Maximum number of POI Subdirectories?

 

I recently bought a Garmin 1350 with a 8GB SDHC card and have been playing around with POI files.

I have created individual POI.gpi files using POI Loader. Each poi.gpi file I keep in its own subdirectory (that way I don't have to bother with renaming each poi.gpi file). These subdirectories are eventually copied over to the 8GB card. The subdirectory layout is as follows:

>Restaurants
>>Restaurant1
>>Restaurant2
>>Restaurant3
>>Restaurant4
>Places
>>Place1
>>Place2
>>Place3

etc. etc.

Each of these subdirectories has only one poi.gpi file.

When I go into Extras/Custom POIs on the Garmin, the >> level of subdirectories will be listed (Restaurant1, ... Place1, Place2, ... etc) in the order that they appear alphabetically in the subdirectory list.

My problem is that in this listing, I can only get 88 subdirectories in the >> level to appear under Extras/Custom POIs categories.

Is there a limitation that I don't know about?

Fyi, I don't have any POIs in the Garmin onboard memory other than about 25 Favorites that I added.

Please excuse me if this question has been answered here previously.

Patrick

Don't know your answer

Why not create one poi file per sub directory, example given 'Restuarants'. Then resaurant.poi file could contain several poi files such as $40 a day, Italian, Mexican, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Throwdown With Bobby Flay, etc. They will be seen in Garmin Extras as directory 'Restauants' and each file will be sub directory in alphabetical order.

@runx10

You may already know this.The numbers in name build a speed alert for the file.

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

My Way - Your Choices and Preferences May by Different

I prefer using directories by logical untis. So I have a restuarant directory, and under it about 6 restaurant files. I also have a directory for "Fast Fish" that contions several POI files for places like "Captain D's," "Arthur Treacher's," and "Long John Silver's."

I see my POI files in Extras, and if there were 88 subdirectories in one spot it would be harder for me to scroll through them. I like the number of choices (directories) at any one level to be 12 or less. If I have more choices I try to group them.

--
- Missouri, Garmin 750 &, 255W

sub-folders

POI Loader will permit only 32 POI groupings (POI, Icon,Sound) per sub-folder. Recent testing by several on this site have found that there is not a limit on the number of sub-folders (except to the extent that only one level of sub-folders is allowed).

Each sub-folder becomes a "category" in your Extras so thinking about how they will sort alphabetically is worth while doing. Some of us like to start the name of the sub-folder of the category we want to show at the top of the list with something like "-- rest areas"

As Walkthisway just said, your may find it easier to limit the number of subfolders to reduce the number of screen presses it take to get to the desired POI

How do you put them into

How do you put them into different directories and if all of them are in one file, can that effect the redrawing of the map?

Try this

1
Create a master folder on your computer
2
create sub-folders like food, gas, stores, etc
3
download poi files from site and place in sub-folders

load to gps with poi-loader

look at your gps, will find categories, food, gas, stores, etc

each category will have a file, example gas will have each poi file as a group of pois

Can this be seperated into

Can this be seperated into several POI files om the Garmin? My Garmin redraws very slow when I load all my POIs on my system

May want to use several memory cards for POIs

festerj wrote:

Can this be seperated into several POI files om the Garmin? My Garmin redraws very slow when I load all my POIs on my system

If you are sure that the number of POIs is slowing down the operation, you could place your POIs on one or several memory cards. Then, insert only the ones that you need for the trip. You could choose not to load any.
The caveat here is that when you start up the GPSr, it will ask if you want to load them onto your unit. Just answer no, and the POIs will be read from the card.

--
Garmin StreetPilot c530, Mapsource

thanks

Thanks to everyone for their comments.

One thing that I liked about 2 subdirectories deep is that Garmin seems to group the 1st set of subdirectories alphabetically (so all the pois under that would be alphabetical), then groups the 2nd level alphabetically. Therefore, even though i see only one list as i scroll down, there are several alphabetical groupings. (This seemed to be what jgermann had also done) This way I can try to place the group(s) closer to the top that I might need more often (although i might add that in one instance, one set of groups comes up earlier than it should and I'm not sure why).

I did end up deleting some pois and grouping together others, to try and keep things more manageable (as some of you have mentioned).

More

Yes on GPS, custom poi files subdirectories will sort alphabetically. However if you have a single poi file on your computer in a sub-directory the GPS will display it as a main folder not a sub-folder.

Say you had rest areas on your computer in sub-directory rest areas with no other file in the sub-directory. It will not be on GPS as rest areas of folder rest areas. The GPS might display Food (folder), Gas (folder), Rest Areas (file), and Way to Cool (folder).

POI files in the main folder will appear on GPS in alphabetical order mixed in with folders as discribed in above paragraph.

As I recall, you can put a special character before the file name to have them appear earliest in alphabetical order.

Also, if you load a poi file, change the name and load another poi file (or more), on the GPS they will separate into two alphabetical lists, one after the other.

and want more

phillyguy19020 wrote:

Also, if you load a poi file, change the name and load another poi file (or more), on the GPS they will separate into two alphabetical lists, one after the other.

phillyguy19020, it might be helpful to other readers is you would expand on the concept of running POI Loader, renaming the poi.gpi file last created by POI Loader to a name better describing its contents, and then running POI loader again.

What have you found about how the GPS presents the "categories" from both (or even several) of the .gpi files.

For example, does the order in which the POI Groupings was loaded have any impact?

Thanks for your help.

I create all of my alert /

I create all of my alert / tourguide poi separately ... rest area.gpi, truck stop.gpi, cracker barrel tourguide.gpi ... In poi loader, I use the Advanced option and save the poi.gpi to the same folder on pc as the source csv / gpx files. You don't even have to have nuvi connected when using this method. I right click and rename poi.gpi to rest area.gpi. Then I copy this file to the nuvi. They appear on the nuvi in the order that you copied them to nuvi e drive. I keep alert files at bottom.

I have many poi flies is poi.gpi that i update regularly in Express mode and then alert files that I don't update often. This also helps me copy / paste on many nuvis.

poi.gpi
rest area.gpi
truck stop.gpi
...

Hope this helps.

--
Hawk - Nuvi 1450

WOW

jthawkin@comcast.net wrote:

I create all of my alert / tourguide poi separately ... rest area.gpi, truck stop.gpi, cracker barrel tourguide.gpi ... In poi loader, I use the Advanced option and save the poi.gpi to the same folder on pc as the source csv / gpx files. You don't even have to have nuvi connected when using this method. I right click and rename poi.gpi to rest area.gpi. Then I copy this file to the nuvi. They appear on the nuvi in the order that you copied them to nuvi e drive. I keep alert files at bottom.

I have many poi flies is poi.gpi that i update regularly in Express mode and then alert files that I don't update often. This also helps me copy / paste on many nuvis.

poi.gpi
rest area.gpi
truck stop.gpi
...

Hope this helps.

There it was - right before my eyes - and I could not see it. The custom folder makes a lot of sense.

Tell us - if you copy two files with one CNTL-C action, which one appears first. This the a time order versus alphabetic question

Thanks for the tip.

baffled

OK. I give up. I have stuff loaded in like I mentioned above (two levels of subdirectories, one poi.gpi per lower subdirectory). However, on one of the higher levels of subdirectories (like above - the one where I am storing restaurants), all the restarants are listed twice when viewed in the Garmin, even though there is only one set of subdirectories. It's as if there are two copies of the restaurants subdirectories on the SDHC card when in fact there is only one.

Has anyone else run into this?

for the most part

jthawkin, i used your method of loading them into the Garmin (i didn't use the SDHC card this time), in the order that I wanted them to appear. It worked, for the most part (some 80 gpi files), but there were about 5-6 that showed up out of order (sooner than when I copied them to the Garmin. Not sure what caused that.

I have found that if you

I have found that if you copy multiple gpi files and paste on nuvi that they do not necessarily list in the same order on nuvi as they appeared on pc.

Also sorting gpi files on nuvi drive has no affect.

Copying from pc to nuvi one gpi file at a time has let me control the order (I only have one main poi.gpi file and 5 alert / tourguide gpi files).

On the duplicate poi issue, poi loader continues to read all csv / gpx files past the first subfolder (first subfolder will show up as category but second level csv files will be loaded without category). So if you have duplicate csv / gpx files in subfolders they will be show up as duplicates on nuvi. If you want to have subfolders with duplicate csv files, just create another empty subfolder ahead of folder containing duplicate files to prevent poi loader from reading.

Give it a try.

--
Hawk - Nuvi 1450

Thanks. I'll give those a

Thanks. I'll give those a try. For most of the .gpi files, I copied individually, but there were one or two times that I copied multiples. Maybe that was the cause.

Additionally, if you want to change/add to what you have on the garmin, do you need to start over every time (i.e., delete all the .gpi files from the poi directory on the garmin)?

Also, have you ever used a SDHC card for the .gpi files, or do you always work directly in the garmin memory?

semi start over

runx10 wrote:

Additionally, if you want to change/add to what you have on the garmin, do you need to start over every time (i.e., delete all the .gpi files from the poi directory on the garmin)?

The GPS does not know or compare what is in each gpi file. It is up to you to keep track. You do not have to start over from scratch but you do need to know what each file contains

If you have an existing

If you have an existing poi.gpi file on nuvi (and have not renamed it to something else such as rest area.gpi) and you run poi loader the normal way using Garmin Device with nuvi connected, poi loader will overwrite your existing poi.gpi. You can either rename all poi.gpi files on nuvi or use Custom Folder(Advanced)option to save poi.gpi to source folder, rename, and then copy to nuvi.

I have played with memory card but now only use internal memory.

--
Hawk - Nuvi 1450