The family goes down south to Disney World in Orlando every couple of years (well twice now….) we always have a good time there seeing all the sites and attractions. Also everytime I say “I wonder why there is no GPS Point Of Interest file available for download into a GPS unit”. This seems like a “natural” to me. Especially for persons having portable GPS units that want to get to an attraction in the shortest route possible from inside or outside of the park. So, I searched the internet and came up with one “Disney World POI” file… but it only has about six entries for the gates of the different theme parks… not so useful for what I want!
I decided to create my own file. No problem. Open the Magellan POI program and enter in the information that is required.
Oh, you don’t have Magellan POI File Editor software on your PC/Mac. Man, you are soooo out of luck.
It is supposed to be on the CD that came with your GPS. Being extremely lazy I did not even try to locate that CD… I just Googled until I found a link someone posted. Maybe I should be nice and add a link to let you download it from here….. we’ll see….
Magellan POI Editor UPDATE 12/14/2015 The link to the POI Editor no longer works so I have removed it. Try searching for this. Things are a lot easier now than when I originally posted the link. Not to mention the version I had posted is long out of date!
Small and portable it can be used in the car or stuck in a pocket for pedestrian use – like walking around Disney World! (Batteries are supposed to be good for 3 hours or so.)
Seems simple enough, there are only about three things: Latitude, Longitude and Name for each POI. Oh, what is that information for each of those? Where do you get it? Hmmm… maybe not quite so easy after all. Open Google Earth, pan around until you find the location, zoom in to make sure it is right, copy the info from the screen into the Magellan POI program…. sort of time consuming. Maybe not such a great idea after all, but it seems like there should be a better way to do this.
A search found a web site forum with some hints, and a reference to another web site where you can do latitude and longitude lookups using an address, name, etc. Check this out –>
UPDATE 12/14/2015 This appears to no longer be working so I removed the link but you can copy and paste to try it. “itouchmap.com/latlong.html”. One thing it does others may not, reverse lookups… if you have a latitude and longitude plug them in and see where in the world it is at. Might be good for doing a “cross reference” check on points you have.
But, this is still a rather slow, copy and paste operation. Find the location, copy the info (a piece at at time) paste it into your file, add Name/Description and go to the next place. If you have a lot of points be prepared to spend some serious mousing time. So… there has to be a better way. Google to the rescue again! An extended search for: POI +file +create and some other terms and come up with a lot of nothing…. wait what is this one…. ITN Converter…. download it, install (cool it doesn’t “really” need to install, it is an executable that runs on it’s own. Even from a USB memory stick.)
So… does it work or not?
Continue reading→
