RVND 7720 POI csv file format

Custon POI Information Format for the RVND 7720

This is what I have found so far, loading POI files into an RVND 7720. I could be wrong about some things.

Data is entered in csv format. The comma is used to separate fields. It has no other use, and cannot be used in character fields, whether enclosed in parenthesis or not. Parenthesis are not used.

There should be no space before or after the comma. Spaces inside of character fields are allowed.

The data for a location may consist of from three to 9 fields. The first three fields are mandatory.
These fields are, in order of entry:

Field Name------data format
Longitude---------------decimal degrees
Latitude----------------decimal degrees
Name--------------------char
Phone-------------------char (20)
Street Address----------char (40)
City--------------------char (40)
State-------------------char (40)
Country-----------------char (40)
ZIP---------------------char (10)

The different fields are mapped to appropriate display locations in the device. While the fields have names, the use of the fields for particular purposes is not enforced.

Commas separate each field, and if a field is not used, the comma is still required if there are subsequent fields used on the line entry. Commas may be used for unused fields, even if all remaining fields are unused. So one or more commas are allowed to exist at the end of a line, although the Rand McNally documentation says otherwise.

Examples:

-119.123456,45.89012,My Location Name
(Only the first three fields are used)

-119.2944,45.85391,Home Depot,,,Hermiston,Oregon,97838
(Six of eight fields used, phone number and street address are null)

-119.28768,45.8192,Hump Railroad Crossing,,Cressey Way,,,
(Only the first five fields are included, and the phone number is null, trailing commas are OK)

The GPS uses the file name to keep track of the file that was the source of user provided data. If you need to update data, just re-enter with the same file name, and the data will be updated.

The manual for the TND 510 says there is another entry method, where the latitude and longitude are not entered, but the address is. I have not been able to make that work with the 7200.

Internally, the data is stored in an sqlite3 database. The entered data is held in a table with the following fields. Some fields are filled with data provided by the database (Ex. SIDE, POIID). The RVND stores all user POI information in a single database file. Sqlite3 uses dynamic typing, and does not enforce field lengths.

TABLE POIS (
LATINT INT,
LONINT INT,
SIDE INT,
POIID INT null,
NAME char null,
CATEGORY INT null,
PHONE char (20) null,
STREET char (40) null,
CITY char (40) null,
STATE char (40) null,
COUNTRY char (40) null,
ZIP char (10) null );

I have not found anyplace in the RVND 7200 that the ZIP is displayed. I know it is retained in the database. ZIP code is displayed for some internal POIs, but not for user entered POIs.

The City and State are stored in the database, and appear in the menu entry when you are choosing a custom POI for a destination or waypoint. However, once that location is loaded into map view, the RVND makes up its own mind what the city and state are, based on the longitude and latitude entered. This may not be the same as what you entered, but is what you see in map view.

The RVND can import data meant for Garmin units, if it is a csv file. However, the Garmin has 4 fields, and the RVND has 9 fields. So you can't expect all the data meant for a Garmin to be properly loaded into the RVND. The RVND expects a pure comma delimited file, it does not use quotation marks to contain text. Therefore commas and EOL characters are all recognized and used. Consider the first entry from the Combined US Campgrounds by Rivopom. Since we are looking at it in text format, not a spreadsheet, indentation is not preserved:

-151.510177,59.63912,A Fisherman's Resort RV Cabins,"1302 Ocean Drive,
Homer,
AK,
99603,
(877) 235-9600"
-150.803926,60.537035,Alaska Canoe Campground,"35292 Sterling Hwy,
Sterling,
AK,
,
(907) 262-3583"

Each line here is considered a separate location because the the csv has an EOL character at the end of each line above. (This is the Unix EOL character, hex 0A, new line, not the Windows EOL sequence hex 0D0A, carriage return-new line.) Only the two lines beginning with longitude, latitude and name are valid for the RVND. These will be recognized and stored. All the remaining lines are not recognized and will be discarded. They will also be stored to an error log file so that you can look and see what went wrong.

Therefore, what gets stored in the RVND is:
longitude, latitude, name, phone #
-151.510177, 59.63912, A Fisherman's Resort RV Cabins, 1302
-150.803926, 60.537035, Alaska Canoe Campground, 35292

When you are choosing a destination, you will only see the name fields above, not the phone #. But when you choose one and go to map view, the RVND will fill in the City and State, as mentioned above, and the phone number. It does not store the City and State information though, it recalculates it each time. And note that the phone number is really the numberic part of the address. Since the RVND was expecting a phone number in column 4, it extracted all the numbers it could from the fourth field and used that.

I will repeat that all the custom POI data is stored in a single db file. However, in the display, when you want to choose a destination, you see menu choices for each separate file you have entered. So they appear to be kept separate, even though they are not. You will become aware of this if you load 100,000 POIs. You might search for an entry from a file that had only 10 POIs, but the unit potentially has to search through all 100,000 POIs to find your data. It can slow down the time it takes to load your POI list.