HOWTO: Importing POI Factory POIs into Sygic GPS (All smartphones) (UPDATED)

After some time, I'm able to put up another HOWTO on how to POI-ify your smartphones

Sygic GPS is presently available for the US for approximately US$24 (Euros 19.99) and as of version 11.2 (now out for some time) it will have the capability of using POIs (in Garmin CSV format) after conversion with a free tool.

The actual Sygic converter is now out, so these instructions have been revised a bit...

In the case of Sygic (much like iGO for WinMo) it does use its own format of POI, but--as it turns out--it is extremely easy to convert the stuff on POI Factory to use with Sygic GPS.

I've based the following on a combination of info from a POI Factory thread on Sygic standalone GPSrs (http://www.poi-factory.com/node/20454#comment-116183) and the info on Sygic's website (http://www.sygic.com/en/poi) to do a unified HOWTO.

Anyways, the HOWTO, a simple ballet of five steps:

STEP 1: Download the POIs you want from POI Factory, along with any icon files--the good news is that Sygic is a LOT more forgiving of BMP format than most GPS programs, with its standard being a 100x100 size BMP that can use either 8-bit or 32-bit colour depth. (If it's below that size, Sygic will resize it.)

Don't sweat the format (whether it's CSV or GPX--you probably want to go with one of those formats). We're going to feed them into Extra_POI_Editor at any rate.

STEP 2: Now we're going to convert this into a format Sygic RUPI Converter understands--and as it turns out, you only need two tools which you may already own, being a fellow POIhead

Grab a copy of Extra POI Editor (yes, you want Extra POI Editor specifically) if you don't have one already, and we're going to set it up as follows:

a) Under Options/M-Column CSV Fields, type in the name "Sygic RUPI text", and set the columns as follows:
Col 1 = Longitude, Col 2 = Latitude, Col 3 = POI Name, Col 4 = "Address, City, State", Col 5 = Phone, Col 6 = Fax, Col 7 = Link, Col 8 = Email, Col 9 = Comment, Col 10 = Description. Hit "Close", and there you go.

(This actually gets it pretty much to the format Sygic's RUPI converter likes, save for using commas except for pipes. We'll fix that in a sec.)

Load your files, save 'em as "M-Column CSV", lather, rinse, repeat until all your POIs are converted. (This is easily the most tedious part of the job. Unfortunately, there's not really good batch tools to do this; POI Edit bobbits stuff from GPX files after the Description, and I like to keep those intact because Sygic's POI format can actually USE these!)

b) Grab a good text editor--I prefer Notepad++, which is free as in beer and as in speech and handles large text files wonderfully.

Add the following line at the VERY start of the file:
delimiter=,

Save and close out.

Open Sygic RUPI Converter, drag and drop your CSV files, select "Convert to RUPI". (Really, it couldn't be simpler. Yes, it works in batch format, unlike the conversion.)

STEP 4: This varies depending on whether you're using the Android or iPhone versions of Sygic GPS:

STEP 4A (Android): Connect Android to PC via USB cable, mount as USB drive, copy the BMP and newly minted UPI file to /Aura/maps/import, disconnect Android, start up Sygic GPS. It should automatically start up a wizard to import these.

(Yes, the official docs say it's in /Sygic/Aura/maps/import, but it ended up in just /Aura/maps/import in my case. Go figure.)

STEP 4B (iPhone): There's two ways to do this for iPhone--the Sygic-approved manner, and a secondary method documented on Pocket GPS World meant for speed cameras (http://www.pocketgpsworld.com//modules.php?name=Forums&file=...). I personally recommend the former approach because the other method requires a jailbroken iPhone, a proprietary app (that costs $10 unless you're a student) and is just a PITA compared with the Sygic method.

STEP 4C (Symbian):

Very similar to that of the Android, hook up phone to computer or hook up SD card and copy to X:/Sygic/auramaps/import (where X is your SD card directory). Sygic will automagically detect the new POIs and add them in.

SYGIC's METHOD: Launch iTunes, connect iPhone, go to "Apps" tab, select "Sygic Navigation" in "File Sharing", drag and drop UPI and BMP files into "Sygic", sync iPhone, start Sygic and go through the wizard.

CREATING APPROPRIATE BITMAP FILES FOR SYGIC ICONS:

Sygic's default format is...a bit bigger than the default on POI Factory (much like other POIable smartphone apps, it uses larger than the 22x22 8-bit BMP format that traditional GPSrs use).

The suggested format is 100x100 BMP--Sygic will happily accept this, but will scale it up to 100x100 and will make it look a bit pixelated in comparison. It works, though.

My preferred method of making POI icons for Sygic is as follows:

a) Find a pic larger than 100x100 pixels, preferably in PNG format.

b) Get a copy of an app called PixelFormer (it's free as in beer and available via Google search, or you can download it at http://www.qualibyte.com/pixelformer/) and save it first as a 32-bit PNG then as a 32-bit BMP file (this allows you to do BMPs with transparencies).

Alternatively:

a) Find an SVG vector file of the particular pic you want, grab a copy of GIMP (http://www.gimp.org), open the SVG as a file of over 100 pixels, resize the canvas to an exact square, scale down to 100x100 pixels, and save as a 32-byte BMP file.

That way you can have full definition for Sygic POI icons and it looks nice.

Also, once you've imported your new POIs, they live in Menu > Settings > Custom POI; you can turn them on and off from there, check the setting to have them show up in the main POI category files.

To enable POIs in Sygic: Menu > Settings > Notifications & Sounds > Points of interest; you can check "Enable" and set radius and alert sounds...haven't yet played around to see if custom alert sounds can be set in Sygic Aura yet, but if so...this is a big bonus.

To enable POIs on the map in Sygic: Menu > Settings > Map view > Points of interest and you can turn on and off from there.

Having recently played with the 7-day trial version of Sygic (which is IMHO becoming mature and which I may end up switching to--not really fond of CoPilot 9 in comparison) this is definitely one of the easier POI softwares to deal with...the only one easier for Android is CoPilot Live, and this is probably THE easiest next to the actual Garmin software for iPhone and Symbian users.

A FEW NOTES AND CAVEATS:

a) Per Sygic, POIs do have to be separated by country--no mixing POIs in the US and Canada. Not a real problem here for most of the POI packages, though.

b) You MUST import these ONLY one at a time--otherwise Sygic kind of sicks up (then again, this is true of ALL Android POI programs, not just Sygic).

c) Sygic is supposedly working on a more mature POI management scheme for future versions of Sygic--no idea if this is a version of Sygic POI Editor on steroids or major changes in Sygic, so this may change. At least they do seem to be taking stuff into consideration, though--if they do put in advanced POI management, this will put them on the top of the pack, as iGO is (alas) OEM-only for Android.

d) To have all of the US, Canada, and Mexico maps, you'll want at least 4.5GB to spare on your SD card. Fortunately, 16GB cards are becoming affordable and even the 8GB cards will work if you don't store a ton of MP3s and such on it...

EDIT: Edited to add link to Sygic POI converter and the New Procedure...

EDIT AGAIN: Turns out you can do the basic conversion of CSV files right in Extra POI Editor, which makes life very simple

EDIT YET AGAIN: Played with the trial version now that Sygic Aura seems to be mature, and Sygic has published a procedure that makes life downright simple--now you just need EPE plus a text editor and you're golden