The last several weeks have been full of rumors around Garmin’s foray into the geocache listing business; a place where Groundspeak’s geocaching.com site is king.  I found it hard to believe at first but as more details became available it seemed inevitable that Garmin would end up with its own site, putting it in direct competition with its (former?) partner Groundspeak.  Much of this became evident around the time Garmin released the chirp, apparently without any forewarning to Groundspeak, a sign that things weren’t well between the two companies.

Today Garmin officially launched OpenCaching.com which they claim is “a completely free online community for creating, sharing and finding geocaches around the world”.  Given that many people pay $30/year to Groundspeak for access to their database, this will immediately get the attention of those who are looking for a less expensive option.

The real interesting part may not be the cost however.  Garmin seems to approaching this as a truly open listing site.  Some key quotes from Garmin’s release:

  • “OpenCaching.com will work with any device or software package that can read GPX files, regardless of manufacturer”
  • “Everyone – regardless of experience or numbers of caches found or placed – is welcome to the same information and invited to get as involved as they want.”
  • “Also, developers can access the OpenCaching.com database through an API, and cache owners can share their information on other sites through the Creative Commons license”

I like the approach — let’s hope that Garmin lives up to their hardware independent and open API promises.  After perusing the site this morning there are capabilities to download a GPX file containing any cache, however the “Send To GPS” function is only supported on Garmin devices. I suspect to see a lot of “optimization” for Garmin GPS devices and products like chirp even though other manufacturers’ GPS devices won’t be excluded.

Garmin is making it very easy to import cache data from Groundspeak, Terracaching and other OpenCaching sites to their listing server.  I exported my owned caches from GSAK this morning and in a few minutes they were published and available on OpenCaching.com.  Similarly I was able to upload all of my find logs and have them listed on OpenCaching.com, however, the logs merely reference a blank cache page until the cache owner decides to upload his/her owned caches.  Uploading non-owned cache descriptions would violate Groundspeak’s Terms of Use.

My overall impression is that the site is clean, uncluttered and easy to navigate.  However there quite a few bugs and many features missing that geocachers have come to expect.  Some of these missing features include:

  • Trackables (travel bugs, geocoins)
  • Photos in logs or cache descriptions
  • iPhone, Android or mobile site
  • Log/cache publication notifications
  • Fieldnote import of field logs from the GPS device
  • Events
  • Temporarily disable owned geocache
  • User profiles (links are broken)
  • Ability to modify delete logs

Garmin has instead focused on a new rating system.  They have introduced a well thought-out and concise method called the bullseye to review four key attributes of any cache:  size, difficultly, terrain and “awesomeness”.  The first three are well understood by all geocachers and the last is Garmin’s way to allow cachers to rate caches they find.  Groundspeak has been hesitant to provide this feature so it will be interesting to see if this gives them the incentive they need to finally do it.

As an experienced geocacher I find that the fact that there are no reviewers for OpenCaching.com submissions very refreshing.  I know several excellent cache hiders around these parts who left the game because they have been frustrated by the long and increasingly cumbersome process of reviewing caches at Groundspeak.  But I am concerned that new geocachers will place caches where they shouldn’t (think more bomb scares and sensitive terrain rip-up) and that hurts the game for everyone.  I would like to see some sort of peer review until you’ve found/placed a certain number of caches.

I like the approach Garmin has taken: using the Creative Commons license for cache listings, a hardware independent means for uploading and downloading cache data to your GPS and providing an open API to the database.  But in my estimation they will have to overcome two big hurdles:

  • Developing a much more robust and feature rich site.  This takes effort — we”ll have to see if they are willing to support that type of sustained development cost
  • Lots of high quality cache data.  Without caches the site will go the way of other listing sites.  Garmin needs to have incentives for people to cross list and create new, high quality caches

Regardless of how Garmin does with OpenCaching.com I hope this is a major wake up call for Groundspeak to provide more open access to their database and improve the overall quality of geocaches listed on geocaching.com.  With a cash-rich player like Garmin looking to rapidly expand into the lucrative and more profitable outdoor handheld GPS market I would be concerned.

Follow us on twitter for more updates on OpenCaching.com and let us know what you think!

Related posts:

  1. GPSFix Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-12-12
  2. GPSFix Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-21
  3. GPSFix Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-12-26