New Tool request - Latitute/Longitude Minutes finder.

Question

Hi there.

Thanks for bringing in that new '360 deg from home' tool. The programming for that must have been a bit 'interesting'!

Could we have a similar tool that can identify missing minutes of either Latitude or Longitude across a country?

There are 2 challenges within NZ (GC5HXCV and GC7YQZ8) that I would like to complete. The Challenge Checkers can provide missing minutes that I can then target, but it would be great if I could see those missing minutes on a map like you can with the 360 degree tool.

Thank you.

Comments

At the risk of being seen as 'self-promoting', am I really the only one interested in such a feature?
I would be genuinely surprised if that was the case, but maybe que sera sera?

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LOL, you are certainly not "'self promoting'"in my view, however, I do know from past reading that resource are limited.  Yes, direct from the Admin's (owner) desk.  I suspect that to track minutes for millions of caches it would be prohibitive when trying to render.  Response time is a priority especially for paid members.  I would not want to start it and have to step away for an hour only to come back and find it is still rendering.

Sorry, I didn't want to post this back when you first asked because I figured someone would pick up the baton and run with it.  If I am wrong on my theory, I apologize.

Cheers!

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Hi TT,

Fair comment about the resources, although I think the programming aspect would be far easier to create than the 360 Deg from home tool as all caches have their minutes already recorded rather than having to calculate whether they fit into an particular arc calculated from an arbitrary location.

But if it's not a popular suggested feature, which judging from the lack of response it clearly isn't, then it's simply not going to happen. That's fine, it was just a suggestion :)

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To clarify what I meant by 'resources,' I was referring to processing time and people available to get the tool set up.  From my experience on this Q&A and all the different questions, answers, and comments I have read over the year, it seems that a lot of feature requests are on the To Do list. With only volunteers (not including the Admin) available to implement, it seems like it will take some time to happen.

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Again, you make a valid point. I can appreciate that a lot of what happens with PGC gets implemented on an Ad Hoc basis by volunteers. I have no issue with this, although it can be a little frustrating to make suggestions and receive absolute silence from any kind of official channel.
It's not that I expect any suggestion to be picked up, but it would be nice to know whether it's something that might at least be looked at. The way this forum currently stands, no-one has any way of knowing if a suggestion has even been seen by the 'right' people unless they leave a comment or an answer.

Answer 1

While having a tool to highlight caches within a specified range of longitude or latitude would be nice, tools > livemap does a pretty good job at providing the answers. Adjust the filters to exclude your finds, pick an area and hover the mouse over some caches. The cache coordinates are given at the bottom of the map. This can be quite a fast method to locate caches within a missing range.

Comments

can you be more specific how these coordinates will help you to check if the cache is in specific minute range? It is a lot of calculations.

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No calculations at all. The information is displayed right on the page. Most degree challenges ask you to find caches for each minute of a degree, eg each minute of 41 degrees south. The checker I wrote tells you what minutes you still need, and the Live Map shows the coordinates of the cursor. Just ignore the decimal component of the minutes. Scroll around the map till you get the right minute range then look around for suitable caches.

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Thanks for clarification. I misunderstood the question as it talked about the 360 degrees and then the minutes. Using minutes is indeed trivial to derive from the coordinates.

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Thanks tS, that's a very suitable work around.