Published at April 18, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
POILoader: A long and involved post of mine from a few weeks back described methods for managing multiple custom POI files on a Garmin GPS, to get around the limitation that POILoader erased the current POI set when uploading a new one. The process was mildly painful, involving going into the GPS’s memory, then copying and renaming the *.gpi POI files to prevent them from being erased; I refer you to that post for the gory details. The latest version of the POILoader makes this process a lot simpler: you now have the option of saving the *.gpi files directly on your computer, where you can rename and manage them directly before copying them into the /Garmin/POI directory on your GPS unit. A lot easier.
Curiously, there’s one additional option in the program, which lets you install the POIs into Garmin’s MapSource program under a specific name. It’s curious because there’s no current support in MapSource for POI uploading; I’d look for that capability in an upcoming release.
DNRGarmin: In comments on this post, Thomas notes that the bug that kept USB connectivity in DNRGarmin non-functional unless you installed with administrator rights has been fixed; it now works with any installation. If you have a Garmin handheld GPS, the latest version of DNRGarmin is a must. You can upload data from GPX, Google Earth’s KML format, text, DBF and shapefile to your Garmin using this program, and conversely save data from your GPS in these formats; it can even re-project data in UTM, Lambert, etc. to geographic coordinates for. Even if you don’t have a Garmin, it’s a handy program to have for converting from one format to another.
Dan Bloomberg wrote to tell me of his new website, the GPS File Depot. Some useful stuff for GPS users, especially Garmin owners:
Published at April 11, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
Last week, I posted on how to convert a point shapefile to a Garmin custom POI file, and how with some manipulation you could include a fair number of the shapefile attributes in that POI’s data screen. But with only 6 lines of dataspace available, and only about 20 or so characters per line, you can only fit so much data onto a single data screen before you run out of space. And there may be times when you need to fit in more data.
The solution is pretty straightforward - just create another set of data for the same set of POIs, and give this new dataset a different name. It’s easy to access this new dataset using standard POI database management; you can make it even easier to distinguish between different datasets by modifying the point name slightly, appending a letter or number to every POI name in the new dataset, distinguishing it from other datasets with the same name. Using this technique, and using a Garmin that takes external data cards, there’s virtually no limit to the amount of attribute data you can include for every point in a shapefile.
Published at April 4, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
Garmin POIs (Points of Interest) datafiles can contain up to two lines of text data for the name, and up to four lines of data for the description, far more than the more limited space for the same data in a GPS waypoint. This gives you enough room to include at least some of a point shapefile’s tabular attribute data for a location, and take it into the field with you for reference. And while there’s typically a limit of 500 to 1000 waypoints on many Garmin GPS units, you can put tens of thousands of locations into a POI file, along with that associated data. Here’s one way to create Garmin POI files from a point shapefile, though you could use comparable tabular data as well.
Continue reading ‘Creating A Garmin GPS Points Of Interest (POI) File From A Point Shapefile’
Published at April 1, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
Creating custom icons for Garmin POI files is similar to, but actually easier than, creating them for custom waypoints. I’ve covered the basic details of creating custom waypoint icons in two previous posts (part one and part two), and refer you to those for the general process. But the graphic format requirements are somewhat relaxed for custom POI icons compared to custom waypoint icons:
Continue reading ‘Creating Custom Icons For Garmin Points Of Interest (POI)’
Published at March 27, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
So you’ve followed the directions in the previous post, and created a CSV POI file, and uploaded it to you Garmin GPS unit. Now what?
Continue reading ‘Managing Custom POI Data On A Garmin Handheld GPS’
Published at March 25, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
In the first post of this series, I compared the features of custom POIs (Points Of Interest) and waypoints for a Garmin handheld GPS unit (like my 60Cx). This post will show how to create a POI datafile that can be uploaded into a Garmin GPSr.
Continue reading ‘Creating A Garmin Custom POI Datafile’
Published at March 23, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
1:24K-equivalent topographic maps for Montana in the Garmin .img format are now available from miscjunk.org, also the source of topo maps for Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Installs in MapSource.
MiscJunk is working on a set for California, but there’s one available now here. This is a 1-GB plus gmapsupp.img file that will have to be copied directly onto a 2-GB or larger microSD or SD card (depending on the Garmin model); it won’t fit on models that have built-in memory.
