Paperless Caching here we come!

Well, we didn't get out Caching last night either! schnarff just wasn't in the mood!

The landfill near work has been on fire since Sunday, and today the wind changed direction, so we all got sent home as the smoke was acrid and horrible! Riding home I was listening to some of the very first PodCacher shows - yep, I'm addicted!

One of them was all about Paperless Caching - which apparently someone had been trying to convince Scab C about at the Swindon Event. I had imagined that one needed a LIVE PDA or PocketPC, and actually went online to the Geocaching.com website! After listening to the show it became obvious it was simply a matter of having an electronic copy of the Cache details instead of a hard copy on paper!

Having an eTrex Vista Cx, I already upload waypoints directly, rather than typing them in, but I had been copying out the Cache details into Word, rather than just printing out page after page - to save some trees! The next step was to get the Cache details electronically too! schnarff has an old Palm that someone at work gave her (in exchange for one of our spare pairs of motorbike gloves for his wife!) but it's never been setup to download e-mails and all the really funcky stuff PDA's can do! I hauled it out and got it connected to the laptop.

Popped onto the PodCacher site for the details of the Palm program they use - CacheMate. It said it was $8, and I wasn't even sure it would work, but it turned out I could download it for free, with limited functionality - perfect! Now to upload some Caches! To get it all automatically, you gotta be a Premium Member, and we're not, so I asked Scab C to do a Pocket Query and send it to me.

Meantime I converted & uploaded a .loc file (what Geocaching.com uploads onto my GPS). This worked fine, but all it gives is the details you get on the GPS - name, waypoint & co-ords. I had spotted a 'memo template' on the CacheMate site and spent a while finding out what this was all about.

Turns out you can create Memos on the PC, HotSync to the Palm and then import into CacheMate - Bingo! Now I can get an electronic copy of the Cache details as easily as I could create the Word docs I was previously using!

This is awesome! Not only does it save paper (and ink, and therefore £!), but it also means we can take encrypted clues with us, as CacheMate has a funky little app to decrypt on the trail! Additionally it can search its own database for nearest Caches - awesome!

The only downside I can see is that we have the same battery issue out in the field with the Palm as we do with the GPS...but no spares for the Palm! :(

Still want to try out the Premium GPX files, I may finally be convinced to fork out for membership! Also need to learn how to store Cache details on a memory card, as the hard drive of the Palm is pretty limited!

Can't wait to try out Paperless Caching for real! Aren't we just the techy queens!!! In reality we should be able to store as many sets of details on the Palm as we can Cache waypoints in the GPS - no more need to decide which Caches we want to print off in advance - just upload the closest 100!!!