Getting POIs to show up on the "Where To" menu

 

So i got my first GPS, nuvi 360. I love it. IT's a great little gadget. One thing i noticed though was that it is missing a bunch of places. Like if you go to the "Where To" menu and select entertainment and then movies, it wouldn't list a Century 25 that is the nearest theater next to my house. Similar, with some stores so i started researching...

basically long story short, I added the POIs, now if I search by name, the places near me that were missing earlier show up but they still don't show up if I use the "Where To" menu and then select "enterntainment" then "Movie theatres" etc.. so how do i get my custom POIs to go into their appropriate categories in the "Where to" menu??

Ah, the Biggest Drawback of Custom POIs

Unfortunately, you cannot combine custom POIs with the pre-loaded POIs. The custom POIs have their own menu area.

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You can't.

They will show up under Extras and not with the built in POIs.

You have to search each set of data (the built in and the Custom POIs) separately.

You Don't

At least that's how it works on my 660 and I think your 360 operates the same. When you press Where To>Food, Lodging... it searches the internal POIs that comes with the Garmin maps.

The custom POI files that you download from this site are found only under Where To>Extras>Custom POIs.

You can't combine the two.

EDIT: I see my fingers weren't fast enough... again.

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Tampa, FL - Garmin nüvi 660 (Software Ver 4.90), 2021.20 CN NA NT maps | Magellan Meridian Gold

hmm that kinda sucks. so is

hmm that kinda sucks. so is there any way to simulate the kind of organization the built in POIs have? becuz say i am somewhere, and i just need electronics stores...how would I just bring up all electronics stores around me from the custom POIs and not just list the Best Buy POI list?

Folders

deviation wrote:

hmm that kinda sucks. so is there any way to simulate the kind of organization the built in POIs have? becuz say i am somewhere, and i just need electronics stores...how would I just bring up all electronics stores around me from the custom POIs and not just list the Best Buy POI list?

Make a folder called "Electronics Stores" and put your Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's and whatever else you want in that folder. It will then show up as a category when you select Custom POI's.

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You can create your own categories under your Custom POIs to be whatever you want.

Create a Main folder for your Custom POIs. Then you can have subfolders under your main folder, if you want. The folders will create categories. You can't have more than one level of subfolder. The files themselves will create the subcategory.

For example, it might look like this.

> My POI (Main folder)
>> IHOP (subfolder)
... IHOP.csv
... IHOP.bmp
>> National Parks (subfolder)
... National Parks.gpx
... National Monuments.gpx
... National Recreation areas.gpx
... National Parks.bmp
... National Monuments.bmp
etc.

In this example, IHOP and National Parks show up as categories and then under National Parks, the subcategories of National Parks, National Monuments, and National Recreation Areas show up.

Here are some screenshots of what it would look like.

This is a shot of the folder and files on my computer.
http://i18.tinypic.com/4q8bl8m.jpg

This is how the first level shows up on my GPS unit.
http://i9.tinypic.com/4t6c8ye.jpg

When I select the National Parks category, this is what I get.
http://i2.tinypic.com/62qyi4z.jpg

Then if I select National Monuments, I get this.
http://i8.tinypic.com/4kbd8jc.jpg

déjà vu

MM,

You sure have gotten your money's worth out of that post.
Cracks me up. laugh out loud

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Tampa, FL - Garmin nüvi 660 (Software Ver 4.90), 2021.20 CN NA NT maps | Magellan Meridian Gold

.

Yeah, I typed it out manually several times before I wised up and saved it to a text file. : )

Good Plan

and easier to edit for future use.

--
Tampa, FL - Garmin nüvi 660 (Software Ver 4.90), 2021.20 CN NA NT maps | Magellan Meridian Gold

OMG

thank u mama! that's a really informative post!

Way to go!

Way to go Motocycle Mama! You're truly a valuable asset to the site. Thanks!

--
-Imagine-

I guess i can just try this

I guess i can just try this and see if it works but could u in theory say combine the files for Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's etc, call it electronics store and thus gain one more level of organization. Then you could have you could have something like..

Custom POI
|_____Shopping
...........|_____Electronics Stores
...........|_____Grocery Stores

|_____Entertainment
...........|___Theatres
...........|___Live Theatre

So when you select electronics store, it would start listing the different stores listed in the combined file. I hope the little diagram above makes sense

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You can't have more than one level of subfolder. The POIs just won't be loaded.

However, you can call the folder Electronics and then put the Best Buy, Circuit City, Fryes, etc files in that folder. You could also edit the files as make them all be in the same file, but just be aware that for any Custom POI list, the unit will only show the 50 locations closest to your current position. This may or may not limit what you want to have on the screen. The other locations WILL be loaded and can be searched by name.

As to folders, again, what you CAN'T do is have more than one level of subfolders.

> My POI (Main folder)
>> Shopping (subfolder)
>>> Electronics (sub-subfolder)
........ Circuit City.csv
........ Best Buy.csv
>>> Grocery (sub-subfolder)
........ Whole Foods.csv
........ Trader Joes.csv
>> Theatres (subfolder)
>>> Live Theatres (sub-folder)

This set up won't work.

so in my little diagram

so in my little diagram there, the "electronics store" would actually be a .csv file that is merger of best buy.csv and circuit city.csv.
Custom POI
|_____Shopping
...........|_____Electronics Stores.csv
...........|_____Grocery Stores.csv

|_____Entertainment
...........|___Theatres.csv
...........|___Live Theatre.csv

i just tried it out, i opened up the best buy csv in excel, selected all the california ones and pasted them into the circuity city csv. renamed the file to electronic stores.csv and put in the garmin. it's sort of working..i think. i have to test it out a little more.

btw, is there a way to get the nuvi to recognize the phone numbers for automated calling? I love that feature for the built in POIs. would be nice for custom POI

okay so it works. only

okay so it works. only drawback is, the bitmaps for say best buy and circuit city can't be different. Also, it's a tedious process to scroll through thousands of lines to pick out the locations you want. is there some sort of software that will let me chug in the .csv, give it a geographic area within which it should filter and spit out a new csv with only the filtered entries? that would make life easy

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I believe that RT's POI Verifier software will extract Custom POIs from a file based upon the state. Check with him for more information.

As you discovered, one of the drawbacks of combining them into one "electronics" file is the lack of Custom Icons specific to that chain.

Also, you can't make the phone numbers dialable using CSV files. They have to be in properly formatted GPX files. Check out Phil's GeePeeEx Editor software.
http://geepeeex.googlepages.com/

i already love you

i already love you motorcycle mama. thank u soooo much!

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Welcome to the site!