Geocaching with the N800

Geocaching is a hobby that some people have picked up. It's like a big scavenger hunt guided by GPS coordinates. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on the subject for more.

People have asked me if it is possible to do this with the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet and Navicore or Maemo Mapper. I did not include this ability within my big Navicore review, but it is possible to get close with Navicore and to get right up on top of the coordinates with Maemo Mapper. I used the Nokia LD-3W GPS unit included with Navicore and video blogged the entire experience:

In the beginning, I entered coordinates with Navicore using the WGS84 option in the Location window. It allowed me to enter in Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds but not decimals of a second. In a cache location like the one I chose, it's pretty important to get right down into it.

Navicore got me right to a place I could park to hunt for the cache, but did not offer more granularity.

I entered the very specific coordinates into Maemo Mapper and it showed me where I was and where to go to the cache. At first, it was hard to get my bearings since I did not bring a compass and the sun was high above me so I wandered down to the car to cool off a bit and see where I had been. I was going up the wrong trail and needed to go further south.

It was a steep trek for a while.

From a distance, this looked like an open circle of rocks. When I got closer, I realized it was an arrow pointing to a shrub. Sadly, there was nothing inside the shrub.

The screenshot above shows how much I wandered around that area looking for any indication of a cache. Anything that looked interesting, out of place, or otherwise odd was explored. Nothing was found. The arrow of rocks at the PRECISE spot of the GPS coordinates shows that it was probably there at some point but is gone now. If you've suffered through the review this far, here's some high-res photos and screenshots to go along with it. This particular trek was not a success, but it was rather fun!