Good folder strategy for offline geocaching
Hi,
I'm struggling to find a good strategy to store geocaches for offline use:
Currently, I've about 1500 caches stored in one folder, and that number is growing each week (I just like to have all the caches in an area which I visit available and keep those available if I would visit that same area later on). When I talk about area, I actually mean the province I live in, about 2.422 km².
I fill this folder by selecting a point in the city I'm going to visit on the map and using the "nearest geocaches" functionality, using the maximum number of caches to search (500). I than store these found caches in my geocaching folder, duplicates which are already in that folder are skipped.
However, I'm starting to notice that using this one big folder is getting slower: updating all caches in that folder takes a long time, and also restarting Locus is becoming slower due to the loading of all these geocaches. Since I expect that a lot more caches will end up in this folder (I've only store a little part of my province currently), I'm afraid that my current strategy is not the good one.
An alternative I was thinking about creating a folder per city. This however has some drawbacks:
- If I want to update all geocaches of all cities stored, this would be a kind of hassle: I have to select each folder one by one and do the update per folder
- When using the "nearest geocaches" to fill a city-folder, geocaches in the border area between two cities would end up duplicated in the folders of both cities. As far as I know, the duplicate check when importing is done against the target folder, not against other folders.
- In the case of duplicate caches, I also end up with an additional selection list when selecting a geocache on the map, in which I have to select the specific folder first.
So, I'm not sure how to continue. Any tips and hints are welcome to get me to a good, workable approach to store a lot of geocaches.
Thanks in advance!
The same question
Hi,
same situation by me but about 3200 caches/folder.
Normally all caches are invisible for faster start of the app. Before any action I mark filtered selection visible. But the handling in the field could be very slow. For this I move all caches around position in a temporary folder and move them back after the tour.
Regards,
KaHeMu
Hi,
same situation by me but about 3200 caches/folder.
Normally all caches are invisible for faster start of the app. Before any action I mark filtered selection visible. But the handling in the field could be very slow. For this I move all caches around position in a temporary folder and move them back after the tour.
Regards,
KaHeMu
Hello guys,
isn't this common problem with huge amount of data in almost every program?
Btw. what is slow for You? Even a folder with 10.000 geocaches, where you select just 500 of them around current map center to display, should work fine. Maybe it take a while till folder content loads, but once you have data on a map, it should work fine.
Also are you using "auto loading of cache waypoints"? Maybe this may slow down in such huge numbers of caches.
Hello guys,
isn't this common problem with huge amount of data in almost every program?
Btw. what is slow for You? Even a folder with 10.000 geocaches, where you select just 500 of them around current map center to display, should work fine. Maybe it take a while till folder content loads, but once you have data on a map, it should work fine.
Also are you using "auto loading of cache waypoints"? Maybe this may slow down in such huge numbers of caches.
Hello,
I don't use auto loading of cache waypoints.
To be clear, it is not that the amount of caches in one folder is a problem for me (yet). I'm just afraid it will get a problem when my geocaching folder grows. You talk about 10.000+ geocaches in one folder, this should not pose a problem? Can you give an estimate of maximum figures which are workable? Max number of geocaches in one folder? Max number of geocaches in total in Locus?
You suggest to only display a subset of the folder contents on the map: "select just 500 of them around current map center to display,". Until now, I didn't use this (I selected the complete folder contents to display on the map or nothing). I suppose you're referring to the max distance folder filter to achieve this? This seems to be working just fine!
So, I can keep on adding adding my geocaches to that same folder, and with some filtering, things shouldn't get too slow?
Hello,
I don't use auto loading of cache waypoints.
To be clear, it is not that the amount of caches in one folder is a problem for me (yet). I'm just afraid it will get a problem when my geocaching folder grows. You talk about 10.000+ geocaches in one folder, this should not pose a problem? Can you give an estimate of maximum figures which are workable? Max number of geocaches in one folder? Max number of geocaches in total in Locus?
You suggest to only display a subset of the folder contents on the map: "select just 500 of them around current map center to display,". Until now, I didn't use this (I selected the complete folder contents to display on the map or nothing). I suppose you're referring to the max distance folder filter to achieve this? This seems to be working just fine!
So, I can keep on adding adding my geocaches to that same folder, and with some filtering, things shouldn't get too slow?
Hello,
unfortunately I do not know any exact numbers. Mainly because they depend on your device, on speed of SD Card/internal memory, on total number of points in database (not just single folder)!! and also on your patience.
So use it, play with it and when you notice is slow too much, just remove some points from database.
I have to say, that Locus is not perfectly optimized to using huge databases, so it's really going to slow down when number of points get bigger. But this number is individual as I wrote above.
To load for example 500 closest points, best is to center map on wanted place, then open folder and at bottom tap on second button, hide all points and then again on second button and "First X points". Should be faster then over filter.
Unfortunately as I do geocaching more like a rare hobby, I have no experiences with huge number of points. So hope someone more except KaHeMu may share some useful tips. Good luck.
Hello,
unfortunately I do not know any exact numbers. Mainly because they depend on your device, on speed of SD Card/internal memory, on total number of points in database (not just single folder)!! and also on your patience.
So use it, play with it and when you notice is slow too much, just remove some points from database.
I have to say, that Locus is not perfectly optimized to using huge databases, so it's really going to slow down when number of points get bigger. But this number is individual as I wrote above.
To load for example 500 closest points, best is to center map on wanted place, then open folder and at bottom tap on second button, hide all points and then again on second button and "First X points". Should be faster then over filter.
Unfortunately as I do geocaching more like a rare hobby, I have no experiences with huge number of points. So hope someone more except KaHeMu may share some useful tips. Good luck.
Hi,
I tried the way of working as suggested by you the past weekend, and this was going just fine!
I'll see where it gets me when I continue to add caches. As you suggest, when it starts getting slower, maybe I have to rethink and just delete caches in areas where I don't come very often.
Thanks for the help and tips!
Hi,
I tried the way of working as suggested by you the past weekend, and this was going just fine!
I'll see where it gets me when I continue to add caches. As you suggest, when it starts getting slower, maybe I have to rethink and just delete caches in areas where I don't come very often.
Thanks for the help and tips!
I go with 6500 geocaches active on map.. device is Note 3 with maps on external sd card.
With standard setting Locus went slower around 5000, but by changing "points simplification until zoom=14 (default 10)" in config file.. everything went smooth again. My experience is that Locus will take a performance hit if you show more than 100 POI's on map at given zoomlevel.
Happy hunt :-)
Sidenote: Only trouble I've ran into is groundspeaks limitation of max 6000 cache updates per 24 hour...
I go with 6500 geocaches active on map.. device is Note 3 with maps on external sd card.
With standard setting Locus went slower around 5000, but by changing "points simplification until zoom=14 (default 10)" in config file.. everything went smooth again. My experience is that Locus will take a performance hit if you show more than 100 POI's on map at given zoomlevel.
Happy hunt :-)
Sidenote: Only trouble I've ran into is groundspeaks limitation of max 6000 cache updates per 24 hour...
Yeah, I know :-)
I often plan my geocaching just by checking the icons, not even open details until arriving parking spot.
Locus give users the options to configure almost anything and everything, I am sure there is alot of different setups. I love this freedom!
Yeah, I know :-)
I often plan my geocaching just by checking the icons, not even open details until arriving parking spot.
Locus give users the options to configure almost anything and everything, I am sure there is alot of different setups. I love this freedom!
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