GPS reviews, news, tips and tricks
UPDATE: As of February 9, they have revived the update zone, at least temporarily.
Sad news today for geocachers on a budget – the Geomate.jr will no longer be sold and the Update Zone service has been discontinued. Keep reading for all the gory details along with how to get a new pocket query into your Geomate…
Garmin’s OpenCaching.com website is live as of this morning. You can create an account or log in with your Garmin account. The site has a lengthy terms of service agreement that appears when you first log in. Other notable things I garnered in a quick first look include forums and a paucity of geocaches (see screenshot above).
UPDATE: Now available at Amazon
The Garmin chirp was announced this morning — a wireless geocaching beacon designed for multi-stage caches, although it seems to cry out for other uses as well.
Slightly larger than a quarter and weighing in at 1 ounce, the chirp has a one-year battery life and a range of 32 feet. It can transmit hints or coordinates for the next stage of a cache
Wireless-enabled Garmin Dakota, Oregon and GPSMAP 62/78 series units are listed as compatible. The chirp is password protected and provides the owner with stats showing the number of visitors the chirp has recorded.
Geocaching is a sort of high-tech treasure hunt and a great way to learn to use your handheld GPS. To begin, go to geocaching.com and enter your zip code. You’ll likely find coordinates for hundreds of nearby caches. You’ll need to register (free) to be able to download them directly to your GPS.
UPDATE 2: Read my hands on review of the Magellan eXplorist 710.
UPDATE: Here’s some screenshots and a discussion of capabilities and accepted map formats.
As expected following the success of the Magellan eXplorist GC, the company today announced several new additions to their updated handheld platform: the Magellan eXplorist 510, 610 and 710.
The so-called Forest Defenders is a group (or more likely, an individual) conducting a “personal war against Letterbox and Geocache littering in eco-sensitive areas.” This drives me absolutely crazy; it’s people like this that give environmentalists a bad name. If you want to limit impact in natural areas, a good start would be to ban people and trails period. But hey FD, in case you haven’t noticed, humans are part of the ecology too.
The first experimental GPS satellite was launched in 1978, with the real thing (the Block II series) starting to go up in 1989. But the Global Positioning System was of limited use to anyone but the military in the early days, due to Selective Availability (SA), which degraded the signal, resulting in inaccuracies of up to 100 meters. An executive order signed by President Bill Clinton ten years ago today ended SA.
The Magellan eXplorist GC
UPDATE: I’ve posted my hands-on review of the Magellan eXplorist GC.
Magellan is announcing a new handheld today – the eXplorist GC, which is designed specifically for geocaching. I’ll have a full review up soon but I wanted to go ahead and give you a sneak peek.
The eXplorist GC is set up for full paperless caching, meaning there’s no need to print out a bunch of info from geocaching.com before heading out. Perhaps the nicest feature in this respect is the ability to sort / filter caches in just about any way and combination you can imagine.
The interface is pretty intuitive. In my early testing I’ve been fairly impressed and think Magellan may have a winner here. I’ve included a couple of screen shots showing the filter feature below to whet your appetite for the full review. In the interim, is there anything specific that you want to know about the eXplorist GC? Chime in below and I’ll try to include it.
Expected to be available next month, the eXplorist GC is priced at $199.99 (MSRP).
UPDATE: This product has been discontinued. Here are my current geocaching GPS recommendations.
The Geomate.jr
GPS Tracklog is written by Rich Owings, author of GPS Mapping.
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