Re: [Gpsbabel-misc] Geocaching - would be nice

[Mont E. <mon...@ya...>]

I've got to agree with Robert here.  The $3 a month
for membership (or $30 a year) is worth it just in
hassle and mental well being costs alone.  

In the beginning, when my eyes were big and my
patience was long, I started writing Perl scripts to
log into the Geocaching web site and do, basically,
what Steve has described.  Unfortunately I have no
control over the changes that are made to their web
site, and every little change to it thus broke the
script.  Sometimes I think it was intentional.

In the end I scrapped the whole LWP::Useragent and
HTTP::Cookies stuff and paid the $3.  I then download
GPX Spinner (http://www.gpxspinner.com).  It, like
GPSBabel is both free and useful.  I don't, however,
understand why you can't get the source (it's seems to
be Perl) for GPX Spinner so that non Windows kids can
play too.  That's, I guess, is a conversation for
another day.  Bottom line my net happiness went up by
+5 and hair loss went down a bit.

For anyone who does use Perl and has their PQ's
delivered to a POP accessible e-mail address, I have a
configurable script that automates the download,
cleaning of duplicate e-mails, decompression, Babeling
to other formats, and Spinning of your GPX files. 
Maybe some day I'll be happy enough with it that I'll
make an official project but, in the mean time, if you
are interested drop me a note and I'll be glad to send
it along.

Good luck Steve.  Hope this helps.

--- Robert Lipe <rob...@us...> wrote:
> steve rodriquez wrote:
> 
> > I have a suggestion on the S/W to help on taking
> info from Geocaching.com and uploaded to the GPS.
> > 
> > To upload the Geocaches in my area I did the
> following:
> > - I did individual searches on traditional, multi,
> unknown, .. geocahces in my area on Geocache.com,
> selected "check all" and downloaded the .loc file
> using the following naming convention:
> 
> The key problem is that the geocaching.loc files
> that are hocked up for
> free simply don't contain this information.
> 
> The good news is that GPSBabel can actually do
> better than that already
> and it's fully automated.
> 
> The bad news is that it works best with GPX files
> with the groundspeak
> extensions, which means you have to be a charter
> member at geocahing to
> get this.
> 
> When faced with an input GPX file that has the
> needed information, such
> as:
> 
> <name>robertlipe-MiddleTN</name>
>   <wpt lat="35.743950" lon="-86.758067">
>   <name>GCGNGG</name>
>   <url>86229.html</url>
>   <desc><![CDATA[Left Turn Clyde]]></desc>
>   <time>2003-08-16T00:00:00</time>
>   <groundspeak:type>Traditional
> cache</groundspeak:type>
>   <groundspeak:difficulty>1</groundspeak:difficulty>
>   <groundspeak:terrain>1.5</groundspeak:terrain>
>  
> <groundspeak:container>Micro</groundspeak:container>
>   </wpt>
> 
> and you output that either straight to your receiver
> (garmin or
> magellan) or to one of their mapping programs
> (mapsend or mapsource) you
> will get a waypoint that has an icon that indicates
> it's a Micro.  For
> Magellans, it's one that looks like a film canister
> and the waypoint
> name will contain the difficulty, the terrain, as
> much of the full name
> as will fit which is the whole thing in this case. 
> Add the -s flag and
> the GC name itself gets replaced with "LeftTrnC". 
> The specifics do vary
> between receivers and file formats, but you get the
> idea.
> 
> GPXSpinner (available only for Windows) will do
> similar tricks and has
> more knobs you can control on the naming.  But it,
> too, wants to see GPX
> input as the cache types is simply not in the .loc
> data.
> 
> > What would be "really" nice is if all these steps
> could be automated,
> > so the only tedious thing becomes downloading all
> the individual pages
> > from Geocache.com.
> 
> Become a charter member.  It's really worth it. :-)
> 
> RJL
> 
> 
>
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