Cach’eye Version 1.3

It’s no secret that I absolutely love the website Cach’eye. In fact, I don’t ever use the Geocaching website maps, I simply run my pocket query and import it into the Cach’eye website. If you don’t know what Cach’eye is, I published a tutorial/review about it a while ago. Basically, it’s a free website that allows you to upload your pocket queries and view all of your caches on various maps (including OS maps), plot coordinates, measure distances, correct puzzle coords, etc. It’s fabulous.

Yesterday it got updated to version 1.3 so is even more fabulous, the updates are:
* cache limit increased from 3000 to 5000 caches
* option to add new caches to the existing ones during import; choosing this option when importing your caches results in adding all new caches to your map and updating all caches which were imported earlier
* populate Todo-List when exporting from GSAK

The new import options

The first two new additions on the list are really handy, and means you can view 5000 caches in the maps at once. Brilliant for planning a trip away. It also means you don’t have to rely on GSAK to grab 5000 caches, you can just import 5 pocket queries of 1000 caches at a time to get all 5000 displayed.

Happy Cach’eye-ing!

Free maps for your Garmin GPSr from Open Street Map

Since I purchased our Garmin GPSr I have always relied on the Garmin Great Britain TOPO maps to “show us the way”. This however, isn’t the only option for maps on our handheld GPSr’s. There is a free option – Open Street Map.

Map options

Garmins come with a worldwide basemap installed. It’s not very exciting though. Some sea, land, a few roads and rivers, etc. To start seeing contours, minor roads, footpaths and more detailed terrains then you need something else. There are a few options for UK cachers…

An example of the base map - No footpaths

There are the Garmin TOPO Great Britain maps. These show countours, roads, rivers, POI’s trig points, and some tracks and paths. They retail at £150. We’ve used these for about a year, and despite Garmin stating the data is provided by the Ordnance Survey not all footpaths are included, and in some cases there are footpaths included that we have walked over to only to be confronted by a gate that says “PRIVATE” on it. The maps are OK. I can’t say they are great.

The Garmin TOPO maps - Some footpaths, minor roads, forests, etc.

Geocaching.com site update: 21-12-10 (Maps, Stats and Favorites)

On the 21st Geocaching.com had quite a big site update which include 3 massive new features: Favorites, Statistics, and maps (Beta) Oh and the forums have had a bit of a make over! Here’s a quick run down of what’s been added incase you’ve missed anything…

Favorites

I must say I’ve always had the issue where when I go to a new place, I’m never sure which caches are really special. When you visit somewhere for a brief amount of time you don’t want to waste your time finding pointless micros that aren’t placed anywhere interesting. There is GCVote which allows you to give up to 5 stars for a cache, however it’s difficult to know if these caches really are special as the ratings on GCVote are very subjective and you could give every cache in the world a 5 star rating if you really wanted to!

Groundspeak have come up with a great idea to allow you to rate the caches that you think are really good whilst limiting the votes that are given: For every 10 caches that you have found you are able to rate 1 cache as your favorite. If you’ve found 2000 caches, you can mark 200 favorites. Simples!

You can see how many favorite points you have by logging in and viewing your profile.

What do points mean? PRIZES!

GREAT RESOURCE: Finally view Caches on OS maps!

Our prayers are answered…

For cachers looking for a hassle-free way to compile caching maps including 1:25k ordnance survey maps with cache location on, our prayers have been answered. I’d previously blogged about using OS GB Mapping by the Hug which requires a bit of faffing about in Excel to get the GPX files in the correct format, and some Photoshopping to remove the route lines that it plots. Geocacher Pardlerum saw the post and was kind enough to drop me an email and let me know about another site that will allow cache plotting on maps including OS maps without the fuss. I can’t believe I’ve never encountered it as I searched, and searched, and searched for something to do this and came out empty handed. So, as most of you probably wouldn’t have stumbled across this site I thought I’d write a little tutorial post to introduce you to this. It really is the bees knees of cache mapping…

The site is CACH’EYE.

An example of an OS cache map