If you’re like me – you hate typing in all those coordinates for geocaches into your handheld GPS unit. It’s such a bother, which is why we decided to purchase the Magellan Explorist 500. Simply hook up your unit to your computer with the USB cable, run the conversion software and presto, all your geocaches are stored to your unit.
But the next problem I came across was the fact that Geocaching.com only gives you 20 caches per page on their website.
So if you search for caches within 25 miles of zip code 75165, there are 320 caches, but only 20 per page. And unless you’re a premium member, that means you’re going to have to download page of 20 caches individually and then upload the files to your GPS unit one by one.
You can download Easy GPS Companion, which does a fair job of combining the files into one .loc file. But occasionally it makes an error and your files get corrupted.
I found a hack that allows you combine all your .loc files into one that so far has worked every time.
.Loc files are really nothing more than XML files, or fancy text files.
Each file starts with two similar lines:
And the files end with:
I played around with the files and sure enough my theory proved to be right.
The individual caches are included within the Waypoint tags…
So if you’d like to combine multiple .Loc files here’s all you need to do.
Step 1:
Download the .Loc files (that may be a given – but you never know) by selecting Download Waypoints on the Geocache.com page
Step 2:
Open a blank text document in notepad, wordpad or your favorite text editor
Step 3:
Paste the following at the top of the file:
Step 4:
Open the first downloaded .Loc file and copy everything between the opening two lines (above) and the last tag, . Basically everything between the first Waypoint tag and the last one.
Step 5:
Paste what you just copied into your new text document
Step 6:
Repeat steps 4 and five again with each .Loc file you have. Be sure you’re copying everything from the first Waypoint tag to the last closing waypoint tag
Step 7:
Add the ending loc tag to the new file with all your combined waypoints.
Step 8:
Save the new text file as an .loc file and then use your normal procedures for converting it and uploading the file to your GPS unit.
Step 9:
You’re all done. Enjoy the ease of 40 or more geocaches in one file and enjoy the hunt.
Drop me a comment if you have any questions.
If you use gpsbabel, you can easily merge all .loc files on the command line.
gpsbabel -i loc -f hold.loc -f FILENAME.loc -o loc -F hold.loc
rename the first downloaded .loc file to hold.loc and run the above line for each additional .loc file.
When you are done,
gpsbabel -i loc -f hold.loc -o magellanx -F caches.gs
copy the caches.gs file to the geocaches directory on the gpsr and you are set!
(Note, there is a maximum of 200 caches in a .gs file. the magellan explorist won’t read more than that.)
If you use gpsbabel, you can easily merge all .loc files on the command line.
gpsbabel -i loc -f hold.loc -f FILENAME.loc -o loc -F hold.loc
rename the first downloaded .loc file to hold.loc and run the above line for each additional .loc file.
When you are done,
gpsbabel -i loc -f hold.loc -o magellanx -F caches.gs
copy the caches.gs file to the geocaches directory on the gpsr and you are set!
(Note, there is a maximum of 200 caches in a .gs file. the magellan explorist won’t read more than that.)
It worked, thanks !
Great! Glad I could help!