{"id":2849,"date":"2007-08-29T20:58:33","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T02:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=2849"},"modified":"2009-08-26T14:39:47","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T19:39:47","slug":"so-you-want-to-merge-all-those-waypointsgeocaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/so-you-want-to-merge-all-those-waypointsgeocaches\/","title":{"rendered":"So you want to merge all those waypoints\/geocaches?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=malesurvival&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=B0007RPW2C&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" align=right><\/iframe>If you&#8217;re like me &#8211; you hate typing in all those coordinates for geocaches into your handheld GPS unit. It&#8217;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.<br \/>\nBut the next problem I came across was the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geocaching.com\">Geocaching.com<\/a> only gives you 20 caches per page on their website.<br \/>\nSo if you search for caches within 25 miles of zip code 75165, there are 320 caches, but only 20 per page. And unless you&#8217;re a premium member, that means you&#8217;re going to have to download page of 20 caches individually and then upload the files to your GPS unit one by one.<br \/>\nYou 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.<!--more--><br \/>\nI found a hack that allows you combine all your .loc files into one that so far has worked every time.<br \/>\n.Loc files are really nothing more than XML files, or fancy text files.<br \/>\nEach file starts with two similar lines:<br \/>\n<textarea rows=\"2\" cols=\"50\"><br \/>\n<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><br \/>\n<loc version=\"1.0\" src=\"Groundspeak<\/textarea><br \/>\nAnd the files end with:<textarea rows=\"1\" cols=\"50\"><\/loc><\/textarea><br \/>\nI played around with the files and sure enough my theory proved to be right.<br \/>\nThe individual caches are included within the Waypoint tags&#8230;<br \/>\n<textarea rows=\"6\" cols=\"50\"><waypoint><name id=\"GCZ6TM\"><![CDATA[138KV Cache by beeya]]><\/name><coord lat=\"32.611017\" lon=\"-96.868017\"\/><type>Geocache<\/type><link text=\"Cache Details\">http:\/\/www.geocaching.com\/seek\/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCZ6TM<\/link>\n<\/waypoint><\/textarea><br \/>\nSo if you&#8217;d like to combine multiple .Loc files here&#8217;s all you need to do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 1:<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.geocaching.com\/seek\/nearest.aspx?zip=75165&#038;dist=25\">Download the .Loc files<\/a> (that may be a given &#8211; but you never know) by selecting Download Waypoints on the Geocache.com page<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 2:<\/strong><br \/>\nOpen a blank text document in notepad, wordpad or your favorite text editor<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 3:<\/strong><br \/>\nPaste the following at the top of the file:<textarea rows=\"2\" cols=\"50\"><?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><loc version=\"1.0\" src=\"Groundspeak\"><\/textarea><\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 4:<\/strong><br \/>\nOpen the first downloaded .Loc file and copy everything between the opening two lines (above) and the last tag, <textarea rows=\"1\" cols=\"50\"><\/loc><\/textarea>. Basically everything between the first Waypoint tag and the last one.<textarea rows=\"1\" cols=\"50\"><Waypoint> &#038; <\/waypoint><\/textarea><\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 5:<\/strong><br \/>\nPaste what you just copied into your new text document<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 6:<\/strong><br \/>\nRepeat steps 4 and five again with each .Loc file you have. Be sure you&#8217;re copying everything from the first Waypoint tag to the last closing waypoint tag<textarea rows=\"1\" cols=\"50\"><Waypoint> &#038; <\/waypoint><\/textarea><\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 7:<\/strong><br \/>\nAdd the ending loc tag to the new file with all your combined waypoints.<br \/>\n<textarea rows=\"1\" cols=\"50\"><\/loc><\/textarea><\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 8:<\/strong><br \/>\nSave 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 9:<\/strong><br \/>\nYou&#8217;re all done. Enjoy the ease of 40 or more geocaches in one file and enjoy the hunt.<\/p>\n<p>Drop me a comment if you have any questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re like me &#8211; you hate typing in all those coordinates for geocaches into your handheld GPS unit. It&#8217;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 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/so-you-want-to-merge-all-those-waypointsgeocaches\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">So you want to merge all those waypoints\/geocaches?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,3,12],"tags":[869,27,871,870],"class_list":["post-2849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-hacks","category-misc","category-techno","tag-geocache","tag-geocaching","tag-loc-file","tag-waypoints"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-JX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}