Custom POI's and Bluetooth

I have a nuvi 680 and a Motorola Razr V9m. When I first tried to link the phone & GPS via bluetooth, I had multiple issues with things not working properly. A single change fixed all of those issues and they now work great together....including GPX phone support.

I discovered that if my phone had a contact with a photograph linked to it (so when someone calls, their picture will display on the phone), that caused the problems with the bluetooth connection. Once I un-linked the pictures from the phone contacts, everything worked fine. It's a little different from your problem, but I would give it a try.

Good Luck,
Jake88

In order to dial numbers from custom POIs when paired,use the <gpxx:PhoneNumber> tag in your .gpx files. For example:

<wpt lat="34.74602" lon="-92.28799">
<name>State Capitol</name>
<extensions>
<gpxx:WaypointExtension>
<gpxx:Address>
<gpxx:StreetAddress>Woodlane Ave.</gpxx:StreetAddress>
<gpxx:City>Little Rock</gpxx:City>
<gpxx:State>AR</gpxx:State>
<gpxx:Country>USA/gpxx:Country>
</gpxx:Address>
<gpxx:PhoneNumber>+1501682902</gpxx:PhoneNumber>
</gpxx:WaypointExtension>
</extensions>
</wpt>

I realize that Garmin allows you to eventually get to the Extras icon via the phone icon on the menu page, but when you do so, you are not given a "Go" option (at least on my 660) -- it is replaced by a second "Dial" button. So, I don't see how you can try to navigate from that screen. I am also confused when you say, "I thought that any POI file in the gpx format would be recognized when I had a bluetooth connection I thought that any POI file in the gpx format would be recognized when I had a bluetooth connection." Are you talking about POIs that were ORIGINALLY in GPX file, that have been loaded into POI.gpi by POI Loader? You haven't put gpx files on the unit have you?

Does it work if you go to Where-To/Extras/Custom-POIs and choose a POI that way and dial?

Where did you get the gpx file? If neither method of dialing via BT works, I'd look at the gpx file with something like GeePeeEx Editor and see whether the number is in the correct place, as well as the other fields.

Jake88, thanks for the heads-up, although. I'm not yet using any photographs in my Razr phone directory. Actually, my nuvi 780 and my Razr work well together except that the POI files I download don't always have phone numbers and therefore don't show up when I am in bluetooth mode.

WAASup, thanks, but fact is I am just too lazy (and probably to dumb) too generate my own Custom POI files. I have been getting freebies off this and other websites. For some reason I had it in my mind that gsx POI's would show up when I was in bluetooth mode with or without a phone number. But I guess that's not true. Are there many custom POI files that have phone numbers? Is there a way I can tell whether a POI file will work in bluetooth mode before I download it?

Thanks for your input.....

bentbiker, as you can tell from my reply to WASsup, I have taken the lazy man's approach to obtaining POI files. I have not put gpx files directly on the unit. Instead, I download them from websites like this, and then I use POI Loader to upload them to my GPS. When I am in a non-bluetooth mode, all my POI's show up under Extras and I can navigate to any one of them.

But then when I connect my GPS to my cell phone via bluetooth and work my way to Extras from the phone icon, I can still see my POI categories but most categories are empty (the actual POI is missing and I get the error message NO MATCHES FOUND).

For example, when I work my way from the phone icon to Extras and then select my Shopping category and then select WalMart, I would expect to touch the Walmart category and see a list of all the nearby Walmart stores. Instead, I see nothing and I get the above error message.

A few POI files do work in bluetooth mode, including Harley dealerships, Red Lobster, and Denny's. I assume these work because the authors properly formatted the gpx file to include phone numbers.

So at this point I am assuming that the gpx file must be properly formatted with the phone number in order to work in bluetooth mode. Is there anyway I can tell whether a downloaded POI gpx file has phone numbers before I actually upload it to my GPS? Are there many such files available on the POI websites?

Please forgive my rambling, and thanks for your help.

It is very simple to open a downloaded file with any of a number of applications and see if it looks OK, but if as you say, you are not interested in opening files, I don't know of a way to find out what is inside without looking inside. Of the two gpx files I looked at on this site, one looks good and one does not. If you want to test the one that looks good, it is:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/11122

Edit: I see that you already have examples of properly formatted files.

bentbiker, I would like to open a few gpx files just to see what they look like. Could you point me to some of the applications for doing this?

Regards......

If you want to see the 'structure', rename the file so it has a ".xml" extension, instead of ".gpx" and you can view it in Internet Explorer.

If you want to see a more Garmin-orientated view of the file, you can use the trial version of GeePeeEx Editor.
http://GeePeeEx.googlepages.com

You should note that there a zillions of available tags in a .gpx file. Most software/hardware only use a subset.

Thanks much, Hornbyp. I found the GeePeeEx Editor, and also found a simple POI Editor. I did not know about renaming a gpx file as an xml file - I will have to try that.

Another question maybe you can help me with. When I am using POI Loader to upload files to my nuvi 780, on a few of the POI files I get an error message about a "data format error on line 1", but then it goes ahead and loads. Any idea what that problem could be? I recently got this error when uploading POI's for Marriott Hotels, Comfort Inns and US Lighthouses.

Thanks.....

Errors in csv files are best determined using "POI Verifier".
http://www.poiverifier.com/

Unfortunately, the poiverifier.com website has been shut down for good. The technician has fully retired. Are there any other such programs?

http://www.poiedit.com/downloads.htm