Garmin POI Loader Question

I'M new to using POI files, but my understanding is that you must reload all of your POI files at the same time, because thr POI Loader puts them all into one main POI file on the Garmin.

Using POI Loader will overwrite the existing POI's on your GPS. Put all of your POI's (or catagory folders)in one directory on your hard drive and browse to that folder to copy to your gps.

There is a way to load multiple POI files IF your GPS is shown as a drive on your computer.

After you load your POI file, you will find in the \Garmin\Poi folder of your GPS a poi.gpi file. You can rename it to whatever you want (with the .gpi extension) and load another POI file.

EXAMPLE: Load the redlight file and you will see a file called poi.gpi. Rename it to Redlight.gpi. Load the Rest area file and you will again see the poi.gpi file. Rename it to RestArea.gpi. etc, etc.

RT

What governs whether the GPS will show as a drive on the PC? SD card????

When you connect the GPS to your computer via the USB cable, check what hard drives are displayed for your computer. If you have the GPS shown as a hard drive, you're good to go. The nuvi 350 does, others don't.

RT

I don't see anything showing for my 2720 although XP does tell me a new device has been connected. Must have something to do with the ones that have SD cards.

Those units with SD cards will have an extra drive letter in "My Computer"

'My Computer' shows 2 additional hard drives for the nuvi 350 (if the SD is inserted). One is the SD (shown as 'Removeable Disk'); the second is the nuvi (shown as 'Garmin nuvi'). Under the 'Garmin nuvi' are the folders, one being 'Garmin'. Under 'Garmin' is the 'poi' folder.

RT

Thank you for the info. This will make it easier to manage my poi.

I just double-checked my 2720 again. Nothing at all shows. If I look under "device manager", I see Garmin USB GPS listed but that's it. Kinda weird.

Don't look under Device Manager, look in "My Computer", you should have specific drive letters for your hard drive (C:) and drive letters for your CD/DVD drives, and then a drive letter for your Garmin unit and another drive letter for your SD card.

this is cool i will do that on my 650
does anyone know who many POI files before your GPS slows down?

Ok, so you load a poi set, rename it on the garmin.

Speed_Trap.gpi
Wawa.gpi
Cabela.gpi

Now, to get the cool Wawa icon or the Speed Trap warning icon, you have to have the csv file and the bmp named the same (hence wawa.bmp and wawa.csv)

Based on this thread am I to understand you cant drive down the road and pass a wawa, a cabela and a speed trap and see the points or the bmp cause you can only run one gpi file at any one time?

You can only see cool icons for wawa if the gpi file is the default and not see any other of the poi file icons?

With all the nice icons, I assume there is no way to load a lot of the common icons (wawa, 7-11, ect) to the Garmin Nuvi so we can select the icon for a custom poi???? I noticed that if I generate a poi, I get the option to select from the stock icons. Any way for us to add icons to that stock list?

All of the POIs files are displayed on the GPS, not just one; and the audio alerts work with more than one of the POI files.

RT

Excuse me while I do the "Happy Dance"

Thank you the info.

As already answered, you'll see the bmp's you have associated with the poi.

You will be able to "see" any of the points in any gpi file you have loaded as you are near them. You can have multiple .gpi files loaded at any particular time.
You'd load your "speed_trap" file, then rename it with the gpi ext. Then load WaWa and do the same.
Or, load all the files you want and name that with the gpi extension.

as you state, you have the proper bmp and file properly named in this scenario and you have a speed trap next to a wawa that is next to a cabela location, as you drive by you will see all three bmp's show up.

When I add a .bmp file or a sound file to my POI's I have to reload all the POI's again AND all the distances that i set. Is there a way to avoid having to re input all the distance or speed information, again?

rename your .gpi files ... then you wouldn't need to reload those

I read the question as asking...

...if I have a poi file loaded and want to add a bmp or mp3 to work with that file...would I need to....

I think that file would have to be reloaded with the bmp/mp3 as well as the proximity/speed data.

Subscribed for future reference, as this is the only way I know to re-find this thread.

1. Bookmark this page, and edit the bookmarked entry

2. Could make a notepad entry with the topic, and copy/paste the url, then save to desktop.

For example I have a notepad file saved to my desktop named "Poi Factory Nodes". One entry looks like this:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/3821 - editing factory poi

When the question comes up about "can I edit the factory loaded poi?" I can easily find what I need to answer the question.
The problem is, remembering to make the notepad entries!

Anyway, there's a couple more ideas on how to re-find threads.

Thanks for the info!