external antenna I get an average of 20' accuracy and with the external it locks faster gets more satellites with better reception. Like any good aftermarket add-on the external antenna just makes things better. I usually don’t use the external antenna unless I really need the accuracy. Since Garmin makes the iQue it seems to me to be more of a GPS than Palm. Which is what I want.

Mark, which handhelds (non-PDA) unit do you recommend for a beginner? There are so many of them out there... They seem pretty well built though, so getting a used one may not be out of the question..

Looking in the $100-160 range...