Why > 1000 waypoints? was: Another dumb question

[+Staufman]

The Garmin 60csx will hold 1000 waypoints in its memory. Why would you need to have any more than that? Don't you ever delete them when you're done with them? Sorry, but I just had to ask.

[+GeekBoy.from.Illinois]

The Garmin 60csx will hold 1000 waypoints in its memory. Why would you need to have any more than that? Don't you ever delete them when you're done with them? Sorry, but I just had to ask.

 

Living where I do, I have over 1700 caches in an area less than 50 miles radius of my house. If I know I will be traveling in much of that area, but I do not know exactly what days I'll be in which area, it is very difficult to work efficiently if I don't have the caches already in my GPSr.

 

Additionally, that 1000 waypoint limit also includes all user waypoints, and any routing (turn-by-turn direction) waypoints. If you travel a lot for work, you could easily eat-up s couple hundred of these waypoints for your business customer locations and for driving directions to them. I load 750 caches into the waypoints of my GPSr, and load all 1700+ caches as custom POI's allowing me to search for any in my GSAK database, although I lose some functionality on any that are not loaded as standard waypoints. My wife's Magellan eXplorist 600 will allow her to store as many geocaches as she wants (as long as she puts no more than 200 in a single file) on either the unit's internal memory, or on it's SD card storage. It takes more work to use the GPSr to find the next nearest cache, but she has all the Geocaching functionality for all of her caches.

[+Staufman]

ok, I got it... so when the 1000 in internal memory are all taken up, and you want to save more of them as poi's on your card, do you just save them to a file and upload them or do you need to use gsak to upload them? I'm not quite clear yet as to how this all works together, as far as what software does what. I'm not talking about topo and city software, I'm talking about the gsak, ximage etc. Any help?

[+GeekBoy.from.Illinois]

Actually, the POI Loader (free download from Garmin) is what you use to load the custom POI's to your micro-SD card. Much like other issues, you will see that when you run the loader, it will delete any custom POI's you may have, and then add the new ones, you you need to put all of your GPX files into one directory and load everything all at once (when using the custom POI features).

 

I have only had my Garmin about a month, and I learned all of this on this very forum in that time. There are many good resources here, if you have time to read them. One good one is a thread that gives good instructions on how to create custom icons for your custom POI's. That might even give you a summary of loading the POI's as well, I have not actually read the most recent version of the information.

[+ThePropers]

ok, I got it... so when the 1000 in internal memory are all taken up, and you want to save more of them as poi's on your card, do you just save them to a file and upload them or do you need to use gsak to upload them? I'm not quite clear yet as to how this all works together, as far as what software does what. I'm not talking about topo and city software, I'm talking about the gsak, ximage etc. Any help?

 

I use the waypoints (with the 1000 limit) strictly for geocaching to hold caches that I have not found, and also for any additional "geocaching related" points, like child waypoints and marking my car..etc.

 

I then have a database for my found caches, and a database for my friends/family/business addresses that are stored as POIs.

 

So this is the software I use:

For the geocaching waypoints, I use GSAK and just send them over.

 

For the POIs, I:

1) Use GSAK for exporting a new GPX of my found caches (to get the smartnames).

2) Use MapSource for creating my addresses, and save that as a GPX file.

3) Use Garmin's POI loader to load those two GPX files.

[+Staufman]

I'm appreciate all you guys have told me. It'll help me out alot. One thing I've noticed is that these forums are a great help, and everyone I've met so far has been great. Thanks guys!