Lab caches for BadgeGen belt ?

Question

We can see a badge for found lab caches, so it seems BadgeGen is counting in also Lab caches. Then, on the other hand for the BadgeGen belt points, there is e.g. one item scoring 2 points per cache type hidden. In here, I do not see a hidden lab (adventure lab) would have an impact, so it seems they are not included. For the sake of consistency, it would be good to have lab caches included  here as well (or then totally excluded).

Comments

Last time this was discussed, it turned out this is a limitation of Geocaching API -- they do not list which lab caches was hidden by whom so they are not visible in the hidden tab either. I do not think anything changed there since that time.

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Thanks. That would be a logical explanation. This info is thus visible within geocaching.com statistics bot not available to project-gc or any other external services due to lack of that info in the API. Perhaps it can be raised as a request.

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Right. On geocaching com, this is also very new as I do not remember seeing that in the hides last time I checked. Moreover the sum really does not match as it still says I have 10 hidden, while I it is 15 with lab caches:
https://www.geocaching.com/p/default.aspx?tab=geocaches#profilepanel
This is common procedure from groundspeak that they first make something available on their website and delay sharing this information with API users (we waited for lab cache finds for years).

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Lab cache hides have been shown on one's profile on the geocaching web site for several years.

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I came to post the exact same thing, so I'd like to see lab hides included too, when/if possible.

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I have a similar problem on Geocaching dot com. It indicates I have 52 owned caches, but with Labcaches the total should be 57. I have checked some of my acquaintances stats, and theirs seem to include the labcaches. I am wonderring if it depends on the number of logs generated by other cachers?

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It is also affecting streak calculations for the BadgeGen belt.  My gc.com stats shows 338 day streak, while BadgeGen shows only 225.

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That seems to be since you haven't selected for Lab caches to be included in the settings on your Profile stats page.

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Hi, I followed the discussion about the API limitations. I think this will not be an easy one but as a workaround, couldn't there be a LAB owner page in project-gc where every LAB cache owner can enter his owned LABs (including the link that can be copied from the LAB-creator)? project-gc could take the data directly from there and it would at least fix the Number of hides inconsistency and the cache type hidden information.

Answer 1

As mentioned by Jakuje "this is a limitation of Geocaching API -- they do not list which lab caches was hidden by whom so they are not visible in the hidden tab either".

So I think we have to wait until GC HQ is including Labcaches into GC.com. With this a Labcache gets (I think) a GC code. With this GC code it would be possible to get all the information with the GC-PGC API interface. As a GCcode (I think) is a key in PGC, PCG can do all the statistics like, hidden,, owner, country etc etc.

So we perhaps have to wait some mor month:

"Geocaching President Bryan Roth just said on the Geocaching Vlogger's Youtube Gathering from July 15th that Adventure Labs will likely be on the Geocaching.com site by the end of this year.       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrUMEpSfF8  "

Comments

The GC code in itself is not critical (we include lab cache finds without lab caches having GC codes), but we can't include lab cache hides as long as Geocaching HQ do not provides us with that information via the API that we are using.

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Think (and hope) this will be possible when GC includes/integrates Labcaches much better than now within GC. Then (I hope) it will just a matter of time the API is provided with additional data for PGC. So we all hope :-)

Answer 2

I attempted to search for anything regarding BadgGen belt and found a question I posted asking if it was going to be updated.  Take a look at the following thread: https://project-gc.com/qa/?qa=23046/belts-will-the-belts-section-badgegen-undergo-updates-future&show=23046#q23046.

When the time comes that the plan to update the belts is addressed, I would certainly bring this question up since it is a valid concern.  What I can't answer is if the possibility can be implemented considering the limited data associated with lab caches.  Groundspeak may be working on that as well so only time will tell.