FAQ Update - Pocket Queries

Known Issues with PQ As of Jul 17 2009 Using "Home" Coordinates and selecting a geographical region (like a state or country) causes strange errors. Instead, use zip code, a nearby cache, or type in the actual coordiantes of your home. It is completely possible to set up "mutually exclusive" criteria, meaning that no single cache can POSSIBLY match the criteria (for example: "I have found" and "I haven't found" - no one cache matches that).

Simplest Setup The simplest version of the pocket query puts the least amount of restrictions on what caches you'll receive. Each criteria you add is MORE restrictive, so for your first PQ, set up a non-restrictive list of caches. The set up to the right in the light green is how I would suggest setting up a standard first time PQ. It will give you a list of the 500 closest caches to a set of coordinates that you don't own and haven't found, and ones that are currently active (not disabled). It will also look up to 100 miles from the center coordinates. If there are more than 500 caches in that radius, the results will be the CLOSEST 500 caches. Once you've got the criteria to the right set, click on "Submit Information" and let the page refresh. When the page reloads, you'll get this message: Thanks! Your query has been modified You can preview the search on the nearest cache page. Click the preview to see how many caches you'll be getting. If it's "no caches" - check the criteria again. Once you're happy with the results, check a day of the week to run (best to select yesterday, today and tomorrow) and the results should be e-mailed to you within minutes. Days to Generate Don't select a day to run (yet) Change to "Run This Query Every Week..." Show Me 500 Caches (that's the max) Of Any type Any Container That I haven't found I don't own Is Active And Terrain unchecked Difficulty unchecked Within Countries unchecked States unchecked From Origin (unchecked) My Home Coordinates Leave unchecked (problem in system) Waypoint name (OK to use) Postal Code (OK to use) By Coordinates (Best to use) Placed During (unchecked) Attributes to Include (leave alone) Attributes to Exclude (leave alone) Output to (leave alone) To see the setup in a graphical format, Click Here or the image to the right. More Complex Talk about AND and OR, and how to choose criteria First, we need a lesson in computer language and logic. In the image to the right are two major groups of objects - let's say red berries and blue berries. There's also a group of hybrid purple berries, which can be considered red berries. That same group of hybrid purple berries can also be considered blue berries. In computer and mathematical logic, if you state that you want blue berries AND red berries, you'll get back the results that match BOTH sets of criteria - only the purple berries. In other words, using "AND" makes it so that each individual result in your much match ALL of the criteria you specify. If you want to truly capture the entire set of berries, the computer/math logic word is "OR" - as in the berries that are red OR blue. That will give you red, blue and purple berries. While this may seem strange to bring up in pocket queries, understanding this is essential to getting exactly what you're looking for. The single biggest mistake in PQs is putting too many limiting criteria on the data, and getting no results. If you look for caches that you HAVE FOUND AND caches that you HAVEN'T FOUND, you'll get back a result of no caches. Using AND means that the individual cache must meet both criteria, and you can't have a single cache that you both have found and haven't found. So, what do you want? Caches within 50 miles that you haven't found? Remember that there's an upper limit of 500 caches returned in the PQ. In densely cached areas, this might be a problem. Don't like locationless caches? If you're doing a proximity search from a set of coordinates they shouldn't show up, but if you're doing a search by a region (state, country), they might show up unless you specifically exclude them. We're going to use a hypothetical query for the purposes of education. We're going to specifically look around my home coordinates (roughly N 41° 38.500 W 088° 13.500) and look for nearby (within 50 miles) new (placed in the last month) single stage caches that I haven't found, that also contain a Travel Bug.

From the /Pocket page, click Create a new query and you'll have a page that looks like the image to the right. Fill in the new name (something you'll recognize in an e-mail) Do NOT select any days to run (yet). This has to do with testing the data prior to getting it e-mailed to you. Don't click "Only run once" (yet). This has to do with testing the data prior to getting it e-mailed to you. Show me X number of caches. The maximum number is 500. I usually set that to 500 and use offline software to limit by proximity. Of... (type) If you're looking for ANY caches, select ANY and you're done with this section. For the purposes of our hypothetical search, we're looking for single stage caches - which would include Traditional OR Project APE OR Letterbox Hybrids. Virtuals won't have Travel Bugs Event Caches aren't single stage caches (but they can have Bugs) Earthcaches are akin to virtuals Locationless caches won't be proximity searches (and I don't think they can hold travel bugs) Multi-caches aren't single stage caches Unknown caches typically fall into the multi-stage aspect of being puzzles Webcams are akin to virtuals and won't have travel bugs sitting in a container CITOs events aren't single stage caches.
Scrolling down... Any container that's fine to leave as is. That (and) Here's where it gets tricky. Remember that every one of these that you click limits the data MORE. Hypothetically, we're looking at... Caches I haven't found I don't own Have Travel Bugs Is Active Terrain and Difficulty For our demonstration, you can leave these as is. If you're looking to limit it, use the drop downs.
This is the proximity or region section. For the purposes of demonstration, we're going to do a proximity search. I'll talk about regional searches in the section on Multiple Regions. Leave Within unchecked for this example. From origin Since I know the coordinates that I'm searching from, I can click the By Coordinates and enter in N 41° 38.500 W 088° 13.500 Within a radius of... Again - our hypothetical was for 50 miles, so I filled it in and made sure it said mi (miles) not km (kilometers).
Attributes This is murky at best. Read the section on Attributes and PQs. For the most part, leave it blank unless you REALLY know what you're doing.
Almost there... Placed During Since we were specifically looking for recently placed caches (within the last month), we can use the drop down to change it to that. Make sure to click the radial circle and choose the drop-down for Last Week, Last Month or Last Year. If you just want caches placed in a certain date range, select that radial button and enter the date range. Unless you want it to go somewhere else - leave it as this account's e-mail address. As a general rule, I would ALWAYS leave the format as GPX - as it carries more information. Almost all of the programs that are out there to open LOC files can open GPX files, and if you have something like GSAK or Watcher to open the GPX file, you'll get more bang for your buck. Compress files into *.zip format (recommended) Oh yea. Check that. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will thank you. If you don't check it, you risk not getting your PQ because it's too big of a file, or because your ISP mistakenly thinks the text file has a virus.

Attributes and PQs Some things to remember: Each cache can only select up to 10 attributes. Most Attributes have a setting of "Attribute=YES" and a setting of "Attribute="NO" (for example: Dogs Allowed Yes or Dogs Allowed No) but some are only "YES" (for example: Boat Required). These are the attributes that only have the ability to choose "YES" or to leave it blank: Special Equipment Conditions Hazards Facilities Access Fee Rapelling Boat Scuba Flashlight Wading Swimming Livestock Abandoned Mines Snakes Ticks Thorns Falling Rocks, Cliff Hunting Dangerous Areas Public Transportation All other attributes have either a YES or a NO or will not be indicated.     examples:  Kid Friendly Yes: Kid Friendly No: Dogs Allowed Yes: Dogs Allowed No: Dogs Allowed implies that the park specifically allows dogs and that the cache owner has thought that this is a pertinent piece of information. The cache owner has specified that as one of the 10 attributes available to their cache. Dogs Not Allowed implies that the park specifically prohibits dogs and that the cache owner has thought that this is a pertinent piece of information. The cache owner has specified that as one of the 10 attributes available to their cache. Niether - If the owner does not specify whether dogs are allowed or not, the owner just didn't think that this was important enough data to be included. You cannot infer from this whether they are or are not allowed. Some notes on the Geocaching.com site: Excluding Attributes Previously, the "Exclude" attributes was buggy. After thorough testing, the selection process is fixed. Choosing "Attribute=No" on attributes that do not have a "=No" On the PQ Generator, users can choose to include or exclude attributes set to NO on attributes that don't allow a NO setting. For example, users can filter on Boat Required=No, but on each cache you can only indicate Boat Required=YES or leave it blank. Including Boat Required=NO will give you an empty result every time. Selecting more attributes to include seems to limit the data further. Selecting Dogs allowed may reduce the results by 25%. Additionally selecting Handicapped Accessible seems to grab only caches that have Dogs Allowed AND have Handicapped Accessible as attributes. Since any one cache can only have up to 10 attributes selected, selecting more than 10 attributes to include on the PQ generator will result in no caches. The PQ Generator also allows you to select mutually exclusive criteria Users can choose to include Dogs Allow=YES, and also on the same query exclude Dogs Allow=YES. Since no one cache can have both, the PQ will result in no caches. Attributes are not included in GPX files When attributes when live in January of 2005, Jeremy posted this quick FAQ on attributes, which included this statement: Will attributes be available in Pocket Queries? Pocket Queries will not contain the attribute information until we update the specification for the GPX to allow this info. We did create an attribute feature in 1.1 but we'll most likely change it to another version to accomodate some new ideas. This feature has not been implemented as of July 2009. Attributes are NOT included in the GPX file and cannot be sorted by GSAK or other offline software. The Pocket Query Generator has the ability on its page to select which attributes to INCLUDE and which attributes to EXCLUDE. But understanding how it all works is a detailed lesson in logic. For our example, we'll look at the "Dogs Allowed" attribute. Right now, there are 244 caches within 10 miles of my home. 244 total caches Leaving the dogs attribute out of both the INCLUDE and the EXCLUDE will give you all of the caches, regardless of this attribute. That's how I got 244. Result 244 Include If you choose to INCLUDE only caches where the Dogs Allowed=YES attribute exists, then you will get a list of caches where the owner has explicitly indicated that dogs are allowed. In my example of 10 miles around my house, there are only 56 caches with the Dogs Allowed=YES attribute on them. Result 56 Include If you choose to INCLUDE only caches where the Dogs Allowed=NO attribute exists, then you will get a list of caches where the owner has explicitly indicated that dogs are prohibited. In my example of 10 miles around my house, there are only 3 caches with the Dogs Allowed=NO attribute on them. Result 3 Exclude If you choose to EXCLUDE caches where the Dogs Allowed=YES attribute exists, then you will get a list of caches that specifically do NOT have the Dogs Allowed=YES. In my example of 244 caches around my home, and 56 caches with the Dogs Allowed=YES attribute on them, that would leave 188 caches. Result 188 Exclude If you choose to EXCLUDE caches where the Dogs Allowed=NO attribute exists, then you will get a list of caches that specifically do NOT have the Dogs Allowed=NO. In my example of 244 caches around my home, and 3 caches with the Dogs Allowed=NO attribute on them, that would leave 241 caches. Result 241 The key point to notice is that including Dogs Allowed=NO is not the same and excluding Dogs Allowed=YES. Back to the top. Multiple Regions If you're doing a search for regions instead of proximity to a set of coordinates (every cache that is in Rhode Island combined with every cache in Connecticut), you can choose the State radial button, and click the first state and scroll the little list until you find the next state. Then hold down your CTRL key and click the second state. If you want ALL states, click the first one (Alabama) and scroll down to the last one and hold the SHIFT key to click on that one (Yukon Territory). Same thing is true for countries.

• Geocaching.com makes it so that you can "share" criteria of Pocket Queries without sharing the results. For example, here's the setup for the hypothetical query we just created above. Right now it only returns two caches for me. If you "submit" this query, it will become one of your saved ones. Pretty cool way to share setup.
  
  
• If you're looking to get more than 500 caches (e.g. you're in a cache dense area), you can split the PQ up by date ranges. Make the first one Jan 1 2000 - Jun 30 2003 (or whatever date works) and the second one Jul 1 2003 (again, play with it, but make it one day later than the ending date of the other query) to Dec 31 2010. Splitting them up by date placed makes it so that each query uses it's maximum potential to grab data. While GSAK and Watcher will both eliminate duplicate data, why have a query pull extra data only to be eliminated? Some cachers try to use overlapping circles plotted out from Microsoft Streets and Trips. While that works for grabbing caches along a route, for a standard query of your home area it seems inefficient.
  
  Here's what the Chicago area looks like with my PQs (Oct 22 2007):
  

  Date Placed Between	Caches in PQ
  2000-Jan-01 - 2004-Jul-24	473
  2004-Jul-25 - 2005-Aug-29	476
  2005-Aug-30 - 2006-Apr-18	456
  2006-Apr-19 - 2006-Oct-17	456
  2006-Oct-18 - 2007-Apr-06	465
  2007-Apr-07 - 2007-Jul-31	456
  2007-Aug-01 - 2010-Dec-31	334
  Total	3,116

  
  
  I use 6 PQs (over a course of two days). I haven't updated the date ranges in quite a while, so the groups starting April 2006 and October 2006 have had quite a few archive. I could rearrange them, but it's not a problem until that last line approaches 500.
  
  I calculated and mapped these results. To capture the same data with just radius circles, I would need 10 PQs, each Pocket Query gathering about 480-490 caches. So I'd be pulling roughly 4,800 - 4,900 caches and throwing out 1,684 to 1,784 duplicates.
  
  If you used the multiple radii method, you would also have to constantly montior each radius and make sure that they don't hit 500 caches. With the date range method, I only need to change it when the most recent set of caches max's out.
  
  
  
  
• I rarely (if ever) use the option Only run once, as once the query is run, it is deleted from my list of queries. I'd much rather manually delete the query after I've secured the data in my in-box and on my hard drive. To delete a query, go into the edit query function, and at the bottom where you clicked "Submit" is also a button for "Delete This Query"
  
  
• Need a sample of a GPX file? Clayjar has one at his site but it's almost 1MB in size. Even thought it's extension is XML, it will still open in GSAK, Watcher and EasyGPS. Here's a GPX file for the two caches in the result from Jan 5 2005 that met the criteria for the PQ we hypothetically set up.
  
  

Last Updated: July 17 2009