POILoader maximum values for Proximity Alert?

I have used over 5000 feet (one mile) for a couple alerts. You need to read some of the FAQs on alerts. There are a lot of things to learn.
Alerts must be turned on in setup.
The POI must actually be on your route and not 100 feet off the road.
Those are the more common problems.

So,

If I get this right, the POI has to be on my route? For example, if the POI coordinate is in the parking lot 150 feet from the road, it will not sound. But, if the POI is right on the edge of the road it will sound... Am I correct?

BTW, I use a Nuvi 660

..that is right!

Check out Phil's great guide for more information about alerts.

Hornbyp's guide to setting alerts with POI Loader
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6764

It's important to understand how the proximity alerts work on Garmin auto units.

The alerts do NOT function as a radius, but rather they function as an "along the road/route" alert.

In order to get an alert several things must be true.

1. You must set an alert either through information in the file or via POI Loader being run in Manual Mode and an alert being manually entered.

2. Alerts must be enabled on your unit.

3. You must be traveling on the road on which the POI is located and traveling in the direction of the POI.

4. The POI must be sufficiently close to the road (typically 50 feet or less).

And to answer the question in the title, the figure that has been discussed in the past is that the limit is 37 miles. But no one seems to be sure if this is 100% accurate. Phil did some testing by inputting different distances and got mixed results.

I found out where that figure came from - it was in the POILoader 'Change Log'. But if you recall, 37 miles doesn't equate to 65,535 metres which is the actual maximum distance it accepts (40.7 miles)

See also:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/7043

Thanks, Phil!

To me the question, though, is "Who the heck wants or needs a 40 mile proximity alert?" I certainly do NOT want to be alerted for 40 miles!

I get tired when it is a mile away but sometinem you need that.

I just wanted to say thank you for all the great info. The tid bit I was missing was the fact that the GPS proximity warning does not work on a Radius but rather on the exact route. I was hoping to use my GPS and warn me whenever I drove within 3 miles of a Costco but I guess I'll have to rethink my strategy... At least now I know why it did not work as I expected.

As for the 40.7 miles maximum value, it seems to be a Garmin programmers way of efficiently recording the distance. Since an unsigned integer maximum value in a long integer (16 bits of memory) is 65535, that probably made the most sense and was the most efficient use of both memory and processing cycles to use the entire 16 bits of memory while knowing that such an extreme value ought to meet 99.9% of customers needs.

I had the same problem. I suggest adding the question to the FAQ about "How proximity works" --> NOT RADIUS