Location of POI's

i pulled the locations from 3 sources, i havent had any issues with them, it gets me right to them.

make notes and forword the corrections and i will update the file, please give location and coord's.

thanks for the help

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't some locations put on the road itself so the alerts will pick them up? For instance I have a MacDonalds here that the alert only works for the side street it's on. The alert won't work on the highway right next to it because I put the location too far off the highway. Starbucks probably needs locations that will set off an alert so we know where to pull of to get our drink.

you are soo right!!!

thanks

I agree with you if you put the coord at the store loc most alerts won't work . With walmart you would need two and sometimes three different coord as they have a number of different enteries, also when you do a poi for a state other than your own sometimes you don't know exactly which shop is the one you want. Flying J is another good example they are at the location so when your on the interstate you don't get an alert just the sign at the side of the road. This information is suppose be a science just a help to locate places. My two cents.

I guess some members have their reason for wanting the alerts.I know when I got my unit I wanted to try every feature including the alerts.Very quickly found they can get very annoying.When out on the road in unknown areas I would prefer to have the coordinates located as close as possible to the location.Very easy to touch the setting for custom pois or internal pois to find what is the closest location you may be looking for and just touch go.Most alerts will not go off any way unless you are on the same road so at best it is hit and miss.

If it's a Starbucks, McDonalds gas station, or whatever. I don't use alerts to tell me when I am passing a McDonalds or Starbucks, if I did I would get constant alerts. If I want a cup of coffee from Starbucks, I click on the Starbucks poi, the nearest Starbucks appears, I select go and it, in my opinion, should take you to the Starbucks, not an intersection or off ramp....

Most pois are to help you find a store or whatever, not alert you to there existence. If that is what you desire then you can make a custom poi from the one you download….
Just my 2 cents.... does that make 6 cents?

Do I hear 8 cents?

I was just defending where the POI maker put his locations. Some places like rest stops need alerts but I agree the alerts could get to be a pain.

Sometimes you put in the correct location for a POI and it just does not show on the correct side of the street.

You are right about that.I hit go to a Sonnys in Georgia and it went right to it but Jill said it was on left side of road and it was located on right side.Checked address on building and it was a match.Went to Google maps and it was showing on wrong side for the coordinates.Just moved the arrow to the other of the road on Google and updated the file since I am the maintainer of it.But that goes to show you the mapping may be incorrect.

If anyone has corrections to a file, they are encouraged to assist with the betterment of the community by reporting those corrections to the file author.

OK, you guys who need an alert for a Starbucks, where is your alerting distance set for. I have my stoplight camera set for 1900 ft. It alerts me before the icon even appears on the screen. Heck, if I had alerts on for Starbucks, driving thru NYC it would be talking constanly.

I don't set alerts for stores for the exact reason you mentioned. If I'm in an unfamiliar city, I bring up the custom POI list and select the location I want as a destination and press "GO."

I don't want to be driving listening to:

approaching Wal-mart
Starbucks ahead
approaching Marriott
approaching Target
McDonalds ahead
approaching Cracker Barrel
etc
etc
etc

It may be cute for awhile, but it quickly would get on my nerves.

I don't set many alerts as it does become annoying after a while. For an example, I was on the highway and came upon heavy traffic due to construction which just happened to be within range of a rest area and the unit just kept repeating the alert for umteen times until I went and changed the settings to kill alerts.

Please keep in mind that POI file contributors for chain items can't usually personally verify each location. Typically, they have gathered these locations from a source on the chains website that allows them to grab a bunch of location addresses. They then put those addresses through a service that returns the Lat/Lon. The Lat/Lat is only as good as the database that the addressing service uses.

A perfect example is my own house. It's been here 20 years, and while the streets all around me are present, the addressing is off on most of them. My house, according to Navteq, is quite a ways down the street. This usually occurs (and so do a lot of mapping errors) because Navteq can't verify the placement of each and every location. So they use algorithyms to determine where on the road a particular address SHOULD be, and on what side. These are rules that are made to be broken

I seen a good example today of a location that I checked the coordinates on.I live in the area and know the store well.The coordinates are set on the main road but the store is in a strip mall a good 1/4 off the road with trees in the path.Someone not knowing the area would just figure the store is not there or waste gas driving around looking for it.

but the store's "address" is probably based on the main road, and that's how the POI was generated. In my opinion, the only way to rectify this for all, would be to do away with addresses as we know them, and instead use a coordinate. So, send all complaints to:

dr5274
38.512281,-122.104889

If you use the front door of the location as coordinates then quite possibly alerts won't work. If you use the driveway entrance then you will have to use your eyes and look for the store or whatever is at the location... I think the driveway is the best all around solution. The same problem exists with malls as strip malls.

I recently began creating my own POIs and discovered one downside to placing the coordinates at the "exact" location of a business.

I noticed the coordinates for a store were located at the main road, when the store is a quarter mile inside the mall lot. So I moved the marker to the store's exact location.

The problem is the mall's lanes are not mapped, so the GPSr thinks the mall is just an open area. So in trying to calculate the route, it can direct you to a side of the mall which is not actually accessible.

Therefore, in dealing with large malls, you need to place the marker at the nearest actual entrance located on a road.

When I set my "Home" location, "Karen" would always tell me "Arriving at home on left" when in fact it was on the right.
I deleted home and set it in the back yard and it works fine now.

Bill