I have just been playing around with POI’s (points of interest) for my Garmin Nuvi. There are heaps of them available free from “GPS Data Team” on the net.
These POI’s are available for other GPS’s as
well as Garmin Nuvi
As
well as the POI you can download an icon in BMP format, which shows up on the screen. I have loaded heaps and heaps to my Nuvi 660 and works great.
They are listed in groups, these being :
Road Safety, Shopping, Restaurants, Accommodation, WiFi Hotspots, Petrol, Tourist Locations, Transportation, Automotive, Postcodes,
Recreation, Money, Computers, Education and Trade.
To load these POI’s on to your Nuvi, firstly you need to download the free “POI Loader” program from Garmin. Then make a new folder (i.e. “POI’s” in “My Documents” it can be called anything as it is only the contents that are loaded to the Nuvi.
Then start making your selections, for example :-
Select “Shopping” then select “Bunnings Warehouse” then select “Download”
Select “Garmin POI BMP” and save to your new folder i.e. “POI’s”
Then go back and select “XML-GPX Exchange Format” and also save to your new folder. You should now have two files in the folder:
Bunnings_Warehouse.bmp ….. This is the Bunnings icon symbol
Bunnings_Warehouse.gpx ….. This is the list of all the Bunnings Stores and . their locations.
To add more, just keep on adding more files to the folder i.e.
Mc Donald’s from “Restaurants’,
Shell Service Stations from “Petrol”, Westpac Banks from “Money” etc etc
When you have all the POI’s you want, plug the Nuvi into computer, the Nuvi will turn on, then start the “Garmin POI Loader” program on the computer, select your Nuvi under “Device” . Then select the folder and location that you stored all the POI’s in, in the above example it was “POI’s”.
Then select “Meters and KPH” for distance and speed units, and “Express” for the mode.
Then select “Next” and the computer will load all the POI’s to your Nuvi.
I suggest you back up the hard drive in the Nuvi to your computer, BEFORE you do anything, just incase anything goes wrong ! Also if you need more room on the hard drive, delete all the foreign voices etc you will never use, as Doug has suggested on previous posts.
Garmin POI Loader is available from :
http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/
POI’s available from :
http://www.gps-data-team.info/poi/australia/
Regards
Neil