Custom POI icons and sounds

The 3790 does not have an MP3 player. Do a search on SOX and you will find many threads on installing this conversion program along with very detailed step-by-step instructions on how to get WAV files installed correctly.

There are even tutorials telling you several different ways to not only use WAV sounds but suggested techniques for organizing your POI.

And because the screen resolution on that unit is so much higher, you likely need to increase the size of the icons before you load them.

As mentioned above, the .mp3 file would not work because you do not have a .mp3 player on your unit.

But, how did you determine that the Icon from the .bmp file does not appear?

First be sure that you do not have double extensions by following the instructions at http://www.poi-factory.com/node/30393

Next be sure that the .bmp file has exactly the same name (except for the extension itself) as the .csv file.

Many of us use the free program Audacity to comvert .mp3 to .wav. Get Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Thank you all for replying.

I do have audacity and will try .wav.

>> how did you determine that the Icon from the .bmp file does not appear?
When an RLC alert pops up it does not have the icon I selected (it does not have an icon at all).

And of course I don't have double extensions (I know better)and the names are identical including case.

Thanks again.

You mean that because of that the icon may not display? OK, I will try higher resolution icons.

Thank you

Increasing the resolution of the bitmap will not make it appear on the map screen. The icon will show if the file is saved as a 256 color bitmap. If it's saved at any other resolution other than 256 color, it will not appear on the 3790's map screen. Most photo edit software will allow you to save a bitmap at this resolution but I find that using Windows Paint to be about the easiest way and it comes as part of the Windows OS.

Once you have the POI bitmap at the proper resolution, be aware that you will probably have to zoom the map screen in before the icon will show up on the screen. Making the icon bigger than 24 x 24 pixels will not result in it appearing larger on the the 3790
screen or at a higher zoom level.

Not higher resolution icons ....

Are you navigating a route or doing a simulation when you say the icon does not show up?

I am navigating the route.

Now, I decided to start with the sound alert, and converted the mp3 into wav file using Audacity. The POI Loader rejected the file with "Unable to convert XXXX.wav file into a proper format". At least with mp3 I didn't get this message, although the alarm is not playing (just the standard ping).

You are most likely missing the sox.exe file. Fo;;ow the instructions in this link.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25730

No, I don't have sox - will try it out. Will it also handle the bmp files?
Thank you

No, Sox handles only sound files.

Early Garmin units came with a .mp3 player. Later units did not have a player, so there had to be another way to get voice alerts - thus SOX.

Assuming you have .bmp file that are 24 by 24, all you need to do is make sure that the name (before the extension) of the .bmp file matches the name of the POI file (before the extension)

Everything is working now

How do you increase the size of icons? Should I keep 256 colors and create say, 48x48 files?

I believe most people would advise you to stay with 24 X 24.

As far as we know, all nuvis available today cannot display any icon larger than 24 x 24 pixels for a custom POI. If you load one larger, when approaching the POI the nuvi will crash and lock up. It is not known whether this will happen if the size is exactly doubled.

Newer nuvis such as the 3790 have a hi-res screen so the icons are very small and cannot be seen unless you zoom in. There is no work-around for this. We hope that Garmin will address this issue in future firmware updates for the nuvis we now own, or at least for future nuvis.

dobs108

That's a shame ... I will try to experiment when I have a chance.