Combining PGPSW Speedcameras and MaFt POI's

[SandLake]

I'm a bit confused about combining Speedcameras and POI's.

It it OK to have them in a folder structure like


POI - MaFt - Accomodation
files
- Attractions
files
- Common
files
- PGPSW
files

or must PGPSW be at the same level as Accomodation/Attractions and Common like this

POI - Accomodation
files
Attractions
files
Common
files
PGPSW
files

This way I (think I) can point CameraManager at D:\POI\PGPSW and POILoader at D:\POI

Which way is the right way?

[MaFt]

i would put them as follows:

C:\POI\Accommodation
C:\POI\Attractions
C:\POI\Food and Drink
C:\POI\Speed Cameras
etc

you would then tell CameraManager that the speed cams are in C:\POI\Speed Cameras

then POILoader to go to C:\POI

MaFt

[SandLake]

Thanks for that, I appreciate your help

[BigJacko]

In case this helps...

I discovered (on my nuvi 265WT) that there is no need to have everything lumped into one single POI (.gpi) file on the GPS device itself. You can have multiple .gpi files and it seems to cope just fine.

What I do is this:

1- Arrange all my location-POIs (from garminpoi/MaFt) in the folder hierarchy as suggested by MaFt, but NOT including the PGPSW camera POIs there.

2 - I keep the camera POIs separate, in a structure all of their own (with my own AT&T-made TTS voice-warning samples that I can drop in after unzipping the main PGPSW zipfiles). I don't use CameraManager, but from what I've seen, this process would still work the same way with Ash's app - you'd just get CameraManager to stick everything in a folder (which could be anywhere), as it does usually - and then get POILoader to deal with it separately from the location-POIs (see next step).

3 - I then use POILoader TWICE - once to create the .gpi file for the location-POIs, and once to create the .gpi for the camera-POIs. The trick is to tell POILoader to save the file to a temporary folder on my hard drive, and not to have it save directly to the GPS unit!. In between each POILoader run, I will rename the POI.GPI file that POILoader creates, so that it is something more memorable (like www.garminpoi.co.uk.gpi and pgpsw_8.014_27-Jan-2010.gpi).

4 - Then I will copy (drag-drop) the TWO .gpi files from the temporary folder on my PC, into the F:\Garmin\POI folder on my GPS unit (or a separate POIs folder on the GPS unit's SD card - which in theory, doesn't even have to be in the GPS at the time, if you have an SD card reader on your PC). I can also remove or delete other outdated .gpi files off the unit at the same time. Yes - it does require a bit of care, but if you keep regular backups, you'll be okay. It's no different from file-copying any other file, really.

You may be asking yourself "why the need for all these extra steps?", which is a perfectly valid question! In short, it's because there are times when I don't wish to have to recompile the whole garminPOI dataset, simply because the PGPSW dataset has changed. PGPSW changes ever week; GarminPOI doesn't. This way, I can do a quick rebuild of just the PGPSW camera stuff each week, and drop in a new .gpi file, removing the old one, without touching the GarminPOI stuff at all.

There is a second benefit (if that's not too strong a word) too - You may have noticed that if you save your POIs to SD card, the GPS unit will ask you if you want to copy these to the main unit's storage, so that (in their words) it'll still be available if the SD card is removed. Personally, I prefer to leave them all on the SD card, but that pop-up warning which happened EVERY time you switched on, really bugged me. Until I noticed that if you say 'yes' to the first prompt to install them, it doesn't actually install them straight away. It takes you to a second page, where you can pick and choose exactly what .gpi files you want copied over to the unit's own storage. This is one area where you might wish to, say, have the GarminPOI stuff copied on to the unit storage, but leave the PGPSW cameras on the SD card - and now, because the files are separate, and both have distinguishable names, you can choose exactly this!

A side-note: if you've decided you don't want either .gpi file to go onto the main unit's storage, but you want to stop that darned popup, you can simply leave both unselected (no ticks), but tick the box at the bottom which tells the system 'don't ask me again' (or words to that effect). Once you've ticked that, and gone through the rest of the process, the unit will stop bothering you about those .gpi files it's found on the SD card (at least, until the next time you place a new .gpi file onto the card, but that's no big deal, because you simply tell it to 'forget' that file too, in the same way).

Hope this helps. Yes, it may seem a little more complicated at first (and maybe it is ), but the point is, the Garmin nuvi GPS's appear to be a lot smarter than the impression given by POILoader. The POI's don't necessarily have to be all in one giant-sized lump of POI data, and can be quite niftily filed away and arranged, if you desire it.

Regards
Neil

[SandLake]

There is a lot in there I didn't realise! Thanks very much for that

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