mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

I have completed mCacher for my own Geocaching when on business trips. Requires Python. See attachments for screen shots. If there is any interest in sharing this with the general N810 community I can make it available. I may need some help to package this up correctly (ie. .install or .deb).

Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Heck yeah there's interest! :) Are cache points plugged in manually or is there a way to automate this?

Looks like a great program!

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

I'll 2nd the reply of "Heck yeah! There's interest!" Geocaching is one of our favorite pasttimes :D And just in time for spring...

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

I want it,too!
That's a feature maemo mapper is missing for geocaching.
I can help you in creating a deb.

Regards,
asys3

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Very cool - Maemo mapper is nice, but a little clunky for geo-caching. Does it store waypoints? The ability to read the POI database from maemo mapper would be nice (if it doesn't already), see them on the big map then walk to them with this :)

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

This is great! I have been looking for something like this also.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Yes! I've been wanting to get started with Geocaching. This app will hopefully push me to it...

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

The most ideal (future) feature would be entering a zipcode or area and having the program retrieve the caches in that area from geocaching.com. Sorry, I know thats probably not in the plans currently, but a man can dream. :)

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

It would be nice if MaemoMapper would have a DBUS interface so that external programs (like this one) can interact with it.
The mCacher could handle the cache and let MaemoMapper show, drive the user to the cache.
Ideally MaemoMapper could reply back, via DBUS again, the direction to follow (so that mCacher can show it as it does now).

This would be a pretty nice integration of these two cool application both related to GPS.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

A thought occurs - does it work on the N800 with bluetooth GPS?

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

I'd also be interested in this if it works on the n800 with a bluetooth GPS.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

It will for sure work.

OS2008 abstracts the two devices.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

OK so sounds like there is interest. I have submitted the mCacher project to Garage which hopefully will be approved.

mCacher is a Python GPS application for Geocaching on the Maemo platform. A Waypoint is entered by Latitude/Longitude. Goto Waypoint provides distance, track and directional arrow to the destination. Arrow indicator is based on direction of travel. Current GPS location may be copied. The currently entered waypoint is saved/restored on application stop/start.

I personally did not have a need to manage/pull in more than one waypoint into mCacher. But it likely would not be too difficult to add.

Assuming the Garage project is approved is anyone willing & able to help get this packaged for NIT (.install or .deb)?

Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Any way to take in the .loc XML file from geocaching.com?

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

OK that was quick, the Garage project has been approved - mcacher. I just need to make a few changes (mCacher icon for Extras) and package this up as a .tar.gz. I will then post out to the project files with instructions to get things going.

Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

cjmonicajr,

I am sure you are working on this fast as you can, I appreciate you doing this.

We are planning on going out geocaching tomorrow. It is supposed to be our first 60f degree day after our second snowiest winter ever. We received 105 inches here in south east Wisconsin it will be nice to get out.

I am wondering if there is any chance that this software will be available by tomorrow morning.

Thanks!

More geocaching related software
 

Hi,

what a coincidence, i have also just written my first geocaching related software. It's a geocaching.com gpx file viewer. See here

It's still under development and currently still lacks some features. While you can already view all the important stuff from the gpx, e.g. the reference bearing and distance is calculated from is fixed. Maemo really eases the development of such stuff as it comes with libgtkhtml and libxml and thus even allows to embed rendered html cache descriptions.

This is written in C with maemo-mapper in mind and i plan to either include this into maemo-mapper so the caches are marked on the map. I am also trying to get this combined with navit and its ability to read garmin maps and hopefully this can be combined with e.g. topographic garmin maps.

Regards,
MoG

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

OK, I have uploaded the initial release of mCacher to the garage project site.

http://mcacher.garage.maemo.org

Note the software requirements and follow the installation instructions. This is a manual install at this point from a .tar.gz archive. You can explode the archive on the NIT or your desktop and ftp the files.

Let me know how things go,
Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

This is great, thanks!

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Maemo Mapper does have a DBUS interface for interaction with it. Details of it are in the dbus-ifc.h file in the source tarball.

Re: More geocaching related software
 

That's great!
It works for me out of the box with a sample gpx-file.
I am not a premium member - but now I think of it !

As a geocacher I would really like to see those funtions like mCacher and gpxviewer ( with gifs, please ;-) to be integrated.

Another little shell program I developed is a script which
can show you a new waypoint caclculated from a given coordinate
and a distance.
That would be nice, too ;-.)

Here's the program:
www.linuxvision.de/dist/dist

or if someone is interested in the C-Source:
www.linuxvision.de/dist/distance.c

---------
>chmod +x dist
>./dist
Please enter latitude, longitude
and degree and distance of new POI:
lat, lon => deg, dist
e.g.: for N 52.818717, E 9.81875 and 90 degree, 67000 metres:
distance 52.818717 9.81875 90 67000
---------
(call with no parameters to geht the help page)


Hope that at some time all these features come to maemo mapper
or are connected via a DBUS connection...

Regards,
asys3

Re: More geocaching related software
 

Ading the DBUS support to mCacher does not look too difficult. If you think you wish to add mCahcer support I could work on the DBUS interface next. I think just a single message "Goto waypoint: name, lat, lon" would do the trick.

Let me know,
Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

All;

Would like to get some feedback on the accuracy of the directional arrow indicator. I am not doing much GPS conditioning on the coordinates. mCacher simply averages two consecutive GPS readings as the current location (the basis for all calculations). It appears there is quite a bit of bounce in GPS readings that is more impactful at slow speeds / short distances. I am considering doing something more elaborate (and allowing the user to select the tracking method).

Thanks,
Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

going tp boston this weekend, if i can get away and do some caching, will post a review on both these little programs.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Hi,

I find it great that there is so much development done for geocaching on the Internet Tablet. OTOH, I feel some projects are reinventing the wheel. There's already two applications that covers the basic needs for Geocaching:
- GeoPOI to convert GPX files to POI databases (Miss the ability to add POI to an existing database but that's an already requested feature)
- Maemo Mapper to display the location of the caches (as POI), the type of caches (using JPG icons for each category), the distance to a cache (with POI context menu) and even the route to the cache.

IME, these two application already make a great team for geocaching. So, even if this new application seems great, I would rather have additional features built into the existing ones, mainly in MM, rather than additional applications that duplicate what these two already do.

So, the big question is: how to build add-ons for MM so Gnuite doesn't have to do all the hard work himself?


Krystan

P.S.: Sorry to be devil advocate here.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Feedback is good. I don't think either of those apps (combined) provide the same approach as mCacher. If they did I would have simply used them. I chose to develop mCacher for myself and posted here to "give back" to the community. If anyone finds this useful then thats great. I do intend to add the DBUS interface.

Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

CJ is right, they're not quite the same things. The GPS display, with an arrow pointing to the destination (I actually prefer to see the distance and direction numbers, not an arrow, but that's just me) is more useful than just seeing it displayed on a map. Both are useful, and having the ability to quickly switch between the two displays would be really nice. Having a satellite photo of the cache location, and the detailed navigation info, on the same device is what lots of people have been looking for, for a long time. Just a little more integration, allowing the logging of the cache, notes, etc into the program would pretty much be the holy grail of caching.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Indeed, I've been tempted to write something myself but not had the opportunity. A simple addition to maemo-mapper to add a direction arrow and distance target would make it even more complete. Maybe it could sit where the satellite information lives?

Although I still intend to try mcacher in the meantime, as it looks ideal for what I want.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

I have posted a new release of mCacher v0.1.1 out on the garage site. This is packaged as a .deb (many thanks to Uwe Koch for the packaging script).

http://mcacher.garage.maemo.org

Also, a major change to tracking (the direction you are walking). Changes in track are damped/slowed to help address GPS drift. I have only tested this a bit, but results look much improved (more stable direction to destination arrow). I am posting this early if anyone wishes to try this over the weekend. The .deb install will coexist with the earlier version so you can try both. The extras mCacher will be the newer .deb version. To run the older version run mcacher.sh from /home/user/mcacher.d.

Next:

Version 0.1.2 - Improved resolution in the direction to destination arrow (currently 36 deg. , double to 18 deg.)

Version 0.1.3 - DBUS support for external apps to initiate mCacher.


Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

I got the dep to install but I had to go into red pill mode and install the python gps manually. Was this to be expected?

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

Yes, that is required for the Python gps packages.

Charlie.

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

field test from boston.

probably not the most accurate field test since it was raining and i was trying to look at the screen, hold the gps face up. and not get every thing too wet.

Mcacher did lock okay, but had very different readings from meamo mapper in term of distance to cache. i had the cache in hand and it was saying 9 miles to go.

now i was in a hurry and was afraid of everything getting totaly wet so this may not be the most accurate test.

as far as functionality, i would have much preferred my waterproof gps. also geocaching with my n800 just seemed klunky.

your mileage may very, especially if you are not getting wet and are afraid of frying your n800.

nrune

Re: mCacher GPS Geocaching - Any Interest?
 

9 Miles? How about 9 ft. Distance measure is reported in Miles for 0.1 miles and >, then switches to feet starting at about 500 ft.