Newbie here

First of all welcome.
The sounds and Icons are separate, above this thread you will see the sounds and icons links.

You will also see the FAQ and getting started, be sure to visit those two links, they will answer most of you questions. Your going to love your new hobby.

Thanks for your reply. I think it will be a great hobby. I just need a little practice. I am still a bit confused and i cant seem to find the answer in the help section. If i downloaded this for example: Rest Areas (State and Combined files). Does that have the sounds and icons together? Is that all i need or do i have to download the 4-5 icons and 4-5 sounds seperatly? Thanks for your time.

Jeff

Thanks for your reply. I think it will be a great hobby. I just need a little practice. I am still a bit confused and i cant seem to find the answer in the help section. If i downloaded this for example: Rest Areas (State and Combined files). Does that have the sounds and icons together? Is that all i need or do i have to download the 4-5 icons and 4-5 sounds seperatly? Thanks for your time.

Jeff

sorry for double post

Here's a link to a site that one of the members has with tons of great information.

http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/index.html

Between the FAQs and Gary's site, I'm sure many of your questions will be answered. If not, come on back on people here are very willing to help

Thanks i found that site to be most helpful.

It will come a lot easier to try to learn one new thing at a time. Many here are old-timers when it comes to a GPS, but I think most will also agree that we learn something new about it all the time. Most important, we learn it from each other.

Welcome to the family...

The 1st lesson is that you want to put all the POI files in one folder on your PC, where you can find them. One folder, that's important.

Next if you want a sound associated with a POI file, it must have the exact same name. Say data is in My_poi.csv, then sound must be My_poi.mp3. Rename files as needed.

Next, you run POI Loader, which is free from Garmin to install whatever you put in that one folder mentioned above into your nuvi.

Now, they won't be in the POI area where we would all expect... You will find them in Extras as Custom POI.

Anytime you run POI Loader it will replace the contents of your Custom POI with whatever you have in that folder. As you add new POI files and update existing ones, that's how they'll get into your Garmin.

This was an overview of what to do. If you need more details, try a keyword search on this site. Chances are good someone else already asked that question and there's a thread of answers. If not, ask away. Good Luck, hope to see you back.

Welcome to the club. Enjoy! You will learn a lot here about your new GPS!

dont froget to have fun

Jeff,

First off, welcome.

As you are using a 200 series Nuvi, it will not play mp3 sounds. You will need to have sounds ending in .wav to hear them on your unit. And, as you have to use wav sounds, you will need one more program - SOX.EXE. There are several links in the discussion groups about this program, just do a search and you will find numerous links.

SOX is a little different than the other programs in that it is copied to C:\Program Files\Garmin where it goes into the same folder that has poiloader.exe.

The biggest problem people run into with these alert sounds is a double extension on the file name. In short, only one period can be in the file name. Windows has a VERY annoying feature of hiding the extension to known file types. Make certain you have disabled this feature - believe me it will help trouble shoot your issues.

One other thing some find out the hard way is that everytime you run POILoader, it overwrites whatever was stored on the Garmin. This means you don't add one file at a time, you need to load all of them at once. (Now there are some advanced tricks to this, but for now just assume you have to load them all at once.)

CharlesD will probably be along very shortly and add his quick 7 steps to loading POI, if not both he and MM (Motorcycle Mama) have written excellent short guides to setting up your POI folder for loading.

As others have stated, playing with a new unit and learning the features, customizing, and creating your own personal files is a big elephant that is best handled one bite at a time. Get comfortable with one thing before moving to the next.

A lot of very useful information all in one location. Thanks for the link. I put in in my bookmarks.

Here is the easiest way to make custom poi files.Since you have a 255 you can also use wav files for your voice alerts.

Making poifiles the easy way.

1.Make a folder on your computer and give it a name. Example My poi's.
2.Download the csv or gpx file and put them in that folder.
3.If you want to add a bmp or mp3. Download from site and also add to the same folder but make sure you name them the same as the file you want them to go with except the extensions.

>My pois=Main Folder
>>Dunkin Donuts.csv
>>Dunkin Donuts.wav
>>Dunkin Donuts.bmp
>>Walmart.csv
>>Walmart.bmp
>>Walmart.wav

4.Hook the gps up to computer using usb cable and then run poiloader. Select My pois folder.
5.If you want alerts use manual mode instead of express.
6.You should get message so many pois are loaded at the end of the download.
7.On GPS go to where to then extras and touch custom pois and you should see them.
8.Every time you run poiloader it will overwrite the existing files.

If you decide to use wav files here is a guide to do that.
a.Download the latest PoiLoader file at http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/ .
b. Download Sox Exe at http://rapidshare.com:80/files/139638423/sox.zip .
c. After un-zipping Sox Exe file place it in your Garmin folder where the PoiLoader exe file is located on the computer.
d. The wav file for alerts will be named the same as the CSV or GPX file except for the extensions.
e. You can make your own wav files by going to http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php and typing in what you want it to say or use a program to convert mp3 files to wav. When using the conversion it must be saved as PCM, 44.100 kHZ., 16 bit, Mono. BobDee posted Wav files on site for download.
Select manual mode on poiloader to set speed or distance for alert.

Charles is getting to be the Newbie buster, he has the method all worked out get you on track.

Charlie is Da Man.