Rand McNally GPS (RVND 7710)
Sat, 10/15/2011 - 9:59am
 |
     17 years
|
For anyone that is interested here is a link to more info about the Rand McNally RVND 7710
|
17 years
|
For anyone that is interested here is a link to more info about the Rand McNally RVND 7710
I'm Learning, so bear with me.
I took over some orphaned POI files and all of a sudden it appeared that I would have to provide both a Garmin .gpx and a Rand McNally .csv.
I have been searching the web and have not found much information about the .csv format for RM units. And what little I have found is contradictory.
For example
Rand McNally IntelliRoute
®
TND
TM
510 User's Guide
Add a Custom POI Location Method 2 (Street Ad-
dress)
1. Type two commas (,,).
2. Enter the name (with spaces) followed by a comma.
3. Provide the phone number.
• Enter the phone number followed by a comma (,).
• If you don't know the phone number, enter a comma (,).
4. Enter the street address followed by a comma (,).
5. Enter the city followed by a comma (,).
6. Spell the state name out (such as Illinois) followed by a comma (,).
7. Enter the country name followed by a comma, (,).
and
(from the TND 730 manual)
Lists of custom POIs are available from third-party sources such as
POI Factory: www.poi-factory.com.
Or enter your own list. Tips for formatting your own list of POIs:
1. Files must be in .csv format.
2. You can enter locations by longitude/latitude (in decimal format),
address, or both.
3. Separate each piece of information with a comma.
Do not use spaces before or after commas.
4. Enter in order the longitude, latitude, location name, street address,
city, state, zip, and country. For example:
• Longitude/latitude and address:
-87.761039,42.059611,Rand McNally,9855 Woods
Dr,Skokie,IL,60077,USA
• Longitude/latitude only:
-87.761039,42.059611,Rand McNally
• Address only:
,,Rand McNally,9855 Woods Dr,Skokie,IL,60077,USA (Note: In
this example, there are two commas at the beginning. Commas
are required as placeholders for fields with no data in them.)
Hey john
If you provide a GPX file you don't need to provide the RM CSV. JM wrote a script that reads a GPX and spits out the RM CSV based on the entries in the GPX. You have to remember, in a GPX all the elements are named so the script looks through your GPX, extracts the proper RM elements in the needed order and adds the county (US or Canada). If you haven't provided a element used by RM, its position is just marked in the CSV by a placeholding comma.
Illiterate? Write for free help.
Hmmmm
If you provide a GPX file you don't need to provide the RM CSV. JM wrote a script that reads a GPX and spits out the RM CSV based on the entries in the GPX. You have to remember, in a GPX all the elements are named so the script looks through your GPX, extracts the proper RM elements in the needed order and adds the county (US or Canada). If you haven't provided a element used by RM, its position is just marked in the CSV by a placeholding comma.
Did not realize that. Thanks for that info.
I still need to get to the truth of what is in a .csv file for Rand McNally but at least I do not have to worry about the orphaned files I took over. I'll continue to maintain them as .gpx files.
By the way, I was playing around with some files that say they are RM .csv files (like Werner Enterprises fuel stops). I downloaded that one and ran it thru POI Loader and it took it even though it had a header followed by entries. The first three lines were:
Lon,Lat,Name,Phone20,Street#,City,ST,Country,ZIP10,
-87.091371,33.278749,Petro,,22526 AL-216,Bucksville,AL,,,
-86.591126,32.845163,Love's,,300 Arby Dr,Clanton,AL,,,
notice the ending quotes
I was quite surprised that my 765 showed the entries.
John
GPX input format
I use a 15 position template for creating GPX files which includes the RM data. The fields are (in the order I enter them):
POI Name, Address (street address), city, state, post code, email, latitude, longitude, phone, symbol, display, proximity, description, comment and country.
If you use EPE to geocode, then you do not want the coordinates as the first entries, It's a quirk in EPE that it ignores empty cells until it finds a value and then assigns that value as the first entry. This means without a Lat/Lon, the first non empty field is used as the latitude/longitude value. This means you would end up with EPE trying to use the POI Name as the longitude and the address ad the latitude.
I run EPE using the M-Column options with my GPX field assignments as the format with a second M-Column having the standard Garmin CSV format fields.
Illiterate? Write for free help.
Different technique
The way I geocoded the Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores involved using EPE, so there is a way to input a file without either Longitude and Latitude so the entries can be geocoded.
I was able to get on the phone with a lady who worked in the Jo-Ann corporate office. After finding out what I wanted, she was kind enough to send me a PDF that contained a printout of the store list as of that date. I used OCR on the PDF to get a text file that looked like this.
0102 Small 6320 SEVEN CORNERS CTR FALLS CHURCH VA 22044 703-534-5325
0106 Small 2A BUREAU DR GAITHERSBURG MD 20878-1402 301-948-1665
0107 Small 232A SOUTH MAIN ST MIDDLETON MA 01949 978-750-6646
I then used several tools to get a "Jo-Ann.csv" file that looked like this
,,102,Small,6320 SEVEN CORNERS CTR,FALLS CHURCH,VA,22044,703-534-5325
,,106,Small,2A BUREAU DR,GAITHERSBURG,MD,20878-1402,301-948-1665
,,107,Small,232A SOUTH MAIN ST,MIDDLETON,MA,1949,978-750-6646
I went to EPE and selected Options > M-Column CSV Fields > 3-User Profile
I changed the name on the right side to Jo-Ann and clicked OK
I then changed the CSV Column Assignment to
Col 1 Longitude
Col 2 Latitude
Col 3 POI Name
Col 4 Description
Col 5 Address
Col 6 City
Col 7 State
Col 8 Post Code
Col 9 Phone
and then clicked Close on the M-Column CSV Fields Assignment dialog
Then, I did a File > Open and navigated to the Jo-Ann.csv file. I was presented with an EPE dialog titled Invalid CSV Line which said:
POI on line 1 does not contain valid longitude and/or latitude
,,102,Small,6320 SEVEN CORNERS CTR,FALLS CHURCH,VA,22044,703-534-5325
Click Ignore to keep this POI, Discard to ignore it or Cancel to abort
Ignore Discard Cancel
| | Apply to entire file
I clicked the button to apply to the entire file and then pressed Ignore.
Once EPE had read the file, I did Tools > Batch Geocoding and EPE geocoded the file.
Now I did a File > Save As >"Jo-Ann geocoded" > "Garmin CSV (*.csv) > Save
This produced the following file
-77.1519756,38.8693135,102,"6320 SEVEN CORNERS CTR,FALLS CHURCH VA 22044,703-534-5325"
-77.2190333,39.1432055,106,"2A BUREAU DR,GAITHERSBURG MD 20878-1402,301-948-1665"
-70.9964878,42.5788251,107,"232A SOUTH MAIN ST,MIDDLETON MA 1949,978-750-6646"