Times have changed, and with that comes forced obsolescence.
For many years, GSAK has been a faithful companion to our Geocaching adventures. I could filter and organize caches, send those caches to our Magellan eXplorist GC and Garmin Nüvi GPSr units. It was fun to analyze our find data with the FindStatGen macro and see our “rewards” with the BadgeGen macro.
Starting last year, my Magellan eXplorist GC GPSr units would no longer communicate with GSAK. I am assuming that something perhaps driver-related must have been clobbered on the Windows side of things. I can still connect the GPSr units by USB cable and browse them as “storage devices”. The only way that I can load them with caches any more is by browsing the device and copying any GPX files directly to the “geocache” directory on the device.
When my last Garmin Nüvi died early in 2018, the available choices to replace it were very slim. I settled on the Garmin Drive 51LM (and yes, it was a “settled on” because, despite several slight enhancements, I don’t feel it is as well made overall as our Nüvis had been over the years).
GSAK had the ability to download custom POIs to the Nüvi GPSrs, but there are no plugins available to do the same for the Drive models. I highly doubt that there are any programmers out there that would invest the time in creating that macro, and it is beyond the realm of my abilities to do so!
With the ability to load POIs and GPX files to the devices no longer an option with GSAK, the other reasons that I liked to use the program are not significant enough to keep me using it.
With the advanced Pocket Query features available now on geocaching.com, I can do most of my “sorting” before I even download the GPX, so that when I run and download the PQ I can just extract the GPX directly to to GPSr.
As for the visual statistics, the Geocaching User Profile has one option for displaying them. I also came across Project GC, the format of which is based off of the FindStatGen and BadgeGen macros that have been found in GSAK all along. Project GC offers additional features, like the ability to search for those caches that will help to “fill in” the missing pieces to complete grids or other challenges.
So, it has been fun, but the time has come to bid adieu to our old friend GSAK.