GSAK 8 – New Features Tutorial

GSAK 8 is the most recently released version of Geocaching Swiss Army Knife. For those not familiar with the software, it’s basically a Geocaching database that you can use to store, filter and manipulate cache data. It’s an absolutely massive product and since version 8 now connects to the Geocaching.com Live API for better integration with the website. Previous versons of the software relied on you manually loading in your own caches, for example via Pocket Queries. Version 8 is better integrated with the Geocaching.com website and is able to not only automatically retrieve cache data, but also download extra logs for caches, add caches to your favourites, quickly log caches, and log caches using the field notes from your GPS.

GSAK8 has been out a fair while now, but I thought I’d use a blog entry to go into some depth as to what the new GSAK 8 features provide and how cachers can benefit from this update as I’ve recently upgraded to it. The update isn’t a freebie for existing GSAK users, however it is really reasonably priced for the amount of features you get ranging from $10 to $20 depending on how recently you purchased version 7. Anyone who doesn’t yet own GSAK can purchase it for $30, however you can get a free 21 day trial here to have a play before deciding to part with your hard earned cache cash!

Get the latest patch

Although you may have installed GSAK8, unless you’re running the latest patch for it you could be really missing out! Click here to view a list of patches and what each patch adds to GSAK. Scroll to the very last post in the forum to download the latest patch. By default, GSAK is configured to tell you if there is a new version available. This doesn’t alert you about any of the latest patches, so I’d strongly recommend spending a few seconds modifying your GSAK preferences to enable patch alerts. To do this, click the ‘Tools‘ menu –> Options –> ‘Advanced‘ tab and then on the top right click the box that says ‘Also check for “patches”‘. Now it will pop up and tell you whenever there is a new patch for download.

Tick the 'Also check for patches' box

Geocaching.com Access

Version 8 of GSAK comes with a new menu item added along the top bar labelled ‘Geocaching.com Access‘. Under this menu is where all the new exciting stuff lives!

The Geocaching.com Access menu

A quick run down of the items:
Get Geocaches – Pull Geocache data straight from Geocaching.com. You’ll need premium membership (i.e. the ability to use Pocket Queries) to get any real benefit from this.
Refresh Cache Data – Update the caches in your database with the latest cache data from the Geocaching.com website.
Download Pocket Queries – Pull up a list of Pocket Queries in your account that are downloadable and download them into your GSAK database.
Status Check – Update the status of the caches in your database (Archived, Disabled, or Available)
Favourite Points – Add/Remove the currently selected cache from your favourites or get your Favourites balance.
Update User Information – In GSAK you can set your Home coordinates and User ID to find caches close to home (for example) and filter those owned/found by you. Instead of doing this manually, this option will pull the data from the your Geocaching.com account.
Publish Logs – Log a cache, or queue up a big list of logs to publish to the Geocaching.com website.
Add to Bookmark List – Add the currently selected cache to one of your bookmark lists, or create a new list to add it to.
Get Available Download Balance (New in Build 37 Patch) – Check what your available balance is for cache downloads (Out of 6000)
Get another Access token – Access to your Geocaching.com account is granted via a token. The first time you access your account via GSAK you will have to click to ‘Allow Access’. If you have 2 Geocaching.com accounts and want to switch to another one in order to download more caches (Perhaps you have 2 premium accounts?) you can do that by selecting this option.

MMTracker Android App (OS maps on your smartphone)

Introduction

For ages I’ve been searching for something on my iPhone to allow me to view Ordnance Survey maps on it whilst I’m out Geocaching. The iOSMap app came out and this was absolutely useless as it requires a wifi internet connection to view the maps and adverts that come along with them. Then there was the official “Memory Map” app however this is £20 and doesn’t view old version of their qct files for each OS Map region, meaning having to buy every new version of the OS maps. I know it’s possible to get OS maps for your GPSr, however the ones that come with the Oregons (for example) are only 50k (less detailed) and you can only buy small parts of the country in 25k.

Then along came a Samsung Galaxy S Android phone and I found an app that answered our prayers “MMTracker“. There is a free version and a paid version of this, and the paid version is just under £5. Bargain. So what does this neat bit of software do?

Well, basically .qct files are files that hold an entire OS map for a particular region. For every paper-based Explorer (25k) OS map there is a qct file equivalent. MMTracker allows you to view these qct files on your phone AND adds a little crosshair, so via the GPS connection in your device you can see yourself moving on these OS maps. Pretty neat! That’s all for free. The paid version allows you to upload and create waypoints (Geocache locations) onto your device so you can navigate to them. You also have a load more features including tracks, and routes. I thought I’d give the app a go last weekend whilst we were out Geocaching. It definitely helped in quite a few spots where we weren’t sure where we were, or in particular when we wanted to find an alternative route back to the car instead of walking back across a horrible ploughed field.

Below is a pic of the app in action. In the top left hand corner your speed is displayed. Ours is at 0kph as we had to stop for the photo to be taken, however as you move you see the little red crosshair move with you.

The app in action. Notice the crosshair that moves with you