gps in store malls

I've used in while walking around New York City walking thru the shopping district

Seems to me that this would probably not work. I think you'd lose the satellite when you went inside the mall.

And I REALLY doubt that any of the map companies go INSIDE the Mall.
SO......
If you did have a signal and you did have an address for the individual store, the directions probably would be: Go out the nearest exit and travel AROUND THE OUTSIDE and come back in.
Probably not what you had in mind.

This may work if there are plenty of skylights and as long as you are under them! However, when you move the signal probably would be lost!

When I turn my Garmin C530 on in the back room of our house it "thinks" that my location is at the house behind our house.. Apparently, this coordinate location is closer to my neighbor's house. So based on this wouldn't think this would work too well.

However, one with initiative and free time might want to create a "Pedestrian" or "Mall" POI file and have the coordinates be the doorway to the individual stores in the mall..(no walkway "streets" would be shown but you'd see the icons..so on second thought, maybe not a great idea after all..)

The mall idea won't work for this reason. All the POIs are located on the road (in the GPSr), not in the actual location of the mall.

It would be cool to have the mall to simulate a "false" GPS signal and give you an SD card so that you could find stores though.

And how it's constructed...

Here is one waypoint I recorded inside a mall:

N44.85508 W93.24270

That is the location of the former home plate of Metropolitan Stadium that once stood at the site of what is now the Mall of America. And a GPSr does work inside - the center court/amusement park area. But they are not a whole lot of good in the rest of the place.

[[Hi just wondering if anybody has ever used a gpx in store malls to fined stores like sport shop, food places that do not have addresses on them do you have to use the coordinates. thank you lucky]]

I have used mine walking. I have a flood control grassy area with sidewalks. I set a POI at the end of my walk. When I use my NUVI 200 in walkig mode, it directs me to the end point (POI) via the steets in the area. I suspect it would do the same thing if my POI were in a Mall.

Unless you have the ability to walk thru walls it will not work, since the walkways in the mall are not streets it will try to take you from lat/long to lat long as the crow flies when used in walking mode.

Maybe I'm using wrong terminology, but in California, we have a number of what I call outdoor malls. They often have quite meandering walkways, and intricate layouts. You can easily get so turned around that you you don't know what direction you are heading, and they can be quite large. I had never given any thought to using a GPS in that environment, but I think I'll try it. No more trying to search out a Directory signboard or an Information kiosk.

As for it not working because direct routing will try to take you through walls, I trust I'll be clever enough to figure out that I need to go to the next opening -- if you use a GPSr to find your car in a giant stadium parking lot, it shows a direct line to your car (in off-road mode), but you don't climb over cars.

Well, you'll get reception, but you're missing a very basic point of addresses.

The address of the mall itself and each of the stores is at the main street out front at the curb. Geocoding any of the store's addresses will get you to the main street out front, and no closer. With a large mall, the actual store could be quite a distance away, on the other side, etc.

Second, mall parking lots are not "official" streets so the entire mall just shows up as a big blank area on the map.

You would have to create POI's for each store yourself using a mall map and satellite view or by walking the mall and setting waypoints manually in front of each store. Having done that, your idea would work as discussed, with the route being shown as a straight line inside the mall from one point to the other.

Thank you's all for the difference replys I just was wondering if it would work. So thank you kindly Lucky

I like that idea of "bookmarking" your car when parking...whether it's a stadium parking lot, city street, shopping mall, etc. I'm sure most of us at one time or another have started to walk to our cars and said, "Now where did I park?"

Thanks.

Since you mention two different methodologies for performing my task, I'm wondering what I've done to make you presume/assume that I wasn't planning on using either one of them.

As for the parking lot thing, check out: http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/index.html#car5...

I wish I could take credit, but I found it among a number of other very interesting suggestions at: http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/index.html#car5...

Yeap been doing that for awhile now and it works great! It really saved me at the state fair this past year. The year before, it took me and my duaghter an hour to find the car after a very long day. This year, 5 minutes to walk str8 to the car.