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.