POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

After a few frustrating experiences with geocaching and the N810 (see thread here I decided to start a poll to see if I'm the only one out there feeling the way I do.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

I haven't tried geocaching, but I have been screwing around with the GPS.

If you want to see your GPS drift, use Maemo Mapper.
Make sure you have tracking turned on.
Go somewhere with a good satellite lock. Now sit there and twiddle your thumbs or something for a moment.
Look at the "track".
There, visualized "drift".


A note, the compass only works if you're moving.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

I use it on an n800 with a decent bluetooth GPS, works fine. I use a garmin etrex (not very accurate, but more rugged) to get close, then finish off with gpxview.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

For me it works fine. MaemoMapper + GPXView really makes geocaching easy. The gps unfortunately needs some time to get the satellite connection. But apart from caches that are hidden in forests, I have a quite enjoyable experience.

icke

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

What he said. If you use a BT GPSr like the one that cam with the n800 car kit you get faster start ups and bit better accuracy. But this means you have now 2 batteries to keep an eye on instead of one.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

Depends on the terrain, with AGPS and a clear view of the skies I get a lock in usually 20-30 seconds. OTOH tall buildings, in forest, etc, can be a bit frustrating, so if you plan on going into such places, an external GPS is recommended as the quality/speed of results is not too good (as you noticed, even if you get a lock, the error is quite big).

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

I must have a very good unit, because I have yet to install AGPS, and if I go outside, even if it's kinda cloudy, I get a lock with between 4 and 10 satellites within the minute.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

I noticed that the latitude has much to do with GPS signal quality. I really cannot complain about my n810 at home (49 deg north), but it was awful to go geocaching with the same device when i was visiting nokia in helsinki at 60 deg north. Those 10 degrees seem to make a huge difference.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

I finally got out and did my first geocache this past weekend. Some friends joined me. We searched for 2, definitely found one, thought we found another one. The one we thought we found, we found something matching the description of what the cache was, but it was empty. We assumed that maybe the contents were taken. Mostly we were just anxious to say we found something.

I used a combination of gpx view and maemo mapper. The accuracy/error was kind of annoying that it jumped around, but it also adds to the fun of searching. To combat the jumping compass, I would just lock the compass and point the N on the compass to north, and get my general direction of where we should be looking.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

The container you found without anything in it could have be another container placed out there to discourage muggle of the main cache. I don't usally place decoy container because it makes it unnecessarily harder for new cachers but there are a group i know that puts up at least 1 decoy up on all there non-urban micro caches.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

Word.

I've conducted that exact experiment and laughed at the results.

I love GPXView. We use maemo mapper to get in the right area, but once we're within 30 feet of the cache, the n810 goes in my pocket and we use our eXplorist to actually find the cache, then I use GPXView is for taking notes and marking it as found. If we have trouble we do use the GPXView for checking logs and hints.

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

GPXView is awesome. The n810's built-in GPS is not. I like to use a combination of GPXview, Maemo Mapper, and an old, cheap, hand-held Cobra GPS. The Cobra isn't great, but it's somewhat better than the n810. Maybe I'll ask Santa for a new high-end GPS this year.

As far as the compass goes, that's a limitation of any device that relies only on the GPS signal. There's no way for the device to know which way it's facing, except by taking the difference between two position measurements. Therefore, you have to be moving. There are some higher-end units which include a digital magnetic compass in addition to the GPS receiver; those will obviously be much better when you're stationary. Until I get one of them, my trusty old-school Silva will remain an essential part of my geocaching kit!

Re: POLL: How is Geocaching and N810 working for you?
 

Accuracy of N810's internal GPSr is good enough for me, even up north here. Usually the GPSr takes me withing a few metres from the cache, however on urban areas I ofter rely more on satellite images than on coordinates. When fully recharged, the device has enough power for seven hours of GSPr operation. This is enough most of the time (but not always). :-)

Most of the time I use Maemo Mapper to get close to the cache and then use my sixth sense to find the cache. If that doesn't work, I start partitioning the grounds by walking around and keeping an eye on the coordinates. And if that doesn't work, I fall back to using GPXView to get more accurate coordinates.

My POI database for Maemo Mapper currently contains some 1000 POIs. All POIs have basic information such as cache name, status, size and terrain rating. They also have full cache description and the five latest log entries. I manage the POIs with home-brewn Perl script that takes care of pretty much everything from my personal notes (such as solved mysteries) to downloading POIs. I have also modified Maemo Mapper (e.g.) to be able to download maps around POI categories and to open POI dialog in less than a second by shift-tapping on one.

All in all, N810 works well for geocaching for me. Or it did until I started suffering from this bug.