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eTrex 30 not showing all caches in a PQ


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I've run the pocket query a few times, so I'd hardly call myself an expert. However, I used to be a DBA, so I have to say this seems perplexing. I ran a PQ of the closest 1000 caches to my house, downloaded it to my eTrex 30, and went geocaching just fine with it one day last week. The next day the I went to a completely different place and was surprised that the caches didn't appear on the Garmin. I thought maybe they'd fallen just outside the 1000 closest clause. BUT when I came home I checked the results on geocaching.com and those caches DID appear in the results. At least, they appeared when I clicked on the PQ Preview button. I specifically zoomed in and checked.

 

So, why didn't they get transferred to the Garmin with the other caches?

 

The only way I could figure to solve this problem (for now) was to create a new PQ 25 miles from home that would also include those caches. When I put that GPX file on the Garmin, those caches came up just fine. Very strange, but maybe there's something obvious I just don't know yet.

 

thanks!

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OK. But the PQ says "1000 Caches Total". So how can it return more than 1000 caches?

 

It sounds as though you have more than 1000 in your pocket query. Is it based on distance? Did you check to see how many caches were in the PQ? If It says 1000, then you are over 1000, and it filters out some of the caches to bring you down to 1000.

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OK. But the PQ says "1000 Caches Total". So how can it return more than 1000 caches?

 

It sounds as though you have more than 1000 in your pocket query. Is it based on distance? Did you check to see how many caches were in the PQ? If It says 1000, then you are over 1000, and it filters out some of the caches to bring you down to 1000.

 

Your PQ seems to have asked for more than 1000. If I run a PQ for the nearest 65 miles, it will find 20000 caches. But it will only show me 1000 of them. And it will say 1000 caches total. Because that is all it can give you.

You have to reduce your parameters so that it shows just under 1000 caches. Not sure what parameters you have set. Probably distance? Reduce your distance until 900 or so show. Then you will have all the caches within that distance. Tough to set another query for the next set of distance.

I set mine by date hidden. My pocket query ANJ-10 asks for all caches hidden in New Jersey between January 1, 2000 and May 5, 2007. That returns 997 caches that I have not found, and that are not on my Ignore list. Thus, all that fit that category will be in the PQ.

It does not send more than 1000. It deletes caches until it only returns 1000.

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I can completely accept that some records have to get dropped out of the results to keep the total to some threshold. But I don't understand why they would show up when I click the preview button on geocaching.com but not show up on the GPSr. It seems odd that the two would not be the same. My frustration is that I use the visual map of caches from the PQ query to confirm if I have the area I am interested in. Especially for trips out of state.

 

I am just going to accept that it doesn't make sense. Thank you for your response!

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Try loading your PQ result into BaseCamp and see if the caches in question are displayed there. BaseCamp should parse the GPX file the same way your GPS does. If the caches aren’t displayed in BaseCamp either, then your PQ is at fault.

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Here's another scenario that I haven't seen anyone mention. Is the GPS *full*? AFTER checking the PQs either in Basecamp, or by viewing them on www.geocaching.com/map (select the Pocket Query from the left to see all the caches it contains on the map)

 

The eTrex 30 supports up to 5,000 caches on the current firmware. However, if you have loaded several 1,000 PQ files on the unit you may have exceeded that and well the GPS will randomly drop caches.

 

Try this:

Before loading your new PQ file, go to the Garmin/GPX folder on the unit (and any MicroSD cards you use) and remove all the .GPX files from it. Don't worry about Current.GPX that one can stay.

Move the files to your computer - don't just "delete" the files as you may have tracks or waypoints stored in them too.

 

One the files are removed, power on your eTrex 30 and allow it to start up. You will see zero geocaches on the unit.

Power off the eTrex and copy your PQ file to it again.

 

Garmin units sometimes get "sticky" about previous cache loads and this process ensures it is reset and using the new PQ file. Particularly if the PQ file always has the same name.

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Aha! I should have thought of that, but I don't really really use BaseMap.

 

Yes, those "missing" cache do show up in BaseMap. And there are 1000 records in the output, including those points. Of course, this now leads me to think it is an eTrex issue after all. I guess I will have to contact Garmin to find out why those caches either aren't transferring or aren't displaying. Like I said, it makes no sense since other caches in from that PQ come across just fine. But I certainly don't like heading out geocaching only to find my target location isn't on the GPSr.

 

Thank you so much for helping me troubleshoot!

 

-LTL

 

Try loading your PQ result into BaseCamp and see if the caches in question are displayed there. BaseCamp should parse the GPX file the same way your GPS does. If the caches aren’t displayed in BaseCamp either, then your PQ is at fault.

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I did not know that about the eTrex. Good to know. I haven't yet reached the 5000 cache limit yet, but will get in the habit of cleaning it out every now and then from now on. It's such a pain to eject it from the computer, then boot it up all over again, only to repeat the process to see if everything works. Sigh.

 

Thanks, though. It's good to know.

 

The head scratcher in this mystery for me is that those point do load if they are in another PQ. That's why I originally thought the problem was the PQ. Sound like eTrex is a little wonky...

 

-LTL

 

Here's another scenario that I haven't seen anyone mention. Is the GPS *full*? AFTER checking the PQs either in Basecamp, or by viewing them on www.geocaching.com/map (select the Pocket Query from the left to see all the caches it contains on the map)

 

The eTrex 30 supports up to 5,000 caches on the current firmware. However, if you have loaded several 1,000 PQ files on the unit you may have exceeded that and well the GPS will randomly drop caches.

 

Try this:

Before loading your new PQ file, go to the Garmin/GPX folder on the unit (and any MicroSD cards you use) and remove all the .GPX files from it. Don't worry about Current.GPX that one can stay.

Move the files to your computer - don't just "delete" the files as you may have tracks or waypoints stored in them too.

 

One the files are removed, power on your eTrex 30 and allow it to start up. You will see zero geocaches on the unit.

Power off the eTrex and copy your PQ file to it again.

 

Garmin units sometimes get "sticky" about previous cache loads and this process ensures it is reset and using the new PQ file. Particularly if the PQ file always has the same name.

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The head scratcher in this mystery for me is that those point do load if they are in another PQ. That's why I originally thought the problem was the PQ. Sound like eTrex is a little wonky...

 

-LTL

 

It could be that the PQ either didn't completely transfer, or was somehow corrupted. I would try downloading it and sending it to the Etrex again.

 

Also make sure you're using the latest firmware on the Etrex there have been a few fixes to geocaches going missing, see here

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Aha! I should have thought of that, but I don't really really use BaseMap.

 

Yes, those "missing" cache do show up in BaseMap. And there are 1000 records in the output, including those points. Of course, this now leads me to think it is an eTrex issue after all. I guess I will have to contact Garmin to find out why those caches either aren't transferring or aren't displaying. Like I said, it makes no sense since other caches in from that PQ come across just fine. But I certainly don't like heading out geocaching only to find my target location isn't on the GPSr.

 

Thank you so much for helping me troubleshoot!

 

-LTL

 

 

The last thing I would do is contact Garmin. They don't know their product or understand how their product operate.

 

Personally I think your running into a distance issue. Garmins will not display all caches beyond 50 miles and there are limits on how many they will display. As you move towards where the "missing" caches are they will magically appear on the list and on the map. If you use basecamp to download what is on your Garmin you will find that the "missing" caches are there.

Edited by jholly
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Personally I think your running into a distance issue. Garmins will not display all caches beyond 50 miles and there are limits on how many they will display. As you move towards where the "missing" caches are they will magically appear on the list and on the map. If you use basecamp to download what is on your Garmin you will find that the "missing" caches are there.

 

I've never hit this 50 mile distance limit for caches on my eTrex 30. Sometimes it takes bloody ages to redraw the map (when I have a complex one loaded like Topo) as I pan over there but I've never known a cache to disappear just for being a fair distance away.

Heck I routinely use GSAK to load a caches-along-a-route spanning several hundred kilometres in one go for road trips where cellular is expensive for me (hence why I know about the 5,000 cache limit).

 

Word of caution to the OP - in my experience you are better to load the 3.70 firmware not the 3.80 one which seems to produce weirdness on my unit specifically with listing nearby caches.

Seems to originate at N0,W0,E0,S0 when itemizing this list. 3.70 was perfectly well behaved.

 

The Wiki Link that was provided by MartyBartfast is missing a few recent firmware releases on it. This is the official Garmin page for the firmware.

 

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Garmins will not display all caches beyond 50 miles

 

I belive you are mistaken on that point. It only applies to GGZ-supporting units like the Oregon 600 or the GPSMAP 64. It also only applies to the list of geocaches, not the map on those units. The range is also ~100 miles and not 50 miles as you stated. I've got a 64 sitting in front of me right now, and I just checked. It's supposed to remind me to load it up and go get some exercise in a local park, but it's just gathering dust right now.

 

It will actually go out to at least 137 miles if the cache is directly NE, SE, SW, or NW which leads me to believe that a square is being overlaid on the earth at your current position with midpoints of the sides at 100 mi directly N, E, S, and W of you. Doing some trigonometry gives us sin(45°) = 100mi / hypotenuse. That yields about 141 miles if the cache is in a corner of that imaginary square.

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I don't think it's a distance issue. I live in a dense metro area so 1000 caches near my house go out only about 8 miles. The "missing" caches were around 7 miles away. I didn't notice they were missing until I got to the site and turned on the GPSr. They simply weren't there. Thankfully I had my iPhone.

 

Definitely thinking it's a Garmin problem, but it's just a guess.

Edited by LovesToLaugh
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I don't think it's a distance issue. I live in a dense metro area so 1000 caches near my house go out only about 8 miles. The "missing" caches were around 7 miles away. I didn't notice they were missing until I got to the site and turned on the GPSr. They simply weren't there. Thankfully I had my iPhone.

 

Definitely thinking it's a Garmin problem, but it's just a guess.

 

Try the reset above and in the future, when adding a new GPX file give it a new name while deleting the old PQ file. That's my daily process. I only go to the wipe/reboot/reload if my eTrex is acting weird. 99% of the time I just replace caches.gpx with caches01.gpx and carry on happily.

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Rather than using the preview on geocaching.com, you can view the contents of the GPX file by running Basecamp after you've installed the file to your gps. You'll know exactly which caches are there.

 

In the mean time, if you're getting more than 1000 caches in an 8-mile radius from your house, you might think about splitting that up into two or more queries. For example, in cache dense cities, I'll often make a PQ for only "Large" caches (small, regular, large, uknown sizes) and another for micros. I'll limit those to only traditional caches and place the multi's, puzzles, letterbox, etc. in a 3rd PQ. And if that still doesn't capture all of them, I start separating by difficulty ratings.

 

I always check to include only caches "I haven't found" and "are enabled." This way, each time you re-run your PQ, you don't fill up the allotment with found caches or caches that are temporarily under the weather for maintenance.

 

It's incredibly frustrating to go to a location and find that the caches you thought you loaded aren't there, so definitely check that they are there either with Basecamp or by turning on your GPS and scrolling the map to your intended destination. If you're going someplace specific, you can also whip up a small PQ for that location. Otherwise, in a cache-dense city, you don't have to have every singe cache loaded on your GPS as you already have more than enough to choose from. So go out, get a couple hundred (or thousand) finds in your city and more will appear in your PQ searches.

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We're getting OT a bit, but… I don't have any problem with simply grabbing the closest 1000 caches. I completely realize that I can sort my results better, but I only have 110 caches to my name so far, and I usually go close to home. Pretty soon I'll filter out the caches I've already found, but that wouldn't have changed my original problem. Thanks, though.

 

 

In the mean time, if you're getting more than 1000 caches in an 8-mile radius from your house, you might think about splitting that up into two or more queries. For example, in cache dense cities, I'll often make a PQ for only "Large" caches (small, regular, large, uknown sizes) and another for micros. I'll limit those to only traditional caches and place the multi's, puzzles, letterbox, etc. in a 3rd PQ. And if that still doesn't capture all of them, I start separating by difficulty ratings.

 

I always check to include only caches "I haven't found" and "are enabled." This way, each time you re-run your PQ, you don't fill up the allotment with found caches or caches that are temporarily under the weather for maintenance.

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Personally I think your running into a distance issue. Garmins will not display all caches beyond 50 miles

 

This is not true on the eTrex 20/30 models. I have tested it several times on my e20 and always found the caches I loaded at distances of 350 miles in one test and 2200 miles in another test. The test at 350 miles was done while about 2100 caches within 15 miles were also on the unit.

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Be sure to look at your cache filter settings on the GPS device itself, just in case...

 

I heard there was a recent change by Groundspeak to the GPX files generated by PQ's. Not only that, but on my 64S while viewing the map screen, I have to go in and make sure all filter settings are enabled, then click "Apply". For some reason I have to do this at every power-on cycle, despite all filter settings already being activated. Something to try just in case -- I think it had to do with cache sizes being "Unknown" or "Not Chosen". If I don't do this step, then I am magically missing some caches near home.

 

Another thing is you could try looking at the list of caches on the GPS unit, and see if the caches you want show up there. If so, then it's probably the filter issue. If not, then it likely means the PQ file is too big, corrupted, etc.

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The next day the I went to a completely different place and was surprised that the caches didn't appear on the Garmin.

This is a bug in the firmware. It happens on my eTrex 30 and my Montana 600. It usually happens when it crashes during the gpx indexing phase after clearing the old cache index. The first half of the green bar is when it's clearing and the second half is when it's reindexing.

 

To get it to reindex the gpx just rename it to something else. If you don't have a computer handy and you keep the gpx files on the external storage, pull the SD card and power up fully. Then put the card back and power up again.

 

I always give any new gpx files I put on the unit a different filename. That seems to minimize the issue. What seems to prevent the load failures completely is to delete the old gpx files and power on the unit so that it only does the clear phase. Then put the new gpx on and have it only do the indexing phase.

 

I've also have had the unit forget the caches after a unexpected power down. I used the sd card trick to get them back.

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I checked this the first chance I had and, by George, you've done it. Mystery solved! A bug in the firmware.

 

I did notice that the eTrex stalls occasionally when booting, so I wondered if that had anything to do with it. This morning I took off all the PQs from the eTrex, then rebooted. Then I powered it off, connected it back to the computer and put back on only the one PQ that had those caches that the Garmin wouldn't list or display. Voilà! They were on there.

 

I cannot thank you enough, since it was a head-scratcher. I guess I will now remember to clean out the eTrex from time to time. Will research reliability next time I purchase a GPSr.

 

thanks again, Avernar!

 

The next day the I went to a completely different place and was surprised that the caches didn't appear on the Garmin.

This is a bug in the firmware. It happens on my eTrex 30 and my Montana 600. It usually happens when it crashes during the gpx indexing phase after clearing the old cache index. The first half of the green bar is when it's clearing and the second half is when it's reindexing.

 

To get it to reindex the gpx just rename it to something else. If you don't have a computer handy and you keep the gpx files on the external storage, pull the SD card and power up fully. Then put the card back and power up again.

 

I always give any new gpx files I put on the unit a different filename. That seems to minimize the issue. What seems to prevent the load failures completely is to delete the old gpx files and power on the unit so that it only does the clear phase. Then put the new gpx on and have it only do the indexing phase.

 

I've also have had the unit forget the caches after a unexpected power down. I used the sd card trick to get them back.

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This is such a frustrating problem. I hate getting out into the field and realising my GPS is only showing half the caches, simply because it crashed during load up and refuses to rescan its memory. I'll try the delete>turn on>add new PQs>turn on again technique and see if it's reliable. Thanks for the tip.

 

It's a good idea to put your PQ files on a microSD card so that if this happens in the field, you just pop the card out, turn on, put the card back in, turn on again and you can fix the problem in the field. This is an issue that occasionally pops up in all of Garmin's GPS models, though often it fails to index all of the caches so it appears as if none are loaded.

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I checked this the first chance I had and, by George, you've done it. Mystery solved! A bug in the firmware.

 

I did notice that the eTrex stalls occasionally when booting, so I wondered if that had anything to do with it. This morning I took off all the PQs from the eTrex, then rebooted. Then I powered it off, connected it back to the computer and put back on only the one PQ that had those caches that the Garmin wouldn't list or display. Voilà! They were on there.

 

I cannot thank you enough, since it was a head-scratcher. I guess I will now remember to clean out the eTrex from time to time. Will research reliability next time I purchase a GPSr.

 

thanks again, Avernar!

 

The next day the I went to a completely different place and was surprised that the caches didn't appear on the Garmin.

This is a bug in the firmware. It happens on my eTrex 30 and my Montana 600. It usually happens when it crashes during the gpx indexing phase after clearing the old cache index. The first half of the green bar is when it's clearing and the second half is when it's reindexing.

 

To get it to reindex the gpx just rename it to something else. If you don't have a computer handy and you keep the gpx files on the external storage, pull the SD card and power up fully. Then put the card back and power up again.

 

I always give any new gpx files I put on the unit a different filename. That seems to minimize the issue. What seems to prevent the load failures completely is to delete the old gpx files and power on the unit so that it only does the clear phase. Then put the new gpx on and have it only do the indexing phase.

 

I've also have had the unit forget the caches after a unexpected power down. I used the sd card trick to get them back.

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I had been plagued with this problem while travelling in Alaska and unable to access a PC with an SD Card slot. I see about half the caches on my eTrex 20 that are showing on my iPhone using the same Pocket Query. I'm sitting at Denali National Park and frustrated I can only see half the caches - not even the one closest to my current position pn my eTrex 20. I found this post and the suggestion to completely remove the micro-SD card and reboot. Did that, then switched off again, replaced the card and rebooted - BINGO!! I can now see exactly the same list of caches as are showing up on my Iphone. FANTASTIC. Must run and cache before they magically disappear again!!!

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