convert .csv to .gpx garmin

I opened the original ONSPD_FEB_2017_UK.csv with EPE and after a long time it came up with 500000 POIs (which is the maximum it can handle). I then created both a gpi file and a csv file.

I put the gpi file in my 285W and went to Extras,Custom POIs. After about 10 minutes it listed the first 52 but I could find others by searching for the name. Each search takes a long time.

Then I tried to create a gpi file using Poi Loader and the csv file that EPE created. Poi Loader churned for a while and quit.

I repeated the process using the ONSPD_FEB_2017_UK_AB.csv file from the multi_csv set. EPE reported 38387 Pois found.

My 285W still grunts with the reduced size gpi file but POI Loader reported 38387 pois processed and created a gpi file that worked in my 285W.

They are on the NE coast of the UK, near Aberdeen, UK.

Good spots for fishing?

Not if it's a Custom POI file for which the format is longitude, latitude, name, description.

Common sense tell me that the OP isn't trying to make a POI file of points somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Kind of hard to use in your automobile.

Motorcycle Mama.... Seems the Garmin, as discussed earler, wants Lon, Lat where as in sample in "Should have added" is in the usual Lat, Lon used by stuff like Google Maps.
Evert..... Lat/lon switch, Sir, I stand corrected, I should have read more closely your comments " in your example", this is turning out to be a real pain and I'm getting a bit exasperated, over a week and I'm still messing with it !.
bobkz... I am saving it as a .csv file, opening it with EPE displays top left the first 4 post codes and the map show the correct location, in that box I can select any of the other 3 and the map shows the location, the down arrow does not scroll, if I drag the tab down, say half way, and release it the tab starts slowly to go back up and then "a problem caused the the program to stop working".
Notepad opens it Ok and I can scroll without problems, same with Word, it appears that whatever is in the file that stops POI loader also stops EPE.

I am a long time Excel user, I split the original big csv into 65536 lines (40 files), open one in word and saved as a text file, imported in to excel and saved as csv.
Still getting the same Excel message about omit features on saving, there can't be anything not compatible in the file now !!!.
Same error using POI loader, BUT, EPE works OK and as expected.
Edit that csv file and reduced it to 25,000 lines.
POI loader now works !.
There is plenty of space on the Garmin so it's not a capacity issue, ( as in disk space ).
BUT.................................
http://www.gpsinformation.org/penrod/poiloader/poiloader.htm...
How many POI's can I load?
According to Garmin, you can load at least 3,000 POIs. I have successfully loaded more than 38,000 POI's without any problem in both a StreetPilot c320 and a 60CSx, nuvi 360 and StreetPilot 2820.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/15907
thetick wrote:
Yes the 32 file limit per folder has been around on the previous version of POI Loader. Also the max number of Custom POI folders on Nuvi 350 is 256.. not sure about other Nuvi models. That's 32*256 = 8196 Custom POI files allowed.

Also recently with my Nuvi 350 I have 1,014,699 Custom POIs, using 21 folders and 403 files.

There looks to be a limit on the number of lines in one file POI loader can manage and there are conflicting numbers above !.

If the line limit is the issue I could do with knowing what the limit is so as to reduce the number of files and the Excel save problem may be a red herring.

I am unlikely to need the whole set so as Evert suggested reducing the total from 2,593,614 is an option although a full set would be best.

Some head way at last.

FYI. Windows 10 fully patched, M/S office 2003. latest POI loader and EPE.

Thanks everybody.

I have been wondering how the OP is going to use the data.

At first I was puzzled why anyone would want to navigate to a postal code since it relates to an area rather than a point of interest.

While looking into that, I noticed that the website that OP referred to appears to be written for people who are into creating and modifying OpenStreetMaps. (OSM)

There are instructions that include using excel with VBA macros etc.

It looks to me like one needs to create an OSM account, download a core map and then migrate postal code area boundaries and other details from the huge data sets. Then the map would be loaded to a Garmin.

Then Garmin POIs need to be created. There are 57 fields in the data sets and it is not clear which fields need to be included in a Garmin POI. We have been using the supposition that longitude,latitude,and Postal Code will suffice.

I guess when the resulting OSM is used on a computer, selecting a POi would cause a postal code's area boundaries to be hi-lighted and perhaps make some demographics from the data sets available.

I don't know what would be seen on a Garmin. (The site indicates that the setup was made for a Garmin 255W)

I am thinking that all this may be too complex for the OP to handle. (no insult intended)

I know the full process is too complex and tedious for me. Also I don't care much for running a VBA macro from a website on my computer.
However, I am willing to continue trying to help with the Garmin POi part of the process but will not be able to test on my Garmin because I will not have the OSM on it.

That message means that you will lose things other than simple text if you save as a csv file. Things like bold, italics, underlining, font size, right justify, etc. are "not compatible" with a csv file and if present in the spreadsheet will be lost.
You will get the message even if none of those things are present. Just select Yes and don't worry about it.

Evert............ My Garmin with Europe maps has a built in opportunity to route to just a post code and I mostly use that method so I don't think using OSM will be any different, Google maps is also happy using just the post code and does not define the boundaries, sure it's not to the nearest 10 feet but often enough and often large companies here have their own post code anyway.

I was hoping you would have had a comment that I can load a smaller file using POI loader and is searchable under extras, and the errors I also see on the big file using EPE.

I am not offended in the too complex remark, the question is....... as it must be a very common requirement why is it so hard and once again as Superdoo said why hasn't somebody just provided a POI file which they must of had at some point.

The post http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Postcod... is specifically aimed at OSM and post code searches.

Re. the 57 fields, the 3 selected work OK in EPE so surely must be enough ?. http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/creating_custom_po...

It is interesting that some random post code chosen from the list don't work in Google maps !.

AB1 5EJ

AB10ED

AB14JS
AB14NL

but others work OK.

Thanks

For those of you all stating that longitude MUST be first, may I remind all that version 1.6 of POI Loader removed that requirement?

I was aware that Garmin had "Added ability to handle swapped lat and lon values in CSV files" but they did it in version 2.6

Several of us at Poi Factory discussed it when it showed in the POI Loader Change log change log 6 years ago:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/32154

I advised chuffer to use the long,lat order that is still in Poi Loader's help for these reasons:

1. In the discussion charles45 concluded "Best to keep as longitude,Latitude" and I agree with that.

2. chuffer's Pois are in the UK and some likely would be in the ++ quadrant. I had concluded in the discussion that "there is no swapping done at all if both fields are of the same sign".

Also chuffer has indicated that he is using EPE.
In the discussion turboccc said about auto swapping "this is too much prone to errors". To date he has not incorporated auto swapping in EPE.

Probably because they are "no longer in use".
https://www.doogal.co.uk/ShowMap.php?postcode=AB1%205EJ

BTW That site offers postcode csv file downloads for a variety of groupings.
https://www.doogal.co.uk/PostcodeDownloads.php

The files I saw include a column that indicates whether the post code is in use.

Between doing a search on POI factory for Choice hotels and downloading the file to my download folder. Then using EPE editor, choosing the proximity point for alerts at 1/2km and then saving the file as a GPX file to my download folder and writing this a total of 10 minutes elapsed.

Well, I did have the .6 correct and I did write instructions on how to take a Excel CSV file and change the order of the elements read into EPE back in 2013 (http://www.poi-factory.com/node/41653).

I get the same results when using EPE with the larger files. However, I found that creating csv or gpi files worked and contained the number of pois that showed at the top in EPE. Just don't try scrolling in EPE when using these large files.

Since Poi Loader chokes on the larger files, tell EPE to save as a gpi file. Save the gpi file(s) to a folder on your computer and then copy to your Garmin.

Evert..... Thanks for the workaround re POI loader choking with large csv files.

I had no problem loading the csv into EPE and thought I would take the opportunity of checking the respective file sizes of each 65530 line files (1 of 40) it creates.

csv =1864kb gpx = 12722kb gpi = 3073kb.

When I use POI loader and the new gpi file I get the following error.

"There are no data files in that folder. Please specify a folder that contains at least one file with a .cvs or gpx extension."

No gpi for me ?.

I can't check the gpi file as EPE will not load it either.

http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/creating_custom_po...

Advanced users can create their own .csv and .gpx files that contain Custom POIs (points of interest) for use on compatible Garmin devices with MP3 players. Both .csv and .gpx files are loaded to the device using the Garmin POI Loader application. After processing the files, POI Loader uploads a single file called Poi.gpi to the device.

I have not attempted to load the gpx file as the size/s would be prohibitive.

There are 2 gpi files already on the Garmin, UK speed camera data base that might contain 3000 entries and is shown as 2.47mb and my earlier test of a csv upload with 25000 lines at 1.38mb, the last one seems rather large for just 3 fields in relation the the sizes shown above.

I am grateful for your time with this.

Thanks

If you want to look into the gpi file try using GPSBabel:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/42816

Else copy the gpi file directly to your Garmin and try it out.

BTW Poi Loader is a creator of gpi file(s)using csv or gpx files as input.

It would not make sense for it to make a gpi file from a gpi file. The output would be the same as the input which would cause an unnecessary increase in the entropy of the Universe. That is why it does not consider gpi files as data.

I tried the following using the ONSPD_FEB_2017_UK_AB.csv:

Used EPE to create a gpi file. It indicated 38,387 POIs

Used GPSBable to create a Garmin gdb file using the gpi file as input
When I opened the gdb file with Mapsource 34,604 POIs showed up.

I am looking into why the difference.

Edit:

I ran the gpi file through GPSBable again and this time all 38,387 POIs showed up in Mapsource. Somehow I must have aborted the GPSBable translation before it was finished the first time.

evert..............Well, I have it working thanks to your time and effort.

I'm just left with one issue, When I use Windows to copy the .gpi files to the Garmin they do all appear under "Extras, Custom POI's" each under it's own file name, I've done 4 x 65,350 lines so far to test.

Seems I can only search for a post code if I know which of the files it's in and then it does take it's time to find it !, no binary chop here..

I have found this to join together several csv's into one sheet but we are back to the too many lines for Excel to open and EPE only just manages the 65,530 as it is so that's probably not an option.

https://www.rondebruin.nl/win/s3/win021.htm

As soon as I start GPSBabel I get "Invalid return data at line 3:unexpected character", I have deleted, re-downloaded and re-installed and Googled the error without success.

I have tried installing it on another computer ( Win 7) with same outcome.

On the Wiki page he does not discuss any issues with the csv size and search speed but...............

"Alternative method

I have had successful results creating an OSM-format file and merging it with a downloaded OSM file using osmosis. Postcodes can then be searched for using Where To? -> Cities, and results are returned extremely quickly."

Thanks

You are very welcome - I am glad my input was of some help.

I got rid of that error message by doing the following:

In GPSBable go to File->Preferences and uncheck the box "Check for newer version on start."