More Garmin POI goodness

This entry is a follow-up to this one.

I should have noted in my last article about this (see above) that if desired, you can drive around with your i3/c340/2720 Garmin GPS Unit to mark waypoints, export to MapSource as a GPX, convert to CSV, then use POI Loader to send the CSV to your GPS as a POI Database.

Here's how that's done:

1) Drive around and mark the places where you want your POI's to be. This is easy enough. Every time you come to a spot where you want a POI to be, just set a "Favorite" (waypoint). Do this as many times as desired.

2) Export the waypoints to MapSource when you get back home.

3) Export the MapSource waypoints as a GPX file.

4. Use GPXtoPOI to convert the GPX to a CSV (the only type of database that POI Loader uses).

5. Use POI Loader to import the database to your Garmin mobile GPS unit, such as the i3, c340 or 2720.

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In the event you have more POI's to add later but don't want to lose your old ones, the easiest way to do this is to have multiple CSV files and have POI Loader load them all at once.

Say you have an existing CSV file. Leave it where it is. Just make your new updated CSV file, put it in the SAME directory where your old CSV file is, and run POI Loader. The POI Loader software will take ALL CSV's in the directory and load them into your GPS unit. Not to worry, these files are very small and won't take away all the storage space... not unless you have several thousand POI's. 😉

Published 2006 Jan 11