Anyone Found A Use For Custom Pois?

[GeoBobC]

Has anyone found a good use for custom POIs yet? They can be loaded, but no information displays on the map: only an icon. Even when hovering with the cursor or clicking on the icon, no information displays. They can be displayed in Find > "Custom Points of Interest" but that seems rather limited in usefulness.

 

What am I missing?

[+Red90]

1) They hold a lot more text than waypoints, so I use them to have a second copy of the caches with the full hints, codes, container types.

 

2) I also keep a copy of all of my found caches, which can be handy when looking at an area in relationship to where you have been before.

 

3) Red light cameras, speed traps.... with proximity alerts.

 

The no name display is a current bug. if you turn off the waypoint display, they become clickable. You can route to then just like a waypoint and you can also create waypoints from them.

[+JanniCash]

Has anyone found a good use for custom POIs yet? They can be loaded, but no information displays on the map: only an icon. Even when hovering with the cursor or clicking on the icon, no information displays. They can be displayed in Find > "Custom Points of Interest" but that seems rather limited in usefulness.

 

What am I missing?

Like discussed in this topic, you have to disable user waypoints in the map setup in order to make the POI's "clickable". Annoying, yes, but better that way than polluting the map beyond recognition with GC waypoints.

 

Jan

[+Timpat]

I agree 100% with Red90! I do almost precisely the same thing. By creating weekly PQs I maintain over 1000 current geocaches for a huge area around me, create a second copy for additional info, and load this as custom POIs. I keep my Owned caches w/all their multi components, and a file for all My Finds to keep as a record. As Red90 stated you can turn OFF your User Waypoints display and when zoomed to the 800' level (or lower) you can ID any POI when scrolling the arrow over. I have a total of 18,000 custom POIs (don't ask me why) loaded. One file is all the world's airports that Neo_Geo shared with me for a total of 8,169 points. It's the nuts!

[Neo_Geo]

One file is all the world's airports that Neo_Geo shared with me for a total of 8,169 points. It's the nuts!

It's actually just the western hemisphere. The eastern hemisphere names contain characters that cause errors during conversion. I also have aviation navaids (VORs and NDBs) as well as airway intersections and reporting points - over 50,000 POIs in all!

 

 

Has anyone found a good use for custom POIs yet? They can be loaded, but no information displays on the map: only an icon. Even when hovering with the cursor or clicking on the icon, no information displays. They can be displayed in Find > "Custom Points of Interest" but that seems rather limited in usefulness.

 

What am I missing?

You can do a search - find nearest containing. I may not know I'm passing by it by looking at it on the map, but if I know what I'm looking for, then I can navigate to it.

Edited July 25, 2006 by Neo_Geo

[Moun10Bike]

I have found the POI functionality to be extremely useful. I use POIs for storing "permanent" waypoints - things like my home location, trailheads, mountain summits, etc. In the past I kept these as normal waypoints, which of course would use up part of the receiver's waypoint capacity and also necessitate deleting and reloading them whenever I wanted to quickly load new data (such as a new Pocket Query). Now I only use waypoints for caches, so it is a simple task to update the receiver without having to worry about deleting or running out of room for the other locations that I want to navigate to on a regular or semi-regular basis.

[GeoidPS]

With my street piloit, I like to be alerted when I'm nearing a speed trap or nearing a lesser expensive gas station. Regular waypoints won't do that (street piloit). Since I create the icons myself, I have no problem identifying what the alert is.

[+Timpat]

I have found the POI functionality to be extremely useful. I use POIs for storing "permanent" waypoints - things like my home location, trailheads, mountain summits, etc. In the past I kept these as normal waypoints, which of course would use up part of the receiver's waypoint capacity and also necessitate deleting and reloading them whenever I wanted to quickly load new data (such as a new Pocket Query). Now I only use waypoints for caches, so it is a simple task to update the receiver without having to worry about deleting or running out of room for the other locations that I want to navigate to on a regular or semi-regular basis.

Here, here, very well put! Agree totally, and just took a couple excellent pointers from you!

[+whitecrow]

Like discussed in this topic, you have to disable user waypoints in the map setup in order to make the POI's "clickable

 

I don't have the user waypoints turned off (set to small). I can pan the east coast & click on any custom icon & it brings up the text I have entered for that icon.

However if I do a find for a custom icon and then pan to another custom icon, I cannot click on that icon.