Here's an avid geocacher clamoring for this feature!

Word is starting to get out about this service in the geocaching community but it will never catch on as long as GPX import/export support is not there.

In particular we need an interface with the products called GPSBabel and Cachemate. With these, geocachers download cache descriptions from listing services in .loc and/or .gpx formats, then load that data into GPS and Palm devices.

Being able to put these geocache locations on your Earthcomber maps would be fantastic, epscially if we could transfer these points between Cachemate and Earthcomber (Cachemate already has an import/export feature via palm memos).

Thanks and I look forward to seeing this feature!

We don't yet have full GPX integration, but we do have the beginnings in place.

The latest Earthcomber Updater (v2.1.6, available for download at left) contains an undocumented feature that allows you to upload a GPX file to your personal location Inbox in Earthcomber Community (the "my inbox" link at left).

From the Inbox you can move the locations into any groups that you are subscribed to. And once in groups, other group members can download the locations to their device using Earthcomber Updater (you can then find them on the map by selecting the My Groups look list).

Please understand, this feature is technically "undocumented", and not yet supported. So use at your own risk.

How it works:

• WINDOWS: Make a copy of your GPX file -- give it the name "Import.gpx" -- and place it into your Palm user folder, then press Get Updates on Earthcomber Updater. Updater should then silently move these locations into your location Inbox. (NOTE: Your Palm user folder is usually located in c:\program files\palm\yournamehere.)
• MAC and LINUX: Start Earthcomber Updater and press ALT-I to bring up the import dialog. Browse for your GPX file in this dialog, and click OK. Then perform Get Updates as above.

Couple notes:

1. Windows is supposed to have the import dialog, too, but it has a bug -- so I wrote up the manual workaround.
2. After an update, the Import.gpx file will still be there -- and will be uploaded again and again to your location Inbox with every Get Updates. So after you perform an upload, confirm that the locations made it to the web, and remove the Import.gpx file from that folder.
3. Mac hasn't really been tested. So we're not sure if it works there or not.
4. I'm not sure which GPX fields get mapped to corresponding Earthcomber fields. So you might find that some of the GPX info doesn't appear in the Earthcomber location listings.

Like I said, this is not yet a supported feature -- so I probably can't offer much help beyond what I just wrote. But perhaps you'd find it useful, even in its current form. If we make a decision to put GPX import/export into active development, however, we'll want beta testers -- maybe you'd be willing to help?

Thanks for your comments. Please let me know if there is any other way I can assist you.

Kind Regards,

Chris Dunworth
Earthcomber Support

Until a better integration comes along I'll work with this a bit and see how it goes.

Thanks!

OK, I downloaded the new version of the updater and did some poking around. Do I need to get the GPX file on my handheld device somehow for the updater to see it to trasnfer it to the inbox?

Thanks

Do I need to get the GPX file on my handheld device somehow for the updater to see it to trasnfer it to the inbox?

No. The GPX file should be on the computer where you installed Updater. Updater will move it to your location Inbox when you press Get Updates -- the handheld doesn't even get involved. The only issue is to make sure Updater can find the file beforehand (the "How it works:" bullet points I wrote tried to explain what you must do).

Once in your Inbox, you can move those locations to groups -- and then download them to the handheld in Earthcomber format (using Updater).

Sorry for the confusion. I hope this was clearer.

Regards,

Chris Dunworth
Earthcomber Support

OK, I re-read your instructions and got all that figured out, but considering the number of caches involved, this process is incredibly tedious and NOT something I'd want to do very often. It also pointed out some shortcomings in dealing with items in the inbox and group. I only deal with 150-250 caches (locations in Earthcomber parlance) at a time. It is not at all unusual for geocachers to need to manipulate hundreds or even a couple of thousand at a time.

In both cases, a batch delete fundtion as wella s a delete all function is badly needed. IN the cases of the inbox, only be able to move 10 at a time is terribly insufficient. There should be an option to move more and there most definitely be an option to move all. Also, there is a problem with, when moveing entries form the inbox into groups, of creating duplicate locations. There should be an option to replace same-named locations. As it is, I unknowingly did a 2nd batch of locations, then had to go back and delete, 1-by-1, over 250 locations!

This all gets compunded by the fact that this location data changes at least once per week (by my method - others get new data daily). If I were to attempt to refresh this data, I'd have to go through and manually delete everything again before restarting this whole process.

The bottom line, I guess, is that there needs to be a smooth way to handle the importation and maintenance of large amounts of GPX data for this to ever become a viable tool for geocachers and other outdoor enthusiasts.

PLEASE let me know when you have something in place that can be tested that begins to meet these criteria.

Thanks!

First, please disregard my last forum post, since you clearly got past your problem (I must have been writing that the same time you were writing this).

Second, thanks for all this great feedback -- your comments were right on the mark. We're definitely aware that the Community area needs improvement in the management of large sets of locations, and your experiences have highlighted several of the areas we should focus on.

As to addressing the specific needs of geocachers -- I think we need a longer dialog to really figure that out (your post was a very helpful starting point). So let me ask you this: is there a geocaching website or two that does a really good job of managing caches, in your estimation? Perhaps there are ideas we can borrow from them. I'd like to do some investigating.

Also, there might be other ways to support geocachers that wouldn't involve server round-trips and community group management (e.g. directly displaying contents of a GPX file on the handheld). So there's another possibility to consider.

We definitely appreciate your willingness to help, and I hope that we can start to address some of these issues soon.

Kind regards,
Chris

Wow! Thanks for the quick and thorough responses!

For geocaching sites, the biggest player is geocaching.com. There are others (terrcaching.com, navicache.com, and others), but none are as large and comprehensive as this one. But to be clear, geocaching sites are really just listing services. That is to say, their main function is to maintain cache descriptions and make that information available to cachers. How cachers get and use that information vary from site to site, but most of them rely heavily on either .gpx or .loc file formats. .gpx is favored by the more serious cachers because of the amount of information imbedded in that format compared to .loc data.

There are also a number of utilities used to retreive, store, manage, convert, and report on GPX and/or LOC data. Probably the most commonly used are

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) (a comprehensive geocache management tool with embedded data conversion using GPSBabel)
http://www.gsak.net

Cachemate (a Palm-based application for storing geocache information obtained from GSAK or other conversion tools)
http://www.smittyware.com/palm/cachemate/

GPSBabel (the premier GPX data conversion tool used stand-alne or internally by GSAK)
http://www.gpsbabel.org/

The best starting point for me personally and geocachers in general would probably be to make a conversion interface for GPSBabel. This would then also enable GSAK users to Convert the data of their choice directly form their primary waypoint management tool.

On a side note, GSAK has a macro scripting language that can execute external programs, so if there is a conversion tool, then perhaps users can then execute a macro to execute an Earthcomber kernel program of some type that would then upload that converted data to a GPX storage space for later download.

But then I have to ask why spend all that time bouncing up and down to the Earthcomber servers when the file could be written to the user's local disk and a slight change in the ECU program could give a config option for a working director for local "spots" files and how to handle them. If anything is found in that directory then it is loaded into the Earthcomber on the palm directly from the local disk and then, at the users option, deleted form that work directory.

Yet another side note :) - The GPX data we use is FULL of vry usefull information, so as this progresses we probably should talk about how to incorporate that into the sot's description/info data feilds.

Does any of that help?

Thanks again for your interest in moveing this forward!

Here are my 2 cents:

There really needs to be following features for waypoint management, especially considering the rise of Google Maps and GPS usage:

1) Batch import of GPX data into Earthcomber
2) Batch delete of waypoints/locations from Earthcomber
3) Export of GPX data from Earthcomber
4) Ways to filter/selectively display different waypoints
5) Ways to have hyperlinks setup to display more info for a waypoint. this hyperlink could be local (offline) or online.

All of this could be handled using a waypoint manager program that exists separate to the main Earthcomber application.

Then other geocaching-specific tools (like GPSBabel, GSAK, GPX Spinner) can generate the waypoints to meet the Earthcomber waypoint database requirements.

This is needed in any case given that ultimately (in my opinion), the cell phone, PDA and GPS are heading toward becoming a single unit.

Regards,

Dan (geoaching name=inspectorgadget)

tsqtx and redxeth --

Thanks for this input -- great stuff. It sounds like maybe a utility that converts waypoints between GPX and Earthcomber PDB's (and possibly back again) could be the bridge that makes integration with cacheing sites happen. We'll have to do some investigation on our end to see what's involved.

Thanks for the links to the cacheing sites. I'll have to dig into that -- but unfortunately I leave on vacation this week (well, not unfortunate for me ;-). But my point is, this is on my plate, so it will probably sit fallow for a short while. But if you think of anything else in the interim, I'm more than happy to pick this up when I return.

Thanks again for the input. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help.

Regards,
Chris

The GPX Import of the Earthcomber Updater should be fully implemented. Just press "Alt-I" from the Main Screen and select the GPX file.

Also, we have improved our Inbox management with regards to mass deleting of locations. The Inbox now lists 25 locations per page and allows you to select them all and delete them all quickly.

Give it a go.

Sincerely,
Randy Wilson

You can now export GPX (and Google Earth/Keyhole) files from your Inbox and from your Groups.

In your Inbox, you'll find the export links below the list of locations.

In your groups, you'll find an export below the list of locations on the Group's main page.

Sincerely,
Randy Wilson
Earthcomber Support

225 max locations? That's all I'm able to upload via GPX it seems, at that point I get a failure from the ECU that "Failed to send all spots, check your inbox in Earthcomber Community to see what's missing".

I always have 4 full pages (200) and a fifth page with 25 on it, seems like there's a 225 limit?

As said above, some of us geocachers have thousands in at a time. Personally I'd be happy with 1000, for now anyway. :)

I'm also wondering about maintenance (ie: I update the list, will I get a lot of duplicates?) but we'll see as I get there.

I've been away for a while to give this time to develop. Apparently progress has been made, but there is still a ways to go before it is truly useful for "power-cachers."

For instance, right now I have almost 600 caches in my active data base and I'm not even one of those "power cachers!" A limit anywhere under 1000 is not going to fly at all.

The maintenance question is not only valid bu absolutely essential. If I load 542 waypoints, then come along with a new GPX file and load 572 (485 of which are duplicates) will the 485 overwrite the previously loaded? Will they duplicate them? How about a way tyo simply replace the entire Inbox in favor of my new upload?

These issues, at a minimum, must be addressed before this becomes a tool of choice for cachers.

Looking at the code, it looks like there shouldn't be a limit. I was able to upload 1193 locations from a GPX file. If you have an example GPX file that causes only 225 to go in, can you send it to support at earthcomber.com? If this happens on multiple files, then the problem might not be what I'm thinking it is. However, my initial guess is that I'm not handling something correctly in your GPX file.

P.S. I also upped the # of locations you can see per page in your inbox to 250. This makes moving a large amount of them much easier.

Sincerely,
Randy Wilson
Earthcomber Support

I think what was really happening is duplicate spots give the "could not upload" error. Now that I have my GPX files sorted out better I rarely see this.

EC is a great suppliment for GeoCaching. :)

I'll test some duplicate spots and see if I can prevent it from quitting when this occurs.

Thanks for the compliments and feedback.

Sincerely,
Randy Wilson
Earthcomber Support