A good day ruined by a bad GPS

Lodainn An Ear · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 93

Had a frustrating day today having intended to do some caches in the Pentlands.

Set out from Boghall Farm and switched the GPS in my phone on and loaded up GPX View - DNF'd the Boghall Farm cache then set off on the climb up towards Caerketton East. I strayed a little off course and ended up closer to Caerketton West so decided to head for that and catch C East on the way back. By the time i reached CW the battery in my phone had died - very disappointing. As caching was out of my scope i continued along to Allermuir Hill and took in the grand views before heading back along the ridge and down to the car park.

...time to get a dedicated GPS (one for the Christmas list maybe!)

Still, i enjoyed the walk and so did the dogs! Not a disaster by any means.

*i use my Nokia N900 phone for caching... the battery has always been bad but never like it was today.

Hobgoblinkiteflier · Member Joined: 05 Jan 2009 Posts: 20 Location: Livingston

Some might say geocacing is a good walk spoiled, so it sounds like you had just the good walk. It was a great day for it, though.

Original A1 · Member Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 81 Location: Auld Reekie

Interesting. I had an appointment at the Gyle first thing yesterday, and because it was so lovely, thought I too would head up for those caches. Trouble was, I had a PQ from Edinburgh to North Berwick with a 3? mile radius from my home co-ords and they didn't include the Pentlands, so they weren't on the GPS. Result was I headed over Dalkeith way.

With your GPS and my batteries, we might have managed it, but hope you enjoyed the views nonetheless.

Cool

mrplenty · Member Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 27 Location: Bonnyrigg

Do you use the phone for placing caches?
I use my N900 for placing them and came under fire loads as unaccurate.
Ive even had it side by side a Garmin Vista HCX and there was about 5 foot difference...Hope santa is going to be good Smile

ayr_lad · Member Joined: 27 Jul 2009 Posts: 13 Location: Edinburgh

Lodainn An Ear · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 93

Lodainn An Ear · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 93

mrplenty · Member Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 27 Location: Bonnyrigg

I use the same app as you GPXView, ive tried AGTL but not as nice as Gpxview.
I was looking at getting the HTC Wildfire as the reports on some posts on groundspeak say that the Gps is very accurate.
I did find the N900 is a bit iffy under tree cover and as you say the battery is also not very good probably due to the Gps draining it.

Cheers mrplenty

Maiawalli · Member Joined: 22 Aug 2010 Posts: 26

That's sounds like quite a frustrating day for you Graham. We have similar problems with the battery life on our iPhones. What we do is only use the GPS function on them for the final hunt for the cache. If not we'd only get a cache or two before the battery died. We do have a proper GPS but find the phone far more convenient for cache hunting (at least when we're not right out in the sticks). We also need to get up the pentlands, as we've only got a few of the caches up there. Maybe we'll bump into you up there!
For setting caches we use our 'real' GPS and generally get a minimum of a hundred readings to average. If there's tree cover then we'll get more (3-400). The one cache we didn't average as we were in a bit of a hurry was well out, so we learnt our lesson that way.
MrPlenty. We've found about 40-45 of your caches now. As you said, initially there were some accuracy issues, but they've been greatly improved. One of these days we'll find the rest of your caches!

mrplenty · Member Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 27 Location: Bonnyrigg

Ive cracked the issues of batteries and gps signals and my inaccuracies. Embarassed

Im going to use the sun by day and the moon and stars by night....

Look out for caches near or maybe not so near you.. Laughing

Lodainn An Ear · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 93

mrplenty · Member Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 27 Location: Bonnyrigg

Have you installed Geotoad?
If you have just start it from the Tools menu in Gpxview.
And log in with your gc.com details.
If not get geotoad from the extras-devel repository from maemo.org
If you dont have the extras-devel i can send you it.

mrplenty

Maiawalli · Member Joined: 22 Aug 2010 Posts: 26

That's sounds like quite a frustrating day for you Graham. We have similar problems with the battery life on our iPhones. What we do is only use the GPS function on them for the final hunt for the cache. If not we'd only get a cache or two before the battery died. We do have a proper GPS but find the phone far more convenient for cache hunting (at least when we're not right out in the sticks). We also need to get up the pentlands, as we've only got a few of the caches up there. Maybe we'll bump into you up there!
For setting caches we use our 'real' GPS and generally get a minimum of a hundred readings to average. If there's tree cover then we'll get more (3-400). The one cache we didn't average as we were in a bit of a hurry was well out, so we learnt our lesson that way.
MrPlenty. We've found about 40-45 of your caches now. As you said, initially there were some accuracy issues, but they've been greatly improved. One of these days we'll find the rest of your caches!

Lodainn An Ear · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 93

Lodainn An Ear · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 93