Newbie ... please be gentle.

[shelandkel]

Hi, I'm new here ... and new to geocaching. Looking forward to getting into this with my family here in Wales.

 

But ... I do have a question ...

 

We're on a very limited budget and already own a TomTom Start 25 satnav, which is a year old. Can we use this instead of investing in a dedicated GPS handheld device?

[+cerberus1]

Not too familiar with tomtom, my other 2/3rds canned hers in a few weeks because it wouldn't enter coordinates.

 

Does yours have pedestrian mode? That'd be a plus.

Have a sorta-smart phone? For now, that'd be a good option to start.

We know people who started by looking up cache pages, and going by coodinates on google maps too.

[+K13]

Hi, I'm new here ... and new to geocaching. Looking forward to getting into this with my family here in Wales.

 

But ... I do have a question ...

 

We're on a very limited budget and already own a TomTom Start 25 satnav, which is a year old. Can we use this instead of investing in a dedicated GPS handheld device?

 

<dons sable gloves> Welcome to the fun! I'm not familiar with that device, but if it allows for manually entering waypoints and can be set to navigate off-road to those waypoints, you should be able to use it like a basic handheld unit. When I started, I would print the cache pages and manually enter the coordinates into my GPS for the hunt.

[+Team Microdot]

We're on a very limited budget and already own a TomTom Start 25 satnav, which is a year old. Can we use this instead of investing in a dedicated GPS handheld device?

 

I've never tried it but I suspect you will struggle and may need to search a wider area before making a find than you would do with a regular hand-held GPSr of GPS enabled smartphone.

 

I expect that even in pedestrian mode a TomTom would try to route you as close to the final destination as it could using marked paths and the location of the cache might not fit that framework.

 

A few minutes research seems to indicate that the Start 25 does support coordinate input and this link might give you a few pointers on how to do that.

 

You could of course try it out first on some urban caches where your TomTom will probably get you closer to the cache location than it would, say, out in the countryside somewhere.

[+ukbackpack]

shelandkel - Just sent you a PM. Where abouts in Wales are you?

[+Magic Phil]

Hello there,

my very first ever cache finds were done using a Tom tom gps. While they are ok for getting you near your GZ they are no match for a gps device.

If you have access to a smartphone then there a plethora of free apps that can greatly improve your geocaching and you'll see the difference between being near to a geocache gz with a Tom Tom and being practically stood on it using a smartphone or gps tracker.!!

[+and1969]

Hi, I'm new here ... and new to geocaching. Looking forward to getting into this with my family here in Wales.

 

But ... I do have a question ...

 

We're on a very limited budget and already own a TomTom Start 25 satnav, which is a year old. Can we use this instead of investing in a dedicated GPS handheld device?

 

<dons sable gloves> Welcome to the fun! I'm not familiar with that device, but if it allows for manually entering waypoints and can be set to navigate off-road to those waypoints, you should be able to use it like a basic handheld unit. When I started, I would print the cache pages and manually enter the coordinates into my GPS for the hunt.

 

Agree with the need for manual coords entry and off-road mode. Another nice to have is the ability to have user-defined POIs which for TomTom is OV2 format and there is software that will generate these. Check if your unit allows third party POIs because TomTom went through a phase of disabling the facility in a software update.

 

I have a very old TomTom OneXL which I tried using for caching, without success. Main problem was it did not give the distance to the destination. I had a glance at the Start 25 manual and it suggested it does show the distance, but in the example it is tenths of miles. It needs to be able to display feet, yards or metres otherwise you will struggle.

 

I still use a Garmin nuvi 1310 as my main GPSr, which has all the above characteristics.

 

If you do use a satnav I suggest getting an A4 document wallet to put it in, as they are sensitive to moisture and also the display is easily scratched.

[+vw_k]

Welcome to the hobby I'm in England but visit Wales a few times a year and find caches when I can I've used a HP ipaq with Tom Tom software to navigate to caches that are along a road. Not sure how useful it would be for caches that aren't on a road though as it's really a road navigation device.

 

As others have suggested, you can get apps on smartphones for geocaching so it's worth looking into if you have one.

 

Some caches can also be found by looking at the map links on the cache page. Satellite images, street view and Ordnance Survey maps can be handy for this, I found my first 20 or so with this method and by using the hints.