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!

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Source: http://www.geocaching.com/

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Odds and ends iPhone iPhone 101

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...

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Steve

There is a great new App for the Apple iPhone called iMarkMySpot that does exactly what you need: it captures GPS locations and directly stores into a GPX file on the iPhone, which can then be emailed to any email account. Go to iTunes and then the App store, and search for "iMarkMySpot"

I've been using it, and it is a blast.

September 10 2008 at 4:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brent

IMO, the accuracy of the GPS on the 3G is not up to snuff for Geocaching. I've taken my Vista HCx out with my 3G for some comparisons, and I'm simply not satisfied with iPhones GPS performance. (although it work great for getting me around town or looking up a close restaraunt)
I am looking forward to some ebook apps that work with pocket queries for spinner/plucker on the iPhone, but I'm going to stick with my tried and true Garmin to get me to the cache.

September 02 2008 at 3:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris Hattan

What format should you be entering the Co-ords.
GC.com uses WG 84.
Theseformats listed appear be have differrent decimal places.
Chris
NZ

July 31 2008 at 6:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

GeoHunt Canada

Agreed that geocaching is an awesome outdoor activity. I've recently just started it this spring and am having a good time. I initially thought the girlfriend was going to think I was some super nerd when I first told her about it, but she now enjoys coming out with me and trying to find the little hidden treasures as well! http://www.geohunt.ca

July 31 2008 at 3:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kris

@ Jack Montana - those sub-centimetre accuracies are only available in North America. WAAS signals are broadcast over the western hemisphere but are useless, for instance, in the UK.

July 24 2008 at 12:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rob

Not sure if anyone pointed this out... I'm pretty sure there may be an easy way to mass convert all the GPS coordinates in a GPX file to VCF format. In other words, create address book entries for each of the caches and plot those on the map.

July 22 2008 at 12:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Fox Tucker

WTF? Nothing better to do with your time? Go save the planet, help out in a homeless shelter, clean up your neighborhood. Crikey! Just go play ball with your kids, friends or dog.

July 21 2008 at 4:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Cizek

Sorry for non-iPhone post here: geocaching on usual phone with java and bluetooth GPS or internal gps:

http://www.locify.com

(nearest caches from here, hints, decrypt, ...).

We are preparing iPhone version of Locify and Geocaching will be there!

July 21 2008 at 12:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ldkaplan

I think the iPhone GPS will do just fine. If someone needs a GPS that tells you within feet, then I think that person may be too reliant on the tool.

Some great comments here. I like the idea of using contacts for caches.

Has anyone looked at G-Spot? I have not downloaded yet:
http://ageekspot.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/g-spot-info-iphone-compass-get-your-mind-outta-the-gutter/

July 21 2008 at 11:17 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

SAM

I'I'm not sure the ol' Iphone will hold up in the woods for too long

July 21 2008 at 8:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply