Putting it all together

Before I go into detail about transferring data, I should explain a bit about how I go about geocaching. I have a basic membership (free) on the geocaching.com website. Some of the limitations with the basic membership are that you don’t get notified of new geocaches, you cannot download a GPX file containing details of geocaches to transfer to a GPS unit and you cannot run a Pocket Query which provides a GPX file with details of a large number of geocaches in a chosen area/route. 

For me, these aren’t really a limitation. I generally don’t have the time to get in the hunt for a First To Find, and if I’m going to go out geocaching, then I generally go to a specific area to do this. I can check what geocaches are in the area and load them onto the eTrex H. So I plan my geocaching and head off to get geocaches in a chosen area when I can, rather than being opportunistic and visiting one if one happens to be close by wherever I happen to be.

This is also an easy way to get an introduction to geocaching – I can carefully choose the geocaches I wish to visit - making sure that the terrain is not too difficult for other family members that might be coming along, and checking that it’s been found recently and isn’t missing in action. 

I am actually going to get a premium membership next month and will then grapple with stripping the GC’s from the GPX file provided by a Pocket Query (and describe my success or otherwise here) but will probably still approach geocaching in the same way.

Moving on

Anyway, continuing on from my previous post…..once I had the cable for the eTrex H and installed the drivers I was all set to be able to connect it up to the computer and start transferring waypoints for geocaches. Now I need to get the computer set up to send the data via the cable. I use Firefox as my web browser (can’t recommend it highly enough) and everything that I am about to describe here uses Firefox as a platform and using the geocaching.com website.

The first thing I needed was the Garmin Communicator Plugin. This enables Firefox to talk directly to the eTrex H, and you can get a copy from the Garmin website (http://www8.garmin.com/products/communicator/). On a side note, the plugin also works with Chrome and Safari.

Send to GPS

Once the plugin is installed I can now send a waypoint straight to the eTrex H by using the ‘Send to GPS’ link from the geocaching.com website.

For example, on the geocaching .com website, I can view a map of geocaches in an area and click on a cache to get more detail (see below).

If I select the highlighted ‘Send to GPS’ link, a new pop-up window opens as Firefox, using the Garmin Communicator Plugin attempts to find the eTrex H.

I can now see the detail of what is going to be sent to the eTrex H. Highlighted above is the code for the geocache, and this is what will become the waypoint name in the eTrex H. If I click on the ‘Write’ button in this window the data will be sent to the eTrex H but the last character of the code will be missing – it will be stored as ‘GC1PV8’. If I was to later send another geocache to the unit which started with the same six characters this one would be overwritten and I would lose it. To get around this, remove the GC – just delete  it in the window so that it looks like this:

Then click on the ‘Write’ button and it is sent to the eTrex H. If it works then you get a message back indicating success:

How does this look on the eTrex H? Here is the eTrex H without any waypoints entered:

And here it is after the transfer is complete – note the ‘transfer complete’ message and the geocache coordinates are now loaded onto the eTrex H as a waypoint:

All I have to do now is select it and start walking!

The above is all fine if you only want to load one or two waypoints, or if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. It’s quick and easy (certainly much easier than entering waypoints manually) but will still take a little while to load a lot of geocaches before heading off to find them.

This is where the use of GreaseMonkey scripts in conjunction with the geocaching.com website comes in – semi automation (and a further post) here we come!

Geocaching and the Garmin eTrex H

I’d been interested in the whole concept of geocaching for a while but taking the first steps into the world of geocaching required the use of a handheld GPS device. After a bit of research into the various devices available here in Australia I chose the Garmin eTrex H with which to commence the adventures.

The eTrex H is a basic unit and I picked mine up for $99 – if I didn’t like geocaching I wouldn’t be losing too much and I could always trade up to a better model if I needed one in the future. The eTrex H really is quite basic with no map support and limited functions but it is accurate and has a pretty good battery life. I was aware that many consider the eTrex H unsuited for use in geocaching but I was also aware that there were ways around the limitations that most saw in the device.

One of my primary motivations in starting this blog was to explain a bit about how I use my eTrex H for geocaching and how it can successfully be used by others with little effort. As an entry level unit I think it is ideal for geocaching and will certainly enable the average geocacher starting out to successfully find caches.

Limitations

There are definitely some limitations with the unit that have the potential to reduce its usefulness in geocaching. The two key limitations as I see it are that there is no cable provided with the unit to enable you to connect it to a computer and it is limited to using six characters for a waypoint name and many geocaches now have seven characters in their ‘code’ eg GC12345. It’s also limited to 500 waypoints, but with the way in which I currently use the eTrex H for geocaching this doesn’t impose a limit in my use of the device.

The missing cable

You don’t need a cable to enter the coordinates for a geocache into the eTrex H but without one it’s a painfully slow exercise. To enter a waypoint manually (to mark the location of the geocache) you need to go to the eTrex menu and choose to mark a waypoint. If you want to record the code for the geocache as the waypoint name you can do so, and what I do is ignore the ‘GC’ from the code and just enter the remaining 4 or 5 characters. This will require a lot of button pressing to scroll through the list of characters and numbers to get each character in the code entered correctly and will take some time. Once recording this you can edit the coordinates which will have been defaulted to your current location. Again you need to edit each individual coordinate for latitude and longitude to match that coordinates of the chosen geocache. A lot more button pressing and then you’re done. I can handle this for one geocache coordinate if I have to, but to enter the coordinates for 10, 20, 50 or more it is just too slow and unwieldy.

Using a cable enables you to connect the eTrex H to your computer, select the geocaches or coordinates that you want to load onto the eTrex H either in a web browser (with the right plugin) or using some software to support this and then transfer the coordinate data electronically.

A cable can be purchased direct from Garmin (I found them a bit pricey) or there are a number of other sources for them – traditional stores and a multitude of online ‘stores’. Make sure you get a USB cable for ease of connectivity rather than a serial cable – most computers these days don’t have serial ports.  I got mine from http://stores.ebay.com.au/gfc-u-know-me  for just over $30 delivered and it arrived pretty quickly. I grabbed the latest drivers from the Prolific website (PL2303 Driver Installer v1.3.0 from http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=31) and was up and running in no time.  If that link is unavailable, search for ‘PL2303 Driver Installer v1.3.0’ - there’s a few other sites that host copies of the drivers. I have used the cable and drivers on both Vista and Windows 7 computers and it works fine with both.

I’ll come back to discuss the use of the cable and loading waypoints later.

The six character limitation

The Trex H support for six character waypoint names means that there are some instances where the full geocache code cannot be held in the device. Since they all start with ‘GC’ I just ignore this bit of the code and use the remaining 4 or 5 characters when recording the waypoint. This is easily achieved automatically (or with very little effort) with the browser based solution that I use to choose and load geocache locations into the unit.

The manual

The manual that is provided with the eTrex H is pretty brief. The manual for the older versions of the eTrex has much more detail in it and much of this is relevant to the eTrex H. The older manual can still be downloaded from the Garmin website (http://static.garmincdn.com/pumac/etrex_yel_cam_3.0.pdf). If this link doesn’t work just go to the Garmin website, select ‘Manuals’ from the support drop down, then choose ‘On the Trail’, ‘Discontinued’ and either ‘eTrex’ or ‘eTrex Camo’ – from the list provided choose the ‘Owner's Manual (Software Version 3.00 and above)’ link and download the manual.