How do I load POIs ?

POIs or Points Of Interest can be loaded onto most Garmin GPS products, a POI is a single Waypoint co-ordinate that can show the location of any map feature the user wishes to display, such as speed cameras, geocashes, shops etc.. POIs can be download from websites or created by a user, either singly or as a group. Downloaded groups of POIs are commonly in Comma Separated Variable format e.g. :-


-0.19857, 51.32294, Banstead,
-0.20301, 51.65531, Barnet,
-3.24159, 51.4145, Barry,
-2.35875, 51.38326, Bath,

Where the fields are Longitude (W/E), Latitude (N/S) and a text description , POIs in this CSV format can be converted and downloaded to a Garmin GPS device (or computer file) using a computer program called Garmin POI loader, this can be downloaded from the Garmin site here :-



Each group of POIs can also have a sound (or voice recording) associated with it and an icon to be displayed, so for example a speed camera could have a recorded message such as "Gatso 30 Miles Per Hour Camera" played when the unit is within a predetermined distance from the POI and the icon would be displayed on-screen, all three files will be combined into a *.GPI file if they are in the same Folder and have the same name e.g. :-

Code:

Folder-POI-Files
              Gatso30.csv
              Gatso30.bmp
              Gatso30.wav

It has been reported that POI Loader will allow 32 folders containing 255 (note :- DO-NOT exceed 255) POIs in each folder or 8160 POIs in total, a maximum number of waypoints is not known, but 403 folders containing over 1 million waypoints has been reported, suggesting at least 2400 waypoints in each folder