Creating POI from Google Earth

You have inspired us to add this topic to the FAQ section. Here is a link
Creating POI Files with Google Earth

Thanks,
Miss Poi

I feel special now...... ( - :

Great idea to FAQ it. I really think that
by adding it to the FAQ's that it's going
to help a lot of people out that use Google
Earth in this manor. I know it sure helped me
out.

By the way, If I do not have PoiEdit could
I use something like EasyGPS to to this.
If I'm correct PoiEdit isn't free and must
be purchased. I could be wrong on this.
I'm just learning the lingo and can't wait
to start contributing.

Hey, collaboration! You do Charlotte and I'll do Mooresville (I think I got the better deal!) and we'll trade...lol

LOL, I'd say so..... Charlotte's a pretty big city. : -)

I was thinking about breaking a few POI's up and for
my 1st do a "Charlotte Night Life" POI. Just places like
Lounges where a nice dress shirt and pants are required.
I doubt anyone would be interested in these loud college
bars so I will try to leave them out. Of course if you
all would like me to add them I will.

Here is one example.

Blue Lounge

From the rotating art gallery and recessed lighting to the mosaic tile floor and blue stained-glass wall, it exudes an ambiance of sophistication, luxury and vibrancy. Sit on the enclosed patio during warmer months, where you can watch Charlotte's bustling uptown scene. Enjoy live jazz and blues Wednesday-Saturday evenings.

http://bluerestaurantandbar.com/blue.html

I should have looked up the faq section earlier. I just spent hours building a tool to convert Google Earth kml files to csv... gee, that already existed... now I know more about kml files than I ever wanted to know...

what you have there is lat and long in decimal format. With google earth if you edit the settings you change it to the traditional format (ex. 34.34566,-84.34525) But that trick with the kdl (or whatever the abbreviations are) is pretty cool. I will have to try that.

christin,

Thank you for the lat and long information.
I ended up playing in Google Earths options
and found the settings you where talking about.
Google Earth is now using the Traditional format
and works great.

For those who are wondering how to change the
lat and long format here is how.

Go To:

" Tools "
" Options "

On the second row you will see " Show Lat/Long "
Now just change it to " Degrees "

Your all set and Google Earth will output in Traditional Format now.

Hey guys..... Quick Questions

I have put a few locations together for my
Charlotte Night Life poi and would like to
know where you guys put the points in Google
Earth. Some of the address that I enter falls
near the street / sidewalk so I have been trying
to locate the front door of the location and place
the Long / Lat there. Is this what everyone wants
or would you prefer the parking lot or another
location beside the building. Here in Charlotte
you normally have to find a parking deck or Parking lot
and I have thought about that and added a few parking
decks. Please let me know what everyone would prefer
and I will finish the project up. Thanks

Good question but, each GPS receiver is going to vary one from the next. I've now got four of these silly buggers and no two read the same. They are not off by much, but if I was to target the door I might end up two offices down the way. Not sure you can get that level of granularity in a POI. I touch up all mine via Google Earth to see how close I can get, but I took two dash mounted GPS units plus my wife's internal car unit and drove to the Marriott Courtyard for the TDay parade in Charlotte, and the only one that put me right in the building was her car!

Yeah,
That's what I'm going to be using "Google Earth". It's a pretty good tool. Well, I will get as close to the door as possible but like you said they all vary.

I'm wanting to get my hands on one of these units running the SIRF III chipset, I hear they are really sh$t hot at location calculation being very accurate... my old eTrex might get you on the block where your house is, but some of these new units would get you all the way into the bathroom!

I have a Magellan Meridium Gold and a Garmin 2720 - they both put me within a couple of feet of each other - not exact to the 6th deciminal point, but within 10 ft or so. Both units put me very close the door I'm looking for.

Also, I had a Lowrance GM100 - my first GPS, and, I moved waypoints to my Meridium and they were also pretty close.

yeah the SiRF is amazing - never now have urban canyon problems, I get a signal inside my house on floor 1 of 2, it wanders little.... It's still civil code, but the positional accuracy is very nice. the real forte is the ability to get a signal all over the place, and FAST. Lock up if you restart nearby is instant, even a short trip away os 15-20+ seconds

well i added poi edit to my laptop and using the instructions in the faq tried to use a google earth kml file to create a poi file.

but when i try to open the kml file with poi edit it says that poi edit cannot open that type of file.

what am i doing wrong?

anyone?

It's pretty common for people to confuse "POI Edit" and "POI Loader". This may not apply in your situation, but I'll mention it for the benefit of other readers.

PoiEdit is a shareware program from dnote software. It reads/writes a variety of POI file formats lets you view end edit the data they contain. POI Loader is software from Garmin that lets you transfer custom POI data into your GPS.

In the recent versions of PoiEdit I've seen, you can load locations from a KML file by selecting File > Open > Files of type: "Google Earth (*.kml)". It looks for favorite locations in the file and formats them as a list of locations.

PoiEdit ignores some types of data in richer file formats (e.g., GPX files are able to hold more than just waypoint/POI coordinates). I imagine this may apply to some types of data that can be stored in KML files as well.

Does "Google Earth" show up as a file type option in the version of PoiEdit you're using?

JM