The geocaching one-trick-pony Geomate.jr may be about to get a second life. We reported back in January that the product had been discontinued, but if you login to update your Geomate.jr today, you’ll get a message saying the page is temporarily out of service. The interesting part is that the page is “signed” by Brand 44.

A little digging turns up the following:

Brand 44 was started in 2011 by Edward O’Brien a Colorado native who wanted to create “Backyard Adventures” as recreational activities that family members of all ages and other groups could enjoy out of doors anywhere. Brand 44 is a distributor of licensed Boy Scouts of America products, Slackers® brand Slacklines and Ziplines. In April of 2012 Brand 44 acquired the Geomate Jr. product line from Apisphere Inc. “This is a great addition to our expanding line of adventure products that get young people and their families outside to explore their world and learn more about themselves,” says Ed O’Brien. At Brand 44, our goal is to provide great products to fine retailer worldwide.

Via Groundspeak

UPDATE: Here’s a news release I’ve received:

Brand 44 of Denver Colorado (brand44co.com) has recently purchased the Geomate Jr. Geocaching GPS product line from Apisphere Inc. of Dallas Texas. “This acquisition rounds out our growing geocaching product line and will enable us to offer select retailers the most comprehensive selection of geocaching products available anywhere,” said Edward O’Brien, Brand 44′s president.

Geocaching is a real world, outdoor treasure hunting game using a GPS enabled device. With your family and friends, navigate to a set of coordinates and attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. Geocaching is one of the fast growing activities as there are over 6 million active geocachers, 1.6 million active geocaches, with over 75 million geocaches forecasted to be found in 2012!

Brand 44 is a creator of products that encourage families and kids to get outdoors and have fun. There is an alarming trend (Outdoor Retailer Association 2011 Recreation Report) showing substantial declines in outdoor participation by kids 6-12 in the last 5 years. Brand 44 is focused on making outdoor activities fun for the whole family.

The “Backyard Adventure” products include the Slackers™ Slacklines and Ziplines, The Geomate™ line of geocaching products including the popular Geomate Jr.® GPS device that comes preloaded with over 250,000 cache locations from the Geocaching.com database. Brand 44 is also the licensee of the “Be Prepared” line, a Boy Scouts of American branded line of camping and activity products.

I hope to be able to speak with Ed O’Brien sometime next week and learn more, in which case I’ll either update this or publish a new post.

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…

Dear Geomate.jr Community

What can we say – this good thing has come to an end. We are no longer able to offer the Geomate.jr for sale or continue the Update Zone service. We do hope you’ve had as much fun geocaching as we’ve had working with everyone.

To help keep the adventures happening however, we have made some software available here that will allow anyone with an Update Kit and a PC to load a Pocket Query from Geocaching.com to a Geomate.jr.

Regrettably,

The Geomate.jr Team

Via Geomatejr.com

UPDATE: This product has been discontinued. Here are my current geocaching GPS recommendations.

The Geomate.jr is designed solely for geocaching, but more than that, its designed to make geocaching drop-dead easy. The Geomate.jr is pre-loaded with 250,000 caches, covering the entire U.S.

Geocaching simplified

Having so many pre-loaded caches eliminates the need to download them from geocaching.com and transfer them to your GPS, making this the ultimate grab n’ go solution.

Compare prices on the Geomate.jr

Priced at a reasonable $69.95, the Geomate.jr is a lightweight one trick pony. It’s not designed to be used like a traditional GPS, though you can store one custom location in it (home, a trailhead, etc.) to direct you back to your starting point.

Using the Geomate.jr

Getting started with the Geomate.jr is simple. Turn it on, let it lock onto GPS satellites, and it will point you to the nearest cache. Push the Next button and it will guide you to the second closest cache. You can scroll through the 20 nearest caches in this manner.

On the main screen, shown at right, you’ll see ratings for Find Difficulty, Terrain Difficulty and Cache Size. Inside the compass circle is an indicator of satellite signal strength, distance to cache, and which cache you are viewing (1 through 20).

The Navigation screen allows you to scroll through latitude, longitude, elevation and the number of satellites being tracked and used.

A Found screen displays the number of found caches, the geocaching.com GC code, the date a cache was marked as found and the order it appears in the found list.

The Geomate.jr compass on the main screen points you to the nearest geocache, but it’s not an electronic compass, so it doesn’t know which way you are facing. You have to take a few steps before it will point you in the correct direction.

An update kit will allow you load an updated database of geocaches, load caches for other countries and more.

Geomate.jr specifications

The 1.2” x 1.2” monochrome screen is not what you’d want on a full-featured GPS, but it works just fine for what the Geomate.jr is. It has a 12 hour rated battery life (2 AAAs) and weighs a scant 3.2 ounces with batteries.

More Geomate.jr reviews

• A number of Geomate.jr reviews have been posted at REI
• CNet gives a 3-1/2 out of 5 star rating in their Geomate.jr review
• Geocaching.com’s discussion board has a Geomate.jr review thread
• A negative review from the NY Times
• A mommy blogger reviews the Geomate.jr
• TechCrunch has even posted a Geomate Jr.review
• The Neat Things in Life reviews the Geomate Jr.
• Cumbyrocks reviews the Geomate.Jr
• I’ll post links to more Geomate.jr reviews as they appear; for now, here are some other…

Geomate.jr resources

• The official Geomate.jr web page
• A PDF version of the Geomate.jr owners manual
• Geomate.jr update kit FAQ (PDF)
• A video demo of the Geomate.jr:

Conclusion and recommendation

I was very impressed with the Geomate.jr. Sturdy and accurate, it directed me right to ground zero for the caches I sought. It is an excellent choice for a wide range of people including:

• The casual geocacher who wants a grab n’ go unit
• Families who want a sturdy and inexpensive unit to put in kids hands
• Seasoned geocachers who want to keep a unit in the car, for those unexpected geocaching opportunities

Compare prices on the Geomate.jr at these merchants:

• Check the current price on the Geomate.jr
  at Amazon
• Get the Apisphere Geomate.jr Geocacher from REI.com

Related posts:

• GPS for geocachers