DT Loop Filter

[rustywa]

Whenever I'm in a new area, I try to focus on those caches that will help me get the next loop of my DT grid. Sometimes I use project-gc for this but since I don't have a premium membership for this site, I'm limited to the next loop while my goal is a few loops away. As a work around I've tried two things:

1. Note which combinations are missing from my DT goal and create a filter for each missing goal. I then highlight all the filtered caches to mark them. Once I've manually gone through all combinations, the highlighted caches are the ones I would need to get.
2. Create a separate program that looks at my online DT stats and loads a GPX file. It then adds a UserFlag to those caches that would satisfy a missing DT combination. Upon loading that modified GPX file into Cachly, the highlighted caches again note the ones I should get.

Both of these options are time consuming, require an internet connection and tie up the UserFlag field. I would love to have a filter that either shows me the caches that have the missing DT combinations for the n-th round. The current DT matrix could preferably be taken from my profile or manually entered on for instance a grid with checkboxes.

[Nic Hubbard]

You would have to show me a bit more about this. I am not familiar with DT grid.

[ChrisDen]

Not sure if this is possible as it will require you to have all your finds stored on Cachly. 

[Team DEMP]

Nic - Not sure of your GC profile so I used rragan (congrats on find #5000) as that should work for you and look the same for me when I describe it. Regarding this specific thread, I'm not interested in it being handled in Cachly but wanted to explain this. 

If you go to https://www.geocaching.com/p/default.aspx?guid=744a4c8e-9c58-4e68-bb57-62576570320a&tab=stats#profilepanel you should see rragan's profile & stats. When you view this page, scroll down to the Difficulty / Terrain grid which is 9x9. A goal is to fill the grid out by finding at least 1 of each of the 81 squares that cover every combination of difficulty/terrain ratings. 

The grid shows the # of caches found in each combination. Completing the "challenge" would show at least 1 cache in each square. "Looping" is finding all 81 x2, x3, x4, etc. If you look at the grid for rragan when I posted this response, you'd see that each square has at least a 2 in it, so he's found all 81 twice. To find all 81 x3, he'd need to log another cache in every square D/T combination that currently shows a 2.

You can easily see the next "loop" but what was requested in the initial post is to look beyond the next loop and look at ones that are in loop+1 & loop+2. 

[Bolling]

Thanks TeamDemp. I didn't know what looping was either. 

Personally, this isn't the type of development path I'd prefer to see Cachly take. I think there is already a big list of more widely useful items. No offense to @rustywa  

[Nic Hubbard]

Thanks. Yeah, I feel that this is a very specialized type of feature request. We need to include much more widely used features as @Bolling said.

[hidegoseek]

35 minutes ago, Bolling said:

Personally, this isn't the type of development path I'd prefer to see Cachly take. 

 

I agree.  There are excellent apps and online tools for the specialized stuff, e.g. iCaching and project-gc.  I don't expect, or want, Cachly as the 'be all end all' geocaching app that gets so bloated that its functionality suffers.  I view it as a tool to be used in the field that should reliably perform each time I use it.  All those other fancy schmancy esoteric tasks are homework on a rainy day using a real computer.   For example, I use project-gc to create a gpx file of qualifying caches to complete the second loop of my fizzy grid.  That file now exists as an offline list on Cachly that I can easily reference when on a road trip.  No muss, no fuss.

[rragan]

Glad my stats could be of assistance. Yes loop 3 is on my task list and I have an offline list to work from. I can't say I ever would look 2 or 3 loops ahead except for Jasmer which is more opportunistic grabbing rather than planned trips for just that purpose. Cachly should aid in the execution of plans and cache finding but most planning belongs to other tools. 

[ChrisDen]

I agree. Go to Project GC answers see what DT you need and filter the offline list.

After filtering, highlight those and then you are good to go 

[rustywa]

I'm using iCaching but even there, with the elaborate filtering options, it is quite time consuming. Project-gc is the easiest by far but as I don't have a premium membership for that site (can't really justify it for just this feature) it becomes less helpful if there is only a single DT that I need for the next loop. If I was running Windows I might have just done this in GSAK but I'm in a pure Apple environment so iCaching is the next best thing for me.

What ChrisDen describes is my option 1. which works but it is slow AND it takes up the highlight flag so I can't use it for something else.

I agree it is somewhat of a special case but Cachly has changed my workflow a bit as well. With the speed and easy of getting caches in an area and exporting that to a GPX file, I no longer create pocket queries. Instead I get the caches in Cachly and export to GPX file to load onto the GPS. All the new functionality for filtering that was added in version 3 make Cachly really useful for me and it now replaced Geosphere as a standard tool. Plus I see more people completing their Fizzy and continuing to work on the next loop. From that perspective (and because feature requests are actually considered) I put in this request. If nobody has the same request it will sink down to the bottom anyway. There is no harm in asking :-)

[Nic Hubbard]

5 minutes ago, rustywa said:

There is no harm in asking :-)

Of course there is not! I love hearing suggestions.

I actually would still like to hear more about how you see this feature being implemented. I understand what @Team DEMP said about how it works, but I am still not wrapping my head around how you were hoping to have this implemented in Cachly. 

[Team DEMP]

@rustywa - if you were around a few months ago, some of the folks that replied in this thread were pretty tough on needed enhancements to replace their beloved Geosphere app functions they relied on. It's hard once you are used to an effective process to switch. I haven't popped over to the Geosphere forum lately to see how much complaining there is about Cachly not being Geosphere but I chuckle with how folks are sometimes whining about the tremendous effort the Cachly developer puts towards meeting their needs while they continue to complain. It got to the point where when a thread started here with "In Geosphere.." I just ignored it. :-D 
 
Anyway, it might be pretty tough to come up with an optimal solution for this for 2 reasons:
1) A source of info to use to determine the needed D/T combinations for each upcoming loop
2) Calling geocaching.com via the API for a series of D/T combinations which might not be a contiguous range. It might require calling geocaching with the lowest D/T combine through the highest D/T combo and then filtering out on the client end to limit to just what is needed on the nth loop.  This would cause a large number of cache requests to be made where possibly many are discarded.

As an example of #2, if you needed a 1/5 and a 5/1 as the remaining D/T combos for loop 12, the request would either need to be each unique combination or 1/1 through 5/5 and filter out the 79 D/T combos that didn't matter. if you go with unique calls for each D/T needed in the nth loop, you could make between 0 or 1 or 81 requests per loop. 

Maybe there's a sexier way to do it but these seem the obvious approaches. 

[rustywa]

From an end user perspective I saw two way to have this implemented: automatic or manual. From the back end, it is just like ChrisDem said, a consecutive application of D/T filters all OR-ed together. In the automatic mode, Cachly would be able to look at my online profile (as quoted earlier) and grab the data from the current D/T matrix. No need to keep all finds within Cachly. The user would have to provide the "loop number", which is the minimum amount of caches for each D/T combination. The matrix is then processed and each combination that has less finds than the "loop number" becomes an OR condition in the SELECT statement.

In the "manual" mode the user would provide a list of D/T combinations that should be filtered on. A specification in the form of 9x9 checkboxes would be sufficient for that. That's if this is implemented as a single "filter".

In iCaching it is possible to add multiple D/T combinations in a filter:

 

In this screenshot all caches that are either 3.5/4.5 or 5/3 .. 5/5 are selected. While this is full flexibility, it becomes more difficult to see what is included. The 9x9 checkboxes make things much clearer.

Again, I don't think the back-end is very difficult, the largest amount of time might be in the usability. That is not an argument in favour of this request but I hope this clears things up a bit.

 

[Bolling]

37 minutes ago, rustywa said:

From that perspective (and because feature requests are actually considered) I put in this request. If nobody has the same request it will sink down to the bottom anyway. There is no harm in asking :-)

I have to agree with you there. A developer who listens and no harm in asking. 

Yep I'm one of the Geosphere users TeamDemp mentioned although I try my best not to say "in Geosphere" although I'm sure I've been guilty. 

[rustywa]

As many before I came from Geosphere as well and it took time to switch to Cachly. With the introduction of the unified database and the filtering of offline lists, it now is a great replacement for Geosphere and like I said I switched over now (it has replaced the Geosphere icon on the home screen). Geosphere could never do the D/T filtering like I'm proposing as well but also my workflow was different then. I heavily relied on PQ's back then. Cachly has change that and I like this new freedom.

3 minutes ago, Team DEMP said:

Anyway, it might be pretty tough to come up with an optimal solution for this for 2 reasons:
1) A source of info to use to determine the needed D/T combinations for each upcoming loop
2) Calling geocaching.com via the API for a series of D/T combinations which might not be a contiguous range. It might require calling geocaching with the lowest D/T combine through the highest D/T combo and then filtering out on the client end to limit to just what is needed on the nth loop.  This would cause a large number of cache requests to be made where possibly many are discarded.

For 1) I'd be ok with a manual selection of the D/T's I need. These things don't change often and just selecting a couple of checkboxes manually is not a big thing. For 2), this is not really the workflow I'm advocating. I would filter all the caches that I have in an offline list for the D/T combinations that I need. I am not advocating to do the filtering on the live list as I know the API doesn't support that. So it is just a filtering on the offline list of caches.

[rragan]

Re DT looping. Here is what I do.

Generally, I know I'm not going to find much locally as I've consumed the hard to get ones already in an earlier loop. Therefore, I only worry about this when I go travelling. So if I'm off to Oregon and working on loop 3, I'll make a list of all DT combos showing a 2. Then I use the geocaching.com search filter for Oregon for only that combo. Using the map view, I  inspect those candidates near where I will go and add them to a list named OregonDT3. Rinse and Repeat for other needed DT combos. In the end, I have a bookmark list for all the needed DT combos I might try for on the trip. Import into Cachly and off I go. 

I could use Project-GC but I prefer to cherry pick as part of trip planning -- the same reason I don't use Caches Along A Route PQ. 

[ChrisDen]

I use Project-gc.com. 

Select the area I am going to and generate a GPX of the caches that cover the gaps. Import to Cachly and highlight them all. Then if you drive passed a highlighted cache you know it us one you need 

[Team DEMP]

Like @ChrisDen I use PGC but a different workflow, leveraging virtual GPS & bookmarks to exchange data.  I create a bookmark list on geocaching.com and a virtual GPS on PGC. I load up the virtual GPS and when I'm done, export to the bookmark list. Open cachly, retrieve the bookmarklist and save offline. 

If geocaching.com would allow the creation of a bookmark list via API, I can probably save a step or two. 

[hidegoseek]

35 minutes ago, ChrisDen said:

Select the area I am going to and generate a GPX of the caches that cover the gaps. Import to Cachly and highlight them all.

 

I've never had any luck with the highlight feature.  The highlights always disappeared the next time I opened Cachly.  (I don't use GSAK, so if the highlights are only from a GSAK file then maybe that's why.)  On my recent trip, I made a separate offline list called "highlight caches" so I wouldn't miss them.  

[Team DEMP]

4 minutes ago, hidegoseek said:

I've never had any luck with the highlight feature.  The highlights always disappeared the next time I opened Cachly. 

I don't often use it but it seemed to work for me. I just tried it again and opened an offline list, highlighted a couple of caches, went to live view, went back to the list and they were still highlighted. I closed cachly and relaunched Cachly, selected the offline list and the caches still retained highlighting. I opened a cache, refreshed it from the live view and it still maintained the highlight. 

Is this reproducible?

[rragan]

2 hours ago, Team DEMP said:

Like @ChrisDen I use PGC but a different workflow, leveraging virtual GPS & bookmarks to exchange data.  I create a bookmark list on geocaching.com and a virtual GPS on PGC. I load up the virtual GPS and when I'm done, export to the bookmark list. Open cachly, retrieve the bookmarklist and save offline. 

If geocaching.com would allow the creation of a bookmark list via API, I can probably save a step or two. 

I sometimes take this route when other tools like Map Compare need to be employed. 

[hidegoseek]

2 hours ago, Team DEMP said:

I don't often use it but it seemed to work for me. I just tried it again and opened an offline list, highlighted a couple of caches, went to live view, went back to the list and they were still highlighted. I closed cachly and relaunched Cachly, selected the offline list and the caches still retained highlighting. I opened a cache, refreshed it from the live view and it still maintained the highlight. 

Is this reproducible?

2

I just tried it and it appears to work now.  My previous attempts to use highlights were several versions ago (2.x something) when I had problems.  I've just marked some for this weekend and will try it out.  Thanks.  

[ChrisDen]

4 hours ago, hidegoseek said:

I just tried it and it appears to work now.  My previous attempts to use highlights were several versions ago (2.x something) when I had problems.  I've just marked some for this weekend and will try it out.  Thanks.  

There was an issue with overwriting the highlight indicator but that was resolved a while ago