Use SD card for POI's?

I loaded a poi directly to the sd card with my pc slot, (my nuvi didnt come with a usb,and I havnt gotten one yet) I plugged the SD card into the unit but it didnt see it, or nothing happened, what can I do??

PS- Garmin doesnt tell you a whole lot about the unit new out of the box, the quick start guide is not very helpfull in showing you how to get the most of the unit

I agree, Garmin doesn't help you out much. I guess they think they've done a good job making it self-explanatory/intuitive. Anyway, get yourself a USB cable, that will help you a lot. The unit should have recognized the POI file and asked you to install it. Did you power it off and on?

Go to Garmin website and download the POI Loader
It will help you to download the POI file to your nuvi or SD card. Try it and it is very useful sofeware

Make sure you get a Garmin USB cable. A standard USB cable doesn't work for anything other than charging the unit as far as I know.
.

My FUJI USB camera cable work fine with my NÜVI 250W, but will work only in mass storage mode, if you want to power your GPS from an exterior source you need a Garmin cable.

I have a regular USB cable and it works just fine for downloading POI files and for charging the unit. Actually I did not know there was a special Garmin USB cable. I have a c550.

I have a C580 and I use whatever cable I have handy for whatever device I am playing with. Camera, Phone, GPS. All the cables work for all the devices.

Paul

Well, it looks like I gave you bad advice. I live and learn everyday

I am just wondering how you choose where these files are stored. I have been adding them through a cord, but am not sure if they are sent to the device itself or my sd card. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

It doesn't matter where you store them. The unit will read them in either place. So, it's up to you. There should be space on your device for many tens of thousands of POI locations.

On my Nuvi 200 (as with all nuvi's), I use Garmin's POI Loader through a standard USB cable and put all my poi's on the sd card for easy transfer to other units. Name the .csv, .gpx,(etc) file a relevent category name, ex. "Taverns.gpx". Run the loader, select the sd card, select manual (for a choice of which files to send). The file poi.gpi will be created on the card under the folder garmin/poi. This poi file has the "taverns" title embedded in it. Rename the file taverns.gpi, for clarity, in the folder. Repeating this procedure will allow you to put a variety of organized files on the card under their specific categories. When the nuvi boots (nuvi 200), it will ask if you want to copy to the unit itself. If you say "yes", then you can decline each or copy it. If you answer "no", then it will ask you every time you boot. Now, when you go to custom poi's after bootup, the list of each category will be there.

I have the nuvi760 and I have all my custom POIs on the memory card, all 1,085,998, of them.(I know, I'm obsessed). This is the easy way I use to store them.

1. Install the Garmin POILoader software.
2. Create a folder for holding all your unzipped POIs
3. Insert your memory card directly into the card
reader on your computer, not the GPS device.
4. Start POILoader and tell it where your custom POIs
folder is on your computer and also tell it which
drive your card was assigned
5. Allow the loader to do it's thing, could take a few
minutes depending on how many POIs you have.
6. When finished put the card back in your device and
turn it on.It will ask if you want them in the
internal memory, I always say no, and allow your
device to finish loading
7. Now select "Where To?",scroll down to "Extras"
there should be a choice for "Custom POIs there.
If all went well. I have never had a problem with
this approach. I hope this helps.

Does anyone know if it works this way on a Garmin 340 ??? I tried it this way and nothing . Can anyone help me

Thanks

Not to get too off topic, but can you put the vehicles on the SD card as well or do those have to be in the vehicles folder on the unit?

Thanks for this information.

The SP340 will not read Custom POIs from the SD card. They must be loaded to the unit itself.

Nope, they can't be read from the card. They must be on the unit.

Thank You I been tring everything to get it to work
What good is the SD slot for ????

I have a question. I spent some time transferring the files. Each time the computer says the items are transferred, but my gps device never asks me to upload them or anything. When I go to view one of the items (I opened excel to see which items I would be uploading) I can not find the point when I search.

buckmanej, we need more info. Are you using the POILoader program to transfer your file?

grncherry1

Just like you said in your "How To", worked great on my new nuvi 260. Thanks

1. Install the Garmin POILoader software.
2. Create a folder for holding all your unzipped POIs
3. Insert your memory card directly into the card
reader on your computer, not the GPS device.
4. Start POILoader and tell it where your custom POIs
folder is on your computer and also tell it which
drive your card was assigned
5. Allow the loader to do it's thing, could take a few
minutes depending on how many POIs you have.
6. When finished put the card back in your device and
turn it on.It will ask if you want them in the
internal memory, I always say no, and allow your
device to finish loading
7. Now select "Where To?",scroll down to "Extras"
there should be a choice for "Custom POIs there.
If all went well. I have never had a problem with
this approach. I hope this helps.

The SD card slot on that model is only used for loading supplemental maps.

You are welcome kdpacker. Glad it worked for you. Next time you add pois just stick them in that folder with the others and run POILoader again. Your folders should all be the same, so no need to change anything.

I have a c330 and it wont read custom poi's from the sd card either. and its kinda disappointing im limited to the number i can put on there.

How many are you trying to load? You should be able to load many tens of thousands of Custom POI locations directly to the unit.

This is answer I got back from Garmin
Thank you for contacting Garmin International, the c340 unit will not
read custom poi's from a data card. The unit has 2mb of supplemental
storage for custom poi's. The unit will not accept custom vehicle icons
due to it not being a mass storage unit

--

For the sake of the OP: the renaming described here is for our human brains, and has the side effect of keeping the poi in diffrent files from being overwritten.

The GPS will categorize based on filename even if you do not rename them on the card (ie, different names only on your HD).

I am using a gramin nuvi 200 and the poi uploader mentioned before. I am wondering if I can use poi's on my sd card and where they would be located or is the sd card just for maps...

Also I am getting an error when uploading. THe program says there is a bad file line number. Do I need to locate that file and remove it before uploading. I believe this same file may have went to favorites as I now have 100 favorites I will never use. I read an earlier post which says I have to delete each individually.

Hi everyone,

I've read on here that the Garmin comes with about 2MB of memory. I was just wondering roughly how this equates as far as amount goes, to POI files...how many will this store? Additionally, if I reach the max memory amount, will it then start replacing/overwriting custom installed POI's on the machine or will it warn me that memory is full first.

Thanks

I have 10 mb free on mine and I have loaded about 30 of these files and have only used 1 mb so far.

I have a new 650. I was having problems loading both POI and firmware update files using the WebUpdater and POI Loader but think I have everything figured out, or at least everything figured out for my setup. I don't know if this works the same way on other Nuvis.

I assume all Garmins use a 5 pin mini USB cable instead of the 4 pin that some MP3 players and other devices use. I was using the correct cable to use WebUpdater but running it through a USB hub, which although it would recognize the 650 and charge it, it would not properly load through it, getting an I/O error. Once I connected the cable directly to a USB port on the computer it worked fine. I don't know if the hub I have is USB 1 or 2 or if this made a difference or not.

Before I figured out to use the USB cable directly into the PC instead of through the hub, I had gotten a batch of POI files. When I used POI Loader, I had the same problem as running WebUpdater, an I/O error. But, I could take the card out of the Garmin and load it with a card reader (which does work through the USB router) and POI Updater. Once the POI files were loaded on the card and I disconnected the 650 from the cable, it asked if I wanted to install the POIs so I said yes (I see now I should have said NO, as grncherry1 said, but had not yet discovered that post when I did that). At this point I think it takes them off the card and transfers them to internal memory.

Once I had figured out the USB issue and had successfully run the WebUpdater, I tried to load more POI files directly to the Garmin. It had a bad file error, but looking down in the text of this message it shows it is really getting a file size error. This is because the POI "master" file ( a compilation of all the POI files that have been loaded) now exceeds the 2M of available memory. I used POI Loader and removed all of them, then ran the Loader again. This time I chose to load to the card instead of the Garmin and it ran fine. I guess since it realized that the file was now too big to load to the internal memory, it did not offer to "install" them when I unplugged the 650 and turned it on.

For me, the POIs work the same on the card as they do in internal memory. It creates a POI folder on the card and stores all the POIs in a single file in that. I don't know how to remove individual POIs or POI files from the device using POI Loader. All I have been able to do is erase the "master file" (which contains all of them) and reload the ones I want but since it only takes a couple of minutes I don't mind.

turf

I will try it on my 650 shortly. Wish the manual would include some of this info but at least this site exists. Thanks.

I was trying to load alot of custom poi's. I found out that i can only load about 25,000 poi's on my unit.

You can store the POI on either the SD or on the device's internal memory.

Note: There were some issues with large files. I don't know if these issues were resolved in newer models. I would personally recommend storing the files on the SD card, even though at power up there is an anoying splash screen asking to load the files to internal memory.

In order to upload the database, you need to download the garmin poi loader from garmin's website.

In addition you need to a mini usb cable to interface your unit with the computer usb port.

Note that the SP 330 and 340 cannot read Custom POIs from the SD card.

Also, you probably can get rid of the annoying prompt by responding "Yes" and then selecting "Skip this file" and you won't be prompted again.

Note for Zumo users, this doesn't work on the Zumo.

This has been bugging me for a while, so I finally tried it. My C580 will read POI from the SD card. They show up on the Custom POIs list after the alphabetical listing of the POI loaded to the GPS.

Paul

I have been reading for two days on all info regarding POIs. This post has been invaluable for what I have been looking for.

Now, a few questions for this really new user. I have learned that I can put the poi files on my sd card. i have no problem with this procedure. My question is that once I reboot the garmin, it asks me if I want to save the info to my garmin.

I have read if I say yes, it will transfer it to my hard drive. If I say no, it will ask me everytime I boot up this question.

So my question is, is there a way that I can bypass this message and still keep the pois on my sd card??

If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

I did it on my C580 like this:

When it asks if you want to load them, press YES. On the next screen it will give you the option of not asking you again, check that and then hit the SKIP option.

How to "un-do" that? I don't know! Maybe when a new file is loaded onto the card?

Thank you, you have just answered all my questions
on memory cards and POI's

I was worried about how to un-do the don't ask me again process too. On my Nuvi 760, as soon as I changed any POI file on the SD card, the Nuvi started asking me again at power up if I wanted to transfer....etc.

On the 660, load POI's on the SD card, start the Nuvi, tell it yes on the first screen, tell it no and check don't ask again on the next screen and you're fine until you reload the POI's and you'll go thru the same thing again. There's no undo or redo.

My nuvi 260 seems to only hold 52 POIs.So I bought an SD card. Still the same 52 pois and no more.

Try a search for "52 POIs"

I thought they were in there...lol.
Thanks so much.

If you have 52 categories for pois showing you will need to break down your files into subfolders to fix the problem of just 52 showing. See http://www.poi-factory.com/node/8674 .

I recently bought a Kenwood DNX 8120 in-dash unit which includes a Garmin GPS similar to the Streetpilot 7200 serie or the Nuvi serie.
Anybody can tell me how to proceed to import waypoints, POI's, new guidance voices, pointers (vehicles) etc... into this unit? Kenwood says to use the SD card and the GPS unit should see the files. Instructions are very hazy. Up to now, it doesn't seems to work. Probably i don't copy on my SD card the right format of files. I copied:
.srf for vehicles
.gpx or .csv for POI's
.VPM for voice guidance language
Your help would be appreciated.

I'm not sure, but here's my guess.

The voice and vehicle files for other Garmin units cannot be read from the SD card and must be in the appropriate folders on the unit itself, so my guess is that you are out of luck there.

Waypoints (on other Garmin units) cannot be read from the SD card either.

As to the Custom POIs, my guess is that the unit will read .GPI files as Custom POIs as the other units do. You must use POI Loader to LOAD them to the card.

Point POI Loader to the SD card as the destination. Use the drop down arrow in the POI Loader if necessary to be sure you are selecting the correct drive. Then put the card in the unit and see if it sees them.

Many Thanks. I'll give this a try and let You know the results. Checking out also with Garmin support for the voices and vehicles.
I'm also trying to figure out how we could draw transparent icons for our POI'S. Have a look on the default ones, they are. As far as I know, it would be possible if Garmin can read .png files

Okay, I am so new it hurts. I've looked in the Garmin store and cannot find the SD cards for sale. I will need one to put into the computer? Or will it let me download/upload the POI files to the Nuvi 880's memory direct? Just how much memory does this device have? I've already imported my Blackberry address book, but that is all so far.