G'day silvermountain,

I've been using a N810 for geocaching for about a year now; once you get yourself set up, it's a great tool for the job. Just don't drop it in a puddle!

To answer your questions:
- I use Google's maps. Before I go out, I fire up Maemo Mapper and just drag the screen over the area I want to visit; the maps get downloaded over my home WiFi link, and saved onto the MicroSD card in the N810. When I'm out, I can start up Maemo Mapper and all the maps are there. As you probably know, Google Maps come in a variety of resolutions, and you only want to download maps in 1 or 2 resolutions or you'll fill up your MicroSD card. Here in Australia, I'm using the "zoom=6" and "zoom=8" maps; one gets me to the general area, and the other lets me zoom in to get a greater level of detail. However, we're generally out caching in the bush here, where there may be only 1 road stretching for 30 miles between caches; it's probably different where you are, so you really need to use trial and error to see what works for you
- I download .gpx files from the geocaching.com site. To view them in Maemo Mapper, you need to first filter out all of the log entries in the .gpx file; if you don't do this, they won't load properly. Once you've done this, I start Maemo Mapper, and load in the .gpx file as a POI (Points Of Interest) file - the cache locations then show up as purple dots in Maemo Mapper
- I've found the N810's GPS to be extremely reliable (in fact, it does a better job than one of our dedicated Garmin units), but the battery life isn't great. I think I probably get about 4-5 hours before the batteries go flat, so I've got a Nokia charger set up in the car. When we finish a cache, I get into the car, hook the N810 to the charger, then go on to the next cache

To filter the log entries out of the .gpx file, I wrote a Ruby program which can run on either the N810 or on a PC. I had to download Ruby onto the N810 to get it to work, which was a bit painful; however, it can be done if you can find the Ruby installer for the N810 (sorry, I don't have the URL). If you want a copy of this program, let me know - it's pretty clunky, but works reliably and can strip the log entries from a .gpx file containing hundreds of cache entries within a few minutes. If you want to go out tomorrow, I'd suggest downloading a .gpx file for just a few caches, then deleting the <log> entries using something like Notepad. It's a bit trial and error, but you'll know you've got it working when you can load and see the caches within Maemo Mapper.

Finally, my boys are 11 and 12, and geocaching is one of the few remaining activities that we all enjoy doing as a family. My older boy would otherwise be out kicking a ball around, and my younger boy would play with his DS or be on the Internet - geocaching is one of the activities that just seems to work for all of us, all the time. Good luck, and I hope you have as much fun with it as we do.

If you want to communicate with me on geocaching.com about any of this, our caching name is "monch's mob".

Regards

David aka monch1962