Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, iPhone 101
iPhone 101: Geocaching with an iPhone 3G
Geocaching is a sport / hobby in which you wander about with a GPS and try to find caches, small hidden containers with swag and a logbook inside. One of the first things I looked for in the App Store was a geocaching application that would let me a) look up caches near my present location, b) tell me when I'm getting close, and c) let me log my finds on Geocaching.com.
Well, nothing is available yet. But don't let that stop you from going out and doing a little cache hunting! See how you can go caching with nothing more than an iPhone 3G in your hand after the break.
1) Make sure you have an iPhone 3G. A regular iPhone or iPod touch will not work; you need the Assisted GPS capabilities of the iPhone 3G for this to work. If you don't, please stop reading. Go do something else...
2) If you're not already signed up on Geocaching.com, do it now. You don't need the Premium membership -- just sign up with a free account. It will let you see the latitude and longitude of the caches you're trying to find, which is an absolute necessity. If you want to find out more about geocaching, check out the Getting Started page on Geocaching.com
3) Search for a nearby cache. To do this from the home page of the Geocaching site, just enter a zip code or city, state, or country info (see right side of screenshot below).
4) After you enter your location information, Geocaching.com displays a list of nearby caches (below):
5) Click on one of the cache names. Now you get the info you'll need for your cache hunt:
6) If you're looking this up on your Mac, you might want to print it to PDF and then email it to yourself for easy reference once you're in the field! The Geocaching.com site is easily viewable on iPhone Safari, so you can cache on the go.
What you want to do now is enter that latitude / longitude information into Google Maps -- that's the app that you're going to use to get to your cache. It would be nice if Apple had built copy/paste into the iPhone 2.0 software so you could just drop that stuff into the proper slot in Google Maps, but noooooooo!
Type the lat/long into Google Maps in the Search field. You'll quickly find where the site is, and if you have your iPhone Location Services turned on you can see where YOU are. That's helpful in getting to the cache. If you ask for directions to a cache that's located off of a street (most are), you'll get driving directions to the closest point to the cache (see below):
7) I always like to zoom in as far as I possibly can so I can get a good idea of where the cache is hiding (see below). Once you've pinpointed the location, you just need to follow the hints to find exactly where the cache is. You may need to dig through bushes, poke under yucca, or slosh through mud to find the cache, but that's part of the fun of geocaching. In this case, the cache seems to be near a footbridge...
That's it! With your Assisted GPS turned on (make sure that Wi-Fi is on if you're in a heavily populated area), you'll get about as accurate a reading as you'll get with most of the GPS devices that you normally use for geocaching. When your "blue dot" (your current location) meets up with your "red dot" (the cache), it's time to turn off the phone and start using your eyes.
After you've found the cache, you can take a picture and/or report your find on Geocaching.com -- using your iPhone 3G, of course. If you're a current geocacher, let us know how you think your iPhone 3G works for caching, and if you get started with the hobby as a result of this post, have fun!
After you've found the cache, you can take a picture and/or report your find on Geocaching.com -- using your iPhone 3G, of course. If you're a current geocacher, let us know how you think your iPhone 3G works for caching, and if you get started with the hobby as a result of this post, have fun!
_thumbnail.jpg "Take a stroll down memory lane")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tyrannous said 8:37AM on 7-19-2008
ah! thanks for reminding me about geocaching, sounds like some wandering fun!
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wilbah said 8:41AM on 7-19-2008
This is great fun, and a really cool thing to do with the kiddies....
My sister and I take our families out for this frequently, I'll even check on geo's if I'm traveling to another part of the country just for fun.
I have first gen iPhone, sister wants the 3G simply for this activity alone! As soon as the lines die down she's going to pick one up... it would be great if there were a dedicated app for this!!
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Allister McNulty said 8:55AM on 7-19-2008
To save typing in the lat/long into the iPhone, you could copy/paste it into Google Maps on your Mac/PC, then email the resulting URL to you iPhone email. Then it's just a matter of clicking the link in your email!
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Chris said 1:42PM on 7-19-2008
On the actual cache page, click the Google Maps link and it will open the Google Maps app that came with your iPhone and will drop a pushpin on the coords. Easy shmeezy, no copy/paste needed! I do this from time to time when I don't have my Colorado 300 with me.
Justin Walther said 9:00AM on 7-19-2008
Geocaching is the first thing I thought of when iphone with GPS was announced! My family loves geocaching but it always has to be a pre-planned activity so I can look up and print out/transfer some caches into my garmin. Tough luck if we wanted to explore an area we didn't anticipate visiting.
There is actually a geocaching app in the works...though the developer is having some issues getting it approved:
http://geopherlite.blogspot.com/
--Justin
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Keith McDuffee said 9:08AM on 7-19-2008
Will there ever be (or is there already) a way to download/cache Google maps for areas so it doesn't need to download the maps while you're in the woods? In some places I've gone for Geocaches, there's no cell service, so I can't get the maps at that time.
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Tim said 11:07AM on 7-19-2008
Ummm....how could you go geocaching with the best accuracy being 7m (~21 ft)!! I know I've hunted some down with that, but especially in town micros need more like 2-3 m accuracy. I talked with the G-Spot developers and the best accuracy they ever got was 7 m. Are you all finding different?
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Tyrannous said 11:42AM on 7-19-2008
try harder
Ryan said 12:08PM on 7-19-2008
21 ft. is VERY good accuracy for a GPS. My $400 60CSx gets 19 feet on average, and it's top of the line. It's not hard after you get used to the styles of the hides. Either way, the iPhone seems like a great device to do this with.
TVGenius said 12:10PM on 7-19-2008
I was wondering about that myself. My real GPS typically has an accuracy of within 3-4 feet, assuming no trees or anything to block the signal (which makes desert caching quite easy at times, especially when once you get there -- Look! A pile of rocks just big enough to hide an ammo can!)
And it doesn't seem like the Wi-Fi assisted location would do any good at making it more accurate...
Tim said 12:33PM on 7-19-2008
Point taken. I guess thinking on average, I usually am getting not much better than 4-6 meters, so 7 wouldn't be bad and very much possible. I hope someone comes up with a good app for geocaching with the iPhone, at least a paperless app that lets us manage data for it while out searching.
Ryan, I've been in accuracy contests and seen many a low end Garmins beat out 60CSxs, so the accuracy doesnot increase with model, its just features that make using it easier.
Cycomachead said 4:14PM on 7-19-2008
3-4 ft accuracy? GPS's aren't supposed to be more accurate than 10ft or 3m according to the US Gov. though that doesn't mean it's not possible.
A-GPS (or assisted GPS) can't make use of WiFi. The Skyhook service that Apple uses can sometimes get you close, but not as accurate as GPS.
Also to the author: Don't tell people to stop reading the article if the don't have an iPhone 3G. It was a good piece of work. And you might be able to get close (not as close as GPS) using WiFi positioning on a 2G iPhone, but it depends on the area. I've gone Geocaching w/o a GPS and it's kinda fun.
Jack Montana said 4:59PM on 7-19-2008
@cycomachead Ummm....no. I don't know who in the "US Gov." you've talked to, but they're not right. As someone who deals with high-precision GPS devices for a living, I can testify to the fact that much, much higher accuracies are attainable... even with the government's consent! SA (selective availability) was turned off a long time ago. All you have to do is have a map-grade (sub meter) or higher quality GPS receiver and sub centimeter (not a misprint) accuracies are available. It'd be a hell of trick to use GPS for surveying if you couldn't get closer than 3m! Survey and map-grade receivers make use of ground stations which transmit correction codes via radio to improve their accuracy (some "civilian" units can also take advantage of this system).
The more you know.
Cags said 11:56AM on 7-19-2008
At the least, I'd like a paperless caching app. PQView is OK, but doesn't work when you are out of cell/wifi range. Last time I checked, there's no wifi hotspots in the wild.
I use Cacheberry on my Blackberry and it's fantastic. I wish we had a similar app on the iPhone.
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Tim said 12:33PM on 7-19-2008
there is a maps offline app on a jailbroken phone, but that's a good point that a geocaching app would need to implement; I really think Garmin needs to put out an app for the iPhone
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Justin Walther said 12:44PM on 7-19-2008
I read on another forum a handy trick for getting the GPS coordinates into google maps. Instead of remembering the digits and typing them into google maps (grr...no copy/paste), on each cache's page, below the description but above the logs, on the left-hand side you'll find a section titled For Online Maps... and below that there is a link straight to google maps. Click on that link with your iphone and it takes you to the Google Maps app with the cache already pinned for you.
We still need a dedicated app to help locate caches close to our location with ease and also give some sense of distance to the cache....but this does make the process a little easier.
--Justin
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branden said 2:34PM on 7-19-2008
I've written an app that gets your current location and displays the nearby caches from geocaching.com. I wasn't sure how much interest there would be in me putting that in the app store. You guys interested?
Gilbert Tang said 2:53PM on 7-19-2008
I really want to thank you for writing this article. Geocaching is one of the main reasons why I am justifying a 3G, whose additional capabilities are less important to me a compared to the original iPhone with 2.0 software.
For those of you who've never done it, Geocaching is one of the most fun little adventures you can go on. It's like a treasure hunt for tech-geeks.
Of course, you also have to dig being outdoors and hiking (unless it's an Urban Cache); but that's part of what's so great about it: you still get to play with gadgets, only you're getting the exercise and fulfillment you would have otherwise forewent if you stayed inside.
Again, thanks for this post.
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Jon said 3:20PM on 7-19-2008
Another good tip I read: On your mac before you go, you can make a group in your contacts for geocaches, then make a new contact for each geocache you want to store. Just past the long/lat in for the address, and your iPhone should be able to map it.
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Jim said 3:45PM on 7-19-2008
What a great post. I'm absolutely doing this tomorrow - there's a cache hidden just less than a mile from my flat.
Thanks!
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