New Garmin 1450

Welcome to the site tntss@fuse.net.Enjoy and if you need any help just post.If you plan to use voice alerts you will need sox.exe and wav files.

Welcome to the site. You will find it quite addicting. There are files for pretty much anything you can imagine.
Make sure you check out the FAQ's. http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6654

A big Welcome to you tntss...you'll love it here. I also own a 1450 and love it ! Enjoy youself here, there are alot of great people that are always willing to help.

I also have 1450 and enjoy its features (5" screen, routes, junction view, lane assist, speed turn red if over speed limit) - welcome aboard!

Thanks Everyone for the warm welcome.....Now it's time to ask for a little help.

My POI's are loaded but don't show on the screen of the GPS. They are listed in the menu but not on the map. What as I doing wrong?

I searched for this topic (as I'm sure the answer is out there) but couldn't find any solution.

Thank!

you need to be zoomed in to see them, unless you have picked one for a destination, then you will see it. Welcome to the factory

So just driving by the location (shell station) it will not show on the map?

Thanks
TNTSS

On my zumo I have to zoom in to 200 ft scale to see the icons. If you are navigating to an icon or have an alert icon pop up it will show on what ever scale you are on.

If all the icons were visible at the wider zooms you would probably not be able to see any roads when ever you were around cities and towns where there are a lot of icons.

Enjoy!

I got a Garmin this xmas too.....I was a Magellan fan for a while, until I used this Garmin...Awesome...and welcome.

Me to.....
I bought it for myself

I was just reading on another GPS forum, and a user there called Garmin tech support about POI's on his 1450. He was told that a POI will not alert, if it's not ON his route, even if it's just a few feet off the route. The 1450 (likely the 14xx series and possibly the 1xxx series) do not have radius alerts.

I am not convinced that the 1xxx series will not support radius alerts so I would be interested in other's experiences.

Garmin says
"What are TourGuide POI's, and which device's support TourGuide POI's?

01/20/2010

TourGuide POIs are custom points of interest that when approached a custom MP3 audio file will start to play to give you information about that specific point or a location near it. A MapSource product is required to create these files.

Garmin PND devices that feature an MP3 player will support the use of these files."

I can agree the MP3s will not play on certain devices, but that is quite different than POILoader setting a "radius" alert.

I think the EPE would let you create a TourGuide alert and link to a .wav file (assuming sox.exe present in the directory with POILoader)

Hopeluffy some owners of the series 1100, 1200, 1300 and 1400 GPS units can clarify

I'm getting the alerts in small popup black boxes, as well as a ding sound, but can't seem to get it to play the mp3 files. I'm using the same POI files as I have on my Nuvi 350, and it all works fine there.

Love the new 1450, but starting to think my custom mp3 alerts are history. Anyone else having the same experience, and have you figures out a way to fix it?

The 1450 will not play mp3.You need sox.exe and wav file for voice alerts.See http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25730 and using TourGuide in the file name will ive a radius alert.

Thanks ... Got it working now. Used Audacity to convert my existing mp3 files to wav, put sox.exe in the same directory as PoiLoader, reloaded, tested it on a nearby POI, and worked like a charm.

You'd think Garmin would have their newer units backward compatible, so users wouldn't have to reinvent their POI "wheel" when upgrading. Glad we have these forums to get the info out.

Glad it worked out.Some users have reported they just use wav files when they have two units and one plays mp3 and other wav.That way they only have to keep one file for custom pois.

As far as I know, Garmin does not officially support using SOX.EXE with POI Loader or even acknowledge that .WAV alerts can be loaded. Maybe I am wrong about that, but I can't find any reference to loading custom alerts in the POI Loader help function. It would be nice if Garmin would improve the POI Loader program so it had native support for custom alerts and didn't require SOX.EXE.

I would think if Garmin was aware of the sox.exe and wav the next update would take it away.

I'm sure they are aware, but the backlash from removing it would kill them in the market, and by people calling in.

There are somethings you don't want to mess with!

Best not even to say anything about it to Garmin.The sox.exe and wav files for those that don't know started back with this post. http://www.poi-factory.com/node/13041 and the credit should go to Hornbyp.

I suspect it is covered in their advanced "Content Toolkit" product for developers. The "GPI Creator" program lists this feature: "Multimedia support for JPEG images, WAV and MP3 audio files". I think Garmin just doesn't want us lowly customers to know about it.

Some smart people on this site that can figure out almost any thing.I also forgot to mention credit goes to Gary A for getting the right sox.exe file for all of us that worked.

Charles, it would boggle my mind if Garmin didn't know about it.

I would think they have som idea about it.Recently a new member after having problem with sox.exe and wav he called Garmin and was told he couldn't get voice alerts and didn't know about wav or the sox.

They may not / will not 'officially' support it.

I'm quite sure Garmin reads the major sites like this one, to get the pulse on their products. They'd be foolish not to use all this free feedback and data.

Can anybody tell me why some Nuvi's have to use Wave files instead of MP3? Why did they change to a Wav format?

Garmin decided to discontinue the mp3 feature on newer models.Older models came with mp3 and others didn't.They never supported wav files.That is something discovered by one of our members for units that didn't have the mp3 ability a while back.

My 1450 doesn't display any POI's as yet
Will let ya know what I find causing no pois at all to show
Virgo

Hey and welcome to TNTSS If it isn't here it can't be had. de Cliff n8dii

Same with my 1490

Are the poi's loaded on the unit?
If you go to where to/ extras/ custom poi's, are they there?

They will not display on the main screen unless you have an icon associated with the poi file, and then you need to be zoomed in real close to the poi.

I have a 1450 with tons of POI databases loaded onto the 8GB SD. From the main page tap "Where To"

Then DOWN ARROW until you see the Gift wrapped "Extras" icon.

IF your POI's are loaded you should see a line that says Custom POI's. Tapping that line should bring up all the POI databases in your unit. You can then scroll down through them to select the POI of interest.

Hope that helps. Sitting here with 1450 in hand so I verified the steps.

First I want to say this site is great. I find it very informative. I also recently bought the 1450 after a short (bad) experience with a new Magellan. I do have a couple of questions on this thread subject however.

The first is I was able to upload a poi list of all DD in the New England area to the 1450. I then found the custom poi list in the extras section. My question is what if i load more custom poi lists? Does the unit put them into different lists under the heading of "custom poi's". Or do they just all keep getting put into 1 big list?

My other question is a bit off the poi topic and has to do with the traffic. Do you need to be on a route for traffic to come up? I have been just using the map so far and have not seen any traffic info, not even the icon. Thanks so much for any info on these questions.

First off, welcome to the site.

The first suggestion is for you to spend a little time reading the FAQs. Several members have put together FAQs on POI and how to load them.

Basically, every time you run POI Loader, it writes a new POI file to the unit. If a file of the same name exists, it will ask if you want to overwrite it. There are a couple of ways around this, but the easiest one to begin with is to create a folder and put the files you want to load into the folder. You then tell POI Loader to load the contents of the folder. The folder can also hold all your icon files (.BMP) and alert sounds (.WAV) for your model unit. The FAQs provide a lot more detail than I have here.

Traffic only shows in areas where there is an FM radio station broadcasting traffic information. According to the coverage map, nobody close to you is broadcasting traffic data. http://www.navteq.com/rdstraffic/index_150.htm

You decide how the Custom POIs are loaded - either one big list or in categories. See the FAQ -

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/30728

If you keep the POI files on the PC all in one big Custom POIs folder, there will be one big list under Extras/Custom POIs in the nuvi. If the POI files are kept in subfolders inside the Custom POIs folder on the PC, the names of the subfolders will become menu categories inside Extras/Custom POIs. For example, McDonalds, Red Light Cameras, or Rest Areas.

Traffic information will appear on the nuvi anytime traffic info is available, whether you are navigating or just driving with the nuvi on. You could be out of range of the FM signal. If you are within range of FM and there are no traffic incidents in the area, no traffic info will appear. It would seem that NH would only have traffic incidents in the south.

Since I live in a high-traffic area, I signed up for the optional lifetime FM traffic from ClearChannel Total Traffic Network. This has been well worth it.

dobs108 Long Island NY

Thank you Box Car and Dobs108 for the info. I checked out the faqs and now it is alot more clear how to do the poi upload thing.

Also thanks for the traffic info and map. I had seen a map when i searched the internet that seemed to show much more coverage up into my area but it must have been for something else. I guess I will have to wait till i drive more down toward Boston to see how the traffic alerts work.

One other question if i may? How much memory do the custom poi's take up compared to the units total available memory?

I would assume they are not really large files as excel files dont tend to usually be really large but i dont want to bog down the unit by loading too many if these units dont have large internal memory.

Thanks again for all the info

Custom pois don't take up a lot of storage space.Connect your gps to computer and go to the drive for it.Right click for properties and you can see how much space has been used.

A time may come that you want to get more storage space for maps etc see http://www.poi-factory.com/node/31186