After two weeks, I give up

 

I had a Garmin Street Pilot for several years and it included rest areas. It died so I bought a Garmin 260, which does not include rest areas. I've spent hours on the internet trying to learn exactly how to download rest areas onto the Garmin 260 and I am stumped. I am also technically challenged, shall we say. Can someone please, in plain English, tell me how I can download rest areas onto my Garmin 260? Thank you.

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I need some R & R.....redwoods and rivers.

1.Make a folder on your

1.Make a folder on your computer and give it a name. Example My poi's.
2.Download the csv file combine rest stops http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6643 and put in the folder My poi's .
3.Run poiloader and select the My pois folder.
4.If you want alerts use manual mode instead of express.
5.You should get message so many pois are loaded at the end of the download.
6.On GPS go to where to then extras and touch custom pois and you should see it.
7.Every time you run poiloader it will overwrite the existing files.

You can download poiloader at http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/

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Charlie. Nuvi 265 WT and Nuvi 2597 LMT. MapFactor Navigator - Offline Maps & GPS.

I have a 260 too and I just

I have a 260 too and I just got here to add POIs.

The process is fairly simple. You get a USB cable, connect it and make a backup copy of your entire Garmin internal folder first. smile

Then you install POILoader which is available on Garmin.com site.

Take the POI file from here, put it in its own directory on your PC, fire up POILoader and point it to that directory. You are done.

If you want to have sound alerts, then it is a bit tricky, as the 260 does not support MP3 format, so you will have to make WAV files in a specific format. See the details at http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/pagepoi.02.htm#... page.

Thank you both for

Thank you both for responding. It sounds simple so I'll give it a try!

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I need some R & R.....redwoods and rivers.

You are welcome. I used the

You are welcome. I used the instructions on Gary's page 1 and page 2 to upload several POI files to my 260. I also added the distance alert to one of them using a WAV file. Haven't yet tried any of the other hacks he mentions.

Another tip is to update the firmware to the latest version using Garmin webUpdater. My 16 month old 260 is much faster now in getting signals, when switched on as well as while driving!

My 350 and 200W both have

My 350 and 200W both have rest areas in the stock POIs. It's under the not-very-intuitive category of "Auto Services", but it's there.

I use the "Where To? > Near... > My Current Route" feature all the time on long trips. From there, you search for either a "Food > Fast Food" or "Auto Services > Rest Areas". I usually pick one and then click "Map" to see how far off-route it goes, but it's never very far.

I also have the POI Factory rest area file, but don't really need it so much.

4250

I've tried unsuccessfully to down load POIs, then if I chance to what is the command to down load them to my 4250?

Correct

saxmaniac wrote:

My 350 and 200W both have rest areas in the stock POIs. It's under the not-very-intuitive category of "Auto Services", but it's there.

I use the "Where To? > Near... > My Current Route" feature all the time on long trips. From there, you search for either a "Food > Fast Food" or "Auto Services > Rest Areas". I usually pick one and then click "Map" to see how far off-route it goes, but it's never very far.

I also have the POI Factory rest area file, but don't really need it so much.

What you say is all correct. And I believe the Near>CurrentRoute feature returns only those locations within .7 miles of the route (could be as little as .5 miles). However, if you try to use this feature on custom POIs, you will get bad results.

Also, your method uses the very outdated list of Rest Areas in the map data, and that is never as up-to-date as the custom file.

Finally, you can't set alerts for the built-in POIs and you might well finding that you just passed the last Rest Area for 100 miles and you didn't have time to get over in time without the alert.

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Nuvi 660 -- and not upgrading it or maps until Garmin fixes long-standing bugs/problems, and get maps to where they are much more current, AND corrected on a more timely basis when advised of mistakes.

Magellan 4250?

Joe Klein wrote:

I've tried unsuccessfully to down load POIs, then if I chance to what is the command to down load them to my 4250?

Joe,
You are in the Garmin Talk forum. You should start a new thread with your question under the Magellan Talk forum.

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Nuvi 660 -- and not upgrading it or maps until Garmin fixes long-standing bugs/problems, and get maps to where they are much more current, AND corrected on a more timely basis when advised of mistakes.