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Arndtwe
March 2nd, 2009, 07:29 PM
Anyone on here a Geocacher? If so, have you found any really nice setups on Ubuntu for managing/manipulating GPX files? If so, please provide details on your setupso the rest of us my benefit. Thanks!! :-D

FraggedLocust
March 2nd, 2009, 07:36 PM
I just started, having recently got a GPS as a gift. But I have been following for about a year or two now. I would like to know if there's more I need to know than just punching in the co-ordinates to my favourites. :)

TravisNewman
March 2nd, 2009, 09:01 PM
Moved to the Cafe.

And on this topic, my wife and I got a GPS for christmas and we have been wanting to try it, but we haven't yet.

bobbocanfly
March 2nd, 2009, 09:04 PM
I've done Geocaching (of sorts). I don't have a GPS, so my system works by me getting the co-ordinates, punching them into Openstreet Map or Google Maps and printing out the resulting map page. It's hacky and not "proper", but still very fun. I even found a cache using this method faster than a group of goecachers that had GPS's.

craigeo
March 2nd, 2009, 11:05 PM
I've been geocaching a few years.
I use a compac flash Global Sat SiRF III BC-337 GPS plugged into my Dell Axim X5 PDA.
I use BeelineGPS software on the PDA.
I just get the gpx files from geocaching.com through my pocket queries. Copy them to the sd card for my pda and import them into Beeline on the pda.
I just use the geocaching.com website to log my finds, etc.
I don't use any software on my pc for maintaining it at all.
The SiRF III chipset is definitely the way to go.
I had a different GPS before which would lose signal in heavy brush. This new one works better than other peoples hand held gps units without the SiRF III chipset.
I also like using the PDA for this because I can make notes, do the geocaching, etc all on one device easily.

smartboyathome
March 2nd, 2009, 11:12 PM
I geocache (if intermitantly, because I can't get to the places where the caches are a lot of the time). I got a Garmin Etrex Venture HC which I use, only thing I wish is that I could get some terrain maps for it for the local terrain. :(

bostonaholic
March 2nd, 2009, 11:26 PM
My parents have been Geocaching for several years now. They have over 1600 finds in several continents.

Arndtwe
March 3rd, 2009, 12:34 AM
Cool to hear of other Ubuntu Geocachers. These are all fun to read, but has anyone got a system down for managing the whole process on Ubuntu? I guess this is what I am mainly after... Since I myself Geocache, and use Ubnuntu it would be nice to kn0ow what others do.

I have not been Geocaching for a few months now, and am ready to get back into the groove. But the last time I needed to prepare for a hunt I was running M$ XP.So now I have no clue what works software wise. I have done quite a bit of research and have found a number of programs, but none of them seem to be any good.

One really good looking piece of Geocaching software that looked good was GPSturbo. On the main site, they show it being run on M$, Linux, and Mac. It said for Linux to download the source and to follow the instructions on the "read me" file to compile... Problem is, I cannot find where to download the source. It is suppose to be on the google page for the software but none of the files say source, all of them say other unrelated things. Any help on this would be most appreciated.

In case it matters, I am running a Dell mini9 with the latest updated 8.04 (hardy) for this machine. Thanks in advance for any and all help!

Arndtwe
March 3rd, 2009, 12:36 AM
P.S. I forgot to mention, I am not interested in running WINE, or VMware. So anything that only requires what I have would be really nice. :-) thanks again...

smartboyathome
March 3rd, 2009, 01:49 AM
The only way to geocache with Ubuntu at the moment (for Garmin GPS's at least) is to purchace a premium account and then use geotoad to fetch the caches and put them on your GPS. Since I didn't want to purchace a premium account, I just use Vista to add the caches to my GPS using the web app.

sgosnell
March 3rd, 2009, 03:17 AM
GPSBabel is a native Linux app, and will work well for converting filetypes and for transferring data to and from a GPS. It's pretty indispensible for caching. There is a developer who has produced caching software for the Nokia NIT, which runs Linux with a custom interface, and that might work with some tweaking. You could try contacting the author of gpxview, Till Harbaum.

I got tired of caching some time back, and just quit. I just got tired of looking under lightposts in WalMart parking lots, as well as not having a lot of free time.

N.B. there are lots of apps called gpxview and gpsviewer, for lots of platforms. You have a lot to wade through.

smartboyathome
March 3rd, 2009, 11:47 PM
I got tired of caching some time back, and just quit. I just got tired of looking under lightposts in WalMart parking lots, as well as not having a lot of free time.

I guess it depends on where you live. Here, we have a lot of forests, and some mountains that are an hour or so drive away, so there are plenty of good caches out there to find.

sgosnell
March 7th, 2009, 05:26 AM
No mountains around here, but there are woods. Most of the people in caching now don't seem to want to go into them, though. I just lost interest.

kg4tah
March 7th, 2009, 02:14 PM
I hope you find your answer and when you do share it here with the rest of us. I too have a garmin etrex and could not get any of the gps programs in the repo's to work with it. Maybe because it has a serial cable and not a usb cable, I don't know but I got really tired of trying to figure it out so that is one reason for the dual xp / ubuntu boot on my pc. On a side note, I have not been able to cache as much as I would like to. I have found maybe 7 caches in the past three years. It is hard to devote much time towards it due to my job and having a wife and 4 kids at home. Anyhow good luck with finding something that works and when or if you do find a good working program let the rest of us know!!!

sgosnell
March 8th, 2009, 02:57 AM
For a serial cable, you need a USB/serial converter. You can buy them in most electronics stores. They convert a USB port to a serial port. For transferring data to a GPS, gpsbabel works for almost anything.

Chilli Bob
March 8th, 2009, 03:16 AM
I looked into this about a year ago and couldn't find a good Linux solution. I was downloading loc files, copying the data to a spreadsheet, saving the spreadsheet as comma delineated text files, then uploading the data to my eTrex with gpsbabel, but it was a bit of a mess. I wanted to learn python to write a script to automate a lot of it (shouldn't be to difficult), but who has the time to learn programming?

Now I just boot into XP, download from geocaching.com to my e Trex with the Garmin utility, and manage my waypoints using easyGPS. It works beautifully.

fyrmedic
May 11th, 2009, 12:49 AM
I've been caching for quite a while and would love to find a really good solution within ubuntu. So far, one of the best apps that I have found for caching is Geocaching Swiss Army Knife. Unfortunately, it is only available in MS. I haven't tried it in wine or VB.

Currently, I have a premium account and get daily queries delivered to my email. When I get those I use GPSVisualizer (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/) to "spin" the file and out put in a .zip that I extract onto my SD card for the GPS.

It's an ugly solution but it gets several hundred caches onto my GPS ready to be found I get the bug to find a couple.

My next plan is to figure out how to run the commands on GPSbabel myself and just write a script that spins the file and saves it on the SD card where I want it automagically.


Regards and good caching,

Brad

furym
December 8th, 2009, 05:31 AM
Okay, here's what I got....

I use a sprint usb modem to keep a laptop connected to the internet while caching.
I have an Etrex H (yellow) with a usb-serial converter cable.
I am running Ubuntu 9.10 on a Dell Inspiron E1505.
I use Google Earth for mapping/planning.
I do use gsak to under wine but it does crash often so still looking for a better way to track finds.
I use gpsbabbel (just found gebabbel in the repositories) to load waypoints to the gps. I do shorten the names by opening the gpx file in gedit and doing a replace all >GC with > .
This allows the Etrex to show names without dropping the end characters.
I use gpx2html to get a "to be found" list that is easier than printing off 500 or so local waypoints.

Anyone with a good (free) logging program to run on linux I am all ears!

I have not tried connecting the Etrex to the computer to track/map while driving. I will have to try that soon.

Guitar John
May 31st, 2010, 09:30 AM
To say I recently got into it would be an overstatement. I "discovered" it while on a motorcycle ride. We were checking out covered bridges in Lancaster, PA. While we were stopped, a guy who was looking for a cache told us a little about it.

Then I found out that a co-worker is really into it. He has the iPhone app (Mac guy). Then, on his recommendation, my wife and I saw the obligatory geocaching movie, "Splinterheads." The movie sucked, but it does give you an idea of what it's all about.

I have an account on their website (http://www.geocaching.com/), and I have gone looking for a couple, but that's about it.

sgosnell
May 31st, 2010, 01:50 PM
gpsbabel is a nice program. It's not that hard to learn, and there is a gui available for it. You can use it to remove the GC characters at the same time you send the waypoints to the GPS, and save a step with gedit. I haven't been caching in a couple of years, but I enjoyed it for awhile. Work intruded, and I sort of lost interest.

stafio
June 11th, 2010, 04:54 AM
QLandkarte GT is available in the repositories, as of the Lucid release. I haven't used it extensively yet, but it seems to work fairly well.

stafio
June 11th, 2010, 05:21 AM
I just came across a Linux substitute for the Garmin Communicator Plugin: http://www.andreas-diesner.de/garminplugin/. It hasn't been tested with the eTrex Legend HCx, which is what I have. Hopefully it works.

ocm_ott
July 5th, 2010, 03:11 AM
I'm a very avid geocacher. I really liked GSAK for Windows, but after my switch to Ubuntu I've started my own similar project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencachemanage/).

We use an eTrex and a Colorado 300. The one piece of glue that you'll need for the eTrex is "gpsbabel", which exists in the repositories. A lot of linux software, including my own OCM, needs it to send waypoints to machines like the eTrex. The other thing you'll need to do for the etrex if you're using Karmic or earlier is follow the instructons here (http://www.gpsbabel.org/os/Linux_Hotplug.html)to fix a permission problem in talking to the device if you aren't root. This problem doesn't seem to happen in Lucid.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencachemanage/

ocm_ott
July 5th, 2010, 02:31 PM
are u sure it is that good

As good as GSAK? Not yet, the project's only about a month old. I've got a long way to go yet, but it's far enough along that it's all we use.

hoosier1104
July 5th, 2010, 03:53 PM
I have thought about it and would like to try it out. I enjoy hiking so why not right. I will keep tabs on this thread to see if there any good solutions.