NAVG8OR

Atlas Cached, Good questions. I checked the GPS unit and I have both routable and non-routable maps on the unit. I believe, based on the current settings on the unit, I likely had a routable map enabled during the previous testing session. All the POIs in that testcase were located near roadways. I will perform some additional testing this weekend in a wilderness area away from routable roads with testcases where either a routable or a non-routable map are enabled on the unit. As well, I want to re-run my original testcase based on a CSV file instead of the GPX based file - to determine if the results differ. Will report back with results.

Hello Everyone, I have been following this thread for about 6 months now as I have been trying to figure out how to get POI Proximity alerts working on my GPSMAP 64S. While I have not spent any significant amount of time Geocaching, I do spend a lot of time working with GPS units to keep our Search and Rescue teams' units working as required. In the SAR community we have requirement similar to your Geocache Proximity Alerting challenge. We have many locations around the province for which we want to receive automatic alerts indicating that we are operating in close proximity to ANY of these locations without specifically having to know we are close to one of them. Example are hazard locations, abandoned mine shafts, sink holes, emergency assembly points etc. which are not always captured on maps. Our thought was to have a custom POI database(s) containing the various locations with custom symbols and proximity alert ranges - hence my close following of this Geocaching thread. Thanks for all your efforts, this was very helpful. Until last week, my experience and results (setting up POIs and walking through them trying to generate alerts) were very similar to those described by Cheminer Will throughout the thread. Last week, I setup a new POI database containing 10 POI locations around my neighborhood. I was able to get the alerting function to work after a couple of test runs. Bit of disclosure first: I use a MAC computer and my GPSMAP 64S has V5.30 of the firmware loaded. POI Loader version used to generate the .gpi file was 2.3.0. I generated a GPX file containing the POI locations and the proximity ranges using Basecamp. I have yet to try using a CSV file but will do that in the next day or so and report those results. Here are the steps and parameters that I used and how I got it to finally work... 1. Generated a GPX file with the 10 POI locations using Basecamp each with a proximity range of 15m. POI locations are all vary between 60 to about 200m apart 2. Created a POI directory which contained: Test_POI.gpx and Test_POI.bmp (custom POI symbol) 3. Ran the POI Loader (in Express Mode) on the POI directory and selected filename as GPX_MAC_2p3p0 4. GPX_MAC_2p3p0.gpi was confirmed to be present in the Garmin/POI directory on the 64s Outside to run tests... On the first test run, I simply walked the route between the POI symbols on the GPSMAP 64 display. I was walking at normal walking speed - between 4-7km/hour. At no point during this test, was a proximity alert generated. I went back home frustrated. Later that same day I had to go out in the car, and having recalled one of the posts by JohnCNA (indicating he was driving) and some posts by Hans (with images showing speeds of 50km/hr). I took the GPS out (with the same POI file) and did the same route DRIVING in the car (15-30km/hr). Low and behold - ALERT after ALERT - each POI in turn alerted in the car. I was amazed that it worked - See attached image. Later that day, I again tried the route walking - slowly at first without any alerts being generated. On my second loop around the POIs - I took off running about ~12 km/hr and again ALERT after ALERT. Even after I slowed down to below 7km an hour the ALERTs still were being generated. Sorry for the long story ... but based on what I saw with these tests - after many attempts walking around/through POIs on a map with no success with alerts, it appears that there may be some limitation as to a minimum speed required to get the alerts to trigger. Again, while this gpi file was generated using a GPX file, I believe that the CSV version will likely work the same - I just haven't tested it yet. I just wanted to let you know what I found so that you could see if this solves your problems with your 66 as well. Try a simple route in your car and see if that works. If so, take a gentle run over the same path and see if that works. Just for clarity when I say route - I don't mean a GARMIN route but just the path between the POI symbols on the display. I didn't have any GARMIN route, steering or guidance between my position and any of the POI symbols while I was testing. The POI symbols were simply displayed on the GPS display while I was walking, driving or jogging between them. For my purposes (and likely yours as well), having some minimum speed to get the alerting to work is really not desirable/acceptable for situations were you are walking around (ie geocaching or searching for someone). If further testing shows this common issue with minimum speed - we will need Garmin's help to fix. Good luck with your testing.