Paperless geocaching on a non gps smartphone

[jamesrodgersjr]

I recently bought my own GPSr (the one I used to get started was borrowed) but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't justify spending a couple of hundred quid on an all singing all dancing unit, so no paperless for me :(

so I turned to the internet and googled like mad, found a few apps that looked good for mobile phones but as my model does not have gps (nokia E63) most of them would not work and I am a cheapskate and refuse to pay hahahahahahahaha :rolleyes:

Then a friend of mines was visiting (nearly converted muggle) and asked if my phone read PDF files. I had no idea so we tried this anyway ..........

If you use a free programme called Cutepdf (The perfect price for me):p

http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp

you can convert the cache description page into a pdf
-click the print cache link (you should get the printable version)
-select file-print at the top of the page (or Ctrl+P)
-select CutePDFwriter as the printer (print preview page)
-go to my documents (the cache PDF should now be there)
-and drag and drop it to your phone (took me a couple of attempts and I had to make a folder on my phone so I could find them)

I hope this will be of some use to someone else and help to save them carrying loads of paper round with them :applause:

[Nevryan]

Although I have an iphone I dont use the onboard GPS for cache hunting I do however download blocks of caches using pocket queries and send them to my phone as HTML files. This allows me to look at the cache page, check clues Etc

[jamesrodgersjr]

cool, I didn't realise that you could do that =0) might give that a try too
how do you do it? is it easy?

[Nevryan]

It is very easy many phones support direct file transfer much better than the iphone which requires a couple of low cost iphope apps to do it. (Fileapp diskaid)

[jamesrodgersjr]

I thought I would post a little update as there was an issue with the new system I am using :(

All of a sudden, when not in the field (thankfully) but preparing to go out the pdf reader crashed and became unable to open files. I looked this up on google and discovered I was not alone :(
there were a few sites saying that it was an issue with very large pdf files bigger than a few megabytes
( this is the point where the technology confuses me a little)
as far as I could see the files I was trying to open were under that figure so I searched some more and found a pdf reader which is about 7 quid
(which being a tightwad I was not impressed with hahahahahah =0P )
I installed the free trial and bingo it worked, only for a one week free trial,
(which decided it was over 12 hours before it should have been this time when I was out in the field)
I will keep looking for a free app to read pdf files as I refuse to pay if I dont have too =0)
and I will update you all on how I get on =0)

[jamesrodgersjr]

Ok I have found something that kinna works :/ lol
but it's free and to me that's the main thing :)
there is a programme called:

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp?Language=EN

you will need the mobile app which is free and works with most mobiles :)
and you will need the software on your computer too
this software is primarily for uploading Ebooks on to your phone but they don't mention that it will convert PDF files to a native format for your phone :) you can then open the files with the app on your phone

> open Mobipocket on your computer
> click import at the top of the screen
> scroll down to PDF file
> navigate to where you have your files and select the one you want
> Send to phone
> Bob's your uncle :)

as I said it kinna works it gives you all the information that you need but during the conversion process it jumbles it up :(

so I would say it does the job, and it is free but you do have the hassle of converting using cute PDF then converting again and not having it exactly the same as the original (the important information is there just a little jumbled up)

I will keep looking to see if I can find anything that works better :)

[madproforg]

I find smartgpx (http://www.smartcaching.de/smartgpx.html) works a treat on a E63. It imports gpxfiles which you can then filter in various ways, log entries and from the logs create a geocache_visits.txt for uploading via the GC fieldnotes - I did this directly from the phone while out in the field.

One big tip with the gpx files, don't send them unzipped via bluetooth as the phone imports the entries into landmarks app, fortunately I discovered this with only 5 entries not the 1000+ I have in now.

[jamesrodgersjr]

wow thats awesome, Thanks=0)
with the mega coming up in the next few days I wasn't looking forward to the epic amount of work involved =0)