Google Earth

[GonzoHiker]

I've downloaded and playing around with gsak. I've got Google maps working and added a tollbar button for it. This is very helpfull.

 

Is there anyway to have gsak call up Google Earth and pass the current waypoint to it? This would be nice as you can zoom the images more with Google Earth than you can with the web interface. Also the layers can add points of reference to make navigating easier.

 

Thanks.

[PercyKittenz]

First, for those who haven't heard about it yet, Google Earth is new software that was released for beta test for Windows PCs. A free version is available http://earth.google.com that will do everything described below. More information about it can be found at that site.

 

I got Google Earth working great for Geocaching - and without having to pay for the $20 GPS compatable version, though I may do this eventually. Because Google Earth is using the GPSBabel engine, the same one that runs under GSAK, it can read both LOC and GPX files. Now, you can't automatically sync up Google Earth to GSAK and have it update your caches, but you can import them with a very small amount of work and without dropping a dime. Here are the two methods I used to get Google Earth Geocache ready:

 

1. Okay, so assuming you've installed Google Earth and you've got a nice database of Geocaches built up in GSAK. Open them both. Go to GSAK and go to the File menu and click Export > GPX/LOC file.

2. We first want to sync up all the caches we've accumulated so far. Make sure that GPX is selected in the first field and both boxes to the right are checked. Further to the right, under Waypoint Name, change the field to %Name if you'd prefer that the waypoints had the names of the caches instead of the codes and change the number of Maximum Characters to something larger, around 64 or so.

3. Under where it says File Name to Create, put in the path of someplace temporary, like your desktop and give the file a name. It doesn't matter what, so long as you can locate it. Click Generate and you'll have a new .GPX file somewhere that has all your caches backed up to it.

4. Open Google Earth so that you can still see the file and drag it from its location on the desktop or wherever you put it into the "Places" field on the left side of Google Earth, under where it says Temporary Places. You can delete the .GPX file after this.

5. Now you've got all your caches imported, but it's pretty messy, so it should be organized a bit. Make some new folders under My Places for your caches by right clicking on My Places and going to New > Folder. Have one folder for caches you haven't found, one for caches you have found and maybe one for caches that have been archived. You can now move each cache one at a time from the imported folder in Temporary Places to their permanent home in the new folders. Remember that Temporary Places will be deleted whenever you close Google Maps so make sure that you've copied over all the caches you want to save.

6. There are some extra things you can do to make caching easier. Even though you've organized your caches into Not Found and Found folders, it can get messy if you're looking at all of them. I changed the icons of all the ones I've found so far as well to the gray version of the default icon. Also, when you click on the blue hyperlinked name of the cache in your Places list, it'll pop up a word balloon that very conveniently has the geocaching.com website hyperlinked so that you can click it and bring up the cache in the browser that's built into Google Earth! If you want to save screen space or don't like the browser that's built in, you can change it to open a new window in your default browser by going to the Tools > Options menu in Google Earth and then clicking the Preferences tab and checking the box "Show web results in external browser.

 

Okay, now you've got all your cache data imported. Great! What about adding new caches? So far, it seems like Google Earth doesn't bother with overwriting files or folders of the same name, so by doing the above steps every time you add a cache, you're going to make a mess. Plus, that was a lot of extra work. Importing a single cache is easier, though! Here's all you have to do.

 

1. Visit the cache page on Geocaching.com. You know where you click to download the .loc or .gpx file near the top of the page? If you're using GSAK anyway, you probably know all about it. Click on it, but instead of opening it in GSAK, save it to the desktop or someplace.

2. From there you can drag it into Google Earth the same way as above. If you're using .LOC files, it'll have the code instead of the name, but all of the other data such as the URL will still be there. Right click on the cache and select Edit to change the name to the actual cache's name if you prefer that.

 

There are a lot of great uses for Google Earth for the Geocacher. I'm so glad that they've released such a fantastic product for free. For one thing, it makes plotting a route to maximize your finds so easy, and gives you some idea of what trouble you'll be getting into that looking at a normal map won't tell you. It even makes geocaching possible, though my no means easier, to do if you can't afford or don't have a GPSr. And that doesn't even get into all of the non-Geocaching uses that this software has!

 

I'm by no means a pro with this stuff. I'm still just figuring out how to get it to work. If anyone else has any other tips, ideas or refinements to the method, please let's discuss them because I'm at least as eager to learn as I am to teach.

 

Here's a screenshot I took of what Google Earth looks like with Geocaches added using some of the caches that I've put into my GSAK database so far.

GoogleCache in Newport Beach / Irvine

 

PercyKittenz

[+gnbrotz]

5. Now you've got all your caches imported, but it's pretty messy, so it should be organized a bit. Make some new folders under My Places for your caches by right clicking on My Places and going to New > Folder. Have one folder for caches you haven't found, one for caches you have found and maybe one for caches that have been archived. You can now move each cache one at a time from the imported folder in Temporary Places to their permanent home in the new folders. Remember that Temporary Places will be deleted whenever you close Google Maps so make sure that you've copied over all the caches you want to save.

Another option would be to have GSAK do all the sorting before exporting. You'll end up with multiple files to open in Google Earth, but with a little work, the organization process can be run by macro, making it as simple as the click of one button.

 

I've also discovered that Google Earth will open multiple files at the same time by ctrl-clicking and selecting them in the "open file" window, so that minimizes the hassle if you allow GSAK to do the sorting/organization. The one downside to this is that each file is named "GPS Device" when placed in the Temporary Places folder, so they would need renamed in order to efficiently recognize them when you want to toggle certain categories on or off.

 

GSAK special tags can help make the different sets more identifiable. For example, if you decide to break things out by cache type, you could have GSAK include that information in the original export using special tags to include it in the name. Then, when selecting only one set of waypoints, you could easily tell which ones they are simply by the displayed name. This may eliminate the need to rename each folder, and will make it easier if you want to take that step.

[robertlipe]

Because Google Earth is using the GPSBabel engine, the same one that runs under GSAK, it can read both LOC and GPX files.

More generically, it means you can hook Google Earth (via the "Keyhole Markup Language", KML) up to any of the formats that GPSBabel supports.

[GonzoHiker]

Thanks for the help guys.

 

I created my folders for found and not found then dropped the .gpx file into the proper folder.

 

You can simply right click on a waypoint and choose cut then paste it onto another directory or you can use drag and drop to move them.

 

If you click on the upper directory (found or not found) and choose edit then you can set the color for the icons and text. This makes it easy to set the color for all of your founs ones to gree and your not found ones to red. You may have to pick the "share style" button which will set the color to the colrs of th efirst way point. Play with this a little and it will make sense. The only down side is that they won't pick upi the colors automatically and you will have to do the edit each time.

 

You can also change the icons or select custom icons. We'll just need to get some created.

 

All in all this is a great tool for the first pass at new software. Perhaps it will get more features add or we will figure out how to hack it to get the deatures.

[GonzoHiker]

Another thing I discovered.

 

Since every tyine you drag and drop a .gpx file into the temporary folder it creates a GPS Device folder with Waypoints and other folders. You can simply drag the new waypoints folder up out of the GPS Device folder and rename it to something else. Like the date you'll be hunting or the trip name. Once found you can still move the found ones to the Found folder.

 

You can then delete the GPS Device folder. Sure keeps things c.leaner

[robertlipe]

All in all this is a great tool for the first pass at new software.

 

Actually, Keyhole became Google Earth after they were purchased by Google. Keyhole has been around for a long time. They even provided a lot of the spiffy photography and "fly by"s used by the likes of CNN when they're trying to show a location and can't get copters there or need to show a relocation or such.

 

I agree that it's impressive stuff, but it's not all new code.

[phoenixdarkdirk]

Sorry to pull up an old thread, but I wrote a Network Link for Google Earth that imported geocaches into the current view. See my site for more details, but Geocaching.com started blocking my IP within 12 hours of using it. It worked amazing while it lasted, but it's sad to see how much Groundspeak hates innovation when it isn't coming from them (or making money for them).

 

Andy Fowler

 

Edit: also see here for other people using this overlay.

Edited July 6, 2005 by phoenixdarkdirk

[+Moaguten]

I totally agree with Andy Fowler. The use of a network link in Google Earth is a great idea, and saves a lot of time. I can not understand why geocaching.com tries to stop this service. After all you can access the same data from geocaching.com without beeing a member! The cache data is read in excactly the same way as before, it is only the search prosess that is altered. I could understand it if the network link was fetching a lot of caches, but that was not the case. Only seven caches in the neighbourhood was fetched! Please let Andy's server access the data again!

[+gnbrotz]

Only seven caches in the neighbourhood was fetched! Please let Andy's server access the data again!

Just because the number was small in the case you noted, doesn't mean that everyone will limit themselves.

 

The proper way to do this is either use the free tools that gc.com provides (ie - site based searches) or become a Premium Member (as I see that you already have) and use Pocket Queries instead of scraping the site.

[phoenixdarkdirk]

I just see this as the problem with having a closed site such as geocaching.com. There will always be limits placed on searches like this, to keep GC in the financial loop. I was using the exact same public search page as the rest of the world, with decimal lat/lon, the script didn't even use GC's zip code translation stuff. I've e-mailed Groundspeak and I'll place their reply here if it's okay with them.

 

Edit: Perhaps something can be arranged to limit this service to premium members by including login info in the network link. I will ask GC about this.

Edited July 6, 2005 by phoenixdarkdirk

[phoenixdarkdirk]

It seems that Geocaching.com has begun to allow queries from my server again. I haven't had a response from them yet, but you're welcome to try out the network link. See http://www.andyfowler.com/journal/2005/07/...r-google-earth/

[PercyKittenz]

Wow, Andy, this is great work! You've really done a fantastic job. Quick question, are the waypoints stored permanently once they've been looked up, or does it delete them when you move away or close Google Earth? I really wouldn't mind at all if this were just a refresh button that fetched the data only when you pressed it and purged old caches that weren't moved to another folder. If that's a comprimise that you can work out with Groundspeak, then it doesn't make your tool any less fantastic and useful.