Geomate Jr. Geocaching GPS Update Kit

I received the update cable for my Geomate JR. as a Christmas gift. The cable itself is sturdy and well made and has a little red light that lights up when you have a good connection between the GPS and your computer. But the functionality is all in the connection.First I created a login account at apisphere.com. Then configured and installed the MAC (beta) version of the software which requires a Firefox browser re-configuration and a small software download and install. You end up with two Firefox extensions. After a reboot I logged into the account, connected the update cable and Geomate Jr., turned on the GPS and the Geomate Jr was "flashed" with the latest firmware. After that I selected the generic geocache update (there are regional specific upates as well) and my Geomate Jr. was updated from 6/9/10 to 1/6/11. The process was easy and straight forward for my system which is: Mac OS X Version 10.6.5 and Firefox 3.6.13. (Note: I tried the same on a Mac with OS 10.5.x / Firefox 3.6.13 and the update process DOES NOT WORK, as another reviewer stated.)I tried the working update (Mac OS 10.6.5) at work and these changes to the Firefox browser on the Mac throw red flags for some network security scanning programs. Network security scanning programs may think there is a password stealer on your system. If you trust Apisphere, then have at it, but I don't know what else you are opening yourself up to. I have since un-installed the Geomate Firefox extensions on the Mac and reverted back to my original browser settings. I ended up having to dig deep into the browser extension configurations (Library/Application Support/FireFox/Profiles/extensions/etc...) to completely remove the Geomate extensions from my Mac system.Although I got the Geomate Mac (beta) version to work on my Mac system, I hope in the future Apisphere can come up with extensions for Firefox or some other application entirely for the Mac, that doesn't behave suspiciously according to security guidelines.I also tried the updater on Windows 7/Internet Explorer as well (I have a VM running on my Mac). It was a simpler process and worked flawlessly. However, again I was notified by the IT security guys of "suspicious" activity. I was told that I have a password stealer on my system and that I should clean my system. The warnings came every time, like clockwork, after I made an update on my GPS. Regardless it was a somewhat easier process to make updates on Windows 7 than on Mac OS.Once you have an account and with your Geomate Jr connected to your computer with the update cable, you can either choose to update the existing nation-wide geocaches on the GPS, or select either a Western or Eastern US area and get more specific geocaches, or select specific caches from geocaching dot com and enter them into an update list manually. These manually entered caches can be any size or difficulty level and are tacked on to whatever update type you select. However, if you select the UPDATE from just the manually entered update page, it will ONLY put those specific caches on the GPS. I had about 6 manually entered caches and when I did the update from that page I was surprised to find ONLY those 6 on the GPS when I turned it on again. (I guess this would be a nice feature if you had a special event for Scouts or something where you wanted to flash your GPS(s) with only a handful of specific caches). For my final selection, I chose the Western US update and plugged in a few manual caches that I knew existed in my area but were not showing up on my GeoMate Jr. I should be good to go for many more treasure hunts now!The update cable works great and the online updates allow adding more geocaches to the GeoMate Jr. (5 stars minus 2 stars for spotty Mac support and suspiciously behaving software in general).The beauty of the Geomate Jr. with the update kit has always been not having to load caches into it one at a time. You simply select the part of the country you want and get ALL caches in that area (with a few exceptions). Then you could go outside knowing you could turn your Geomate on anywhere in that selected part of the country and start geocaching. It doesn't get any simpler than that.Another note: Once in a while when I plug in the update kit along with my Geomate Jr. the Geomate sometimes goes to a completely blank screen... like the batteries are completely dead. And it subsequently refuses to turn back on. This may have something to do with the sequence of what you plug in and when you turn the Geomate Jr. on. At any rate, don't panic. Provided the batteries are not dead, simply remove the batteries and re-insert. The Geomate should turn on again. Unfortunately, I threw away a perfectly good set of batteries when this first happened to me, but that's also how I learned that simply removing the batteries and re-inserting fixes the problem.UPDATE 7/18/2012There was concern that the GEOMATE JR. was no more and that support for updates went the way of the dodo along with it. Support was down for a few months, but Apisphere, the company who made the Geomate, was bought by Brand44 and you can use the update website again. I recently updated my Geomate Jr. on Window 7 from the website and my Geomate was flashed with caches as of 7/18/2012. Long live the Geomate Jr. and update kit!

This is an update to my first review, below...Apisphere responded to my email concern, same day, and on a Saturday at that. Using the update kit required us to turn off Norton Utilities to run the update. It worked and we were off and running. It's been muddy in our area so we have simply stopped by a place that we know there are caches and tested out our new Geomate Jr. Worked like a charm. Gave us cache size, terrain, distance, and pointed us in the right direction. We can't wait to put it to field use.Original post: We received our Geomate Jr and update kit from Amazon quickly. No problem there. The Geomate Jr looks like it would be perfect for us to use with our children for geocaching, however, not being able to update with the current geocache inventory could be disappointing. We "successfully" uploaded the software on three of our PCs, two with Windows 7 and one with Vista. When connecting the Geomate Jr to the the computer with the update cable, Windows STOPS WORKING. So essentially this purchase does not work for us. We are waiting for a response from Apisphere's Help Desk. Depending on the response, I will either update my post or return the products. This could have been avoided had the versions of Windows been disclosed...they tell you up front that it doesn't work with Apple.

I agree that this is a necessary accessory for the Geomate Jr. The Geomate Jr. works fine without it, but it can be kind of annoying if you know there is a cache nearby, but you can't find it because it's not included on the original product.The best thing about this update kit is that you can update as often as you want with no limits. One thing that should be noted is that you cannot load "all" of the caches in the U.S. onto the geomate jr at once. You have to select a region (roughly 1/2 of the U.S.) and it will load all "traditional" caches up to a difficulty level of 4. Considering that this gps is designed for kids, that should be more than enough!I am also thankful to the previous reviewer who noted that Norton had to be turned off to install the update. That happened to be the case for me, too, and I knew what to do because I had read the review.I bought the Geomate Jr. first and then ordered the update kit a few days later. If you're considering the Geomate Jr., you might as well buy both at once, because once you try it you will want it. :)

I was excited to get both the Geomate Jr and the update kit for less than the cost of the Geomate alone in our local Target store. The update kit was fairly painless to use (had issues with the beta version of Firefox, but worked flawlessly with IE7). We were able to locate a couple Geocaches we knew about but had never found, and a couple of them were fairly new, so it's obvious the update worked great.My mom and I love Geocaching, so I purchased this bundle for our joint use. Looking forward to many fun adventures with it this summer!

This update kit is no longer supported and will not update your geomate jr. I purchased it and returned it as I could not use it. So I now have the geomate jr. with no way for updates. I have found that some caches on the geocaching website are not on my geomate jr. It's too bad that the update kit is no longer supported because I found the ease of use of the unit is something that I really like. However it will eventually be useless without the update kit.

I was so happy to recieve this item that I could barely open the box! It was well-packaged, and the product was intact upon recieving it. I took it out and immediately used it to update my GeoMate. It was VERY easy to use! The only downer is that the GeoMate list of points isn't as concise as the geocaching.com website's point list. Honestly, I was a beginner geocacher, and my focus was more on the actual find, rather than what points are part of a series, etc. so the lack of being able to enter coordinates didn't really affect me. Overall, this is a great starting tool to help introduce someone to the fun and challenging world of geocaching!