Thread: How to create TourGuides for Garmin nuvi models

How to create TourGuides for Garmin nuvi models. (by lschwabe)

TourGuide functionality will basically play automatically the sound or narrative associated with a given Waypoint (or Point of Interest-POI) when you are within a certain radius of it, it also allows you to see a picture or read the descriptive text related to that point. This is done by associating a sound file (wav, or mp3 some units) and/or an icon (bmp) and/or an image (jpg) with particular Waypoint entries.

TourGuides are different to POI alerts, in that the association of the sound or icon is done at the Waypoint level, not at the file level. With POI alerts, the sound applies to all the waypoints contained in one file, not to specific ones, and there is no control to pause the sound file, as the POI alert is typically short, where the TourGuide one tends to be much longer.



TourGuides do not require all 3 types of files (icon, image, and sound). For example, it can be used to only specify icons per entry, or images per entry, just sound files, or any combination of the above.

To use TourGuide sound files in nuvi units that do not has an mp3 player, sound files must be wav format, 16 bit, mono, and you must use POI Loader 2.5.2, and you need to install a sox utility for POI Loader to verify the wav files.
http://www.poi-factory.com/images/csv/sox-14-0-1.zip

TourGuides is NOT a routing feature, for that you need Routes functionality, so your TourGuide is a touristic kind of TourGuide

In units that include an mp3 player, TourGuide sound may be stopped and replayed, wav files play whole from start to finish.

Sound files must contain the case sensitive "TourGuide" text as part of the sound file name.

The POI file must be in gpx format, not csv, and does not require "TourGuide" to be part of the file name, but see below how to create TourGuides in csv-like text files and then easily convert to gpx format.

Sound activation requires a proximity to be specified.


A VERY EASY WAY TO CREATE TOURGUIDEs

1. use POI Converter from this site

Code:

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the POI Converter JavaScript make the creation of the gpx file very easy.

2. Check that the Garmin "POI Loader" properties on your Windows desktop to ensure that the "Start in" folder is blanked out, this is important to make sure it finds the "Data" folder when loading POIs.

3. Create a POI file in a text file, similar in format to the csv POI files, but this file uses two additional values to indicate proximity, and TourGuide folder name for the entry. This file does not require "TourGuide" as part of the filename.

Text file sample entries:

-79.123456,43.654321,Name of waypoint one,Description of wp1,750,WpFolderA

-79.234567,43.543216,Name of waypoint two,"Description of waypoint2

using multiple lines of text
followed by a 5th parameter to indicate proximity
followed by a 6th paramenter to indicate a folder name containing associated
TourGuide files for this entry",500,WpFolderB



In this example, the POI Converter utility will:

•Take the 5th parameter (750 and 500 values) and used them as the distance triggers, placing them in the gpx file proximity tags, and
•Take the 6th parameter (WpFolderA and WpFolderB values) to create a link to associate the location of where the TourGuide media files are, by creating the required tags in the gpx file (link href="Data/WpFolderA", or link href="Data/WpFolderB") for the above entries. In other words, this will link the POI entries to the TourGuide associated files (icon/sound/image) contained in the corresponding folders.


Note that the description for a Waypoint can span across many multiple lines, which would be required for lengthy descriptions of TourGuide points, just make sure not to use " (double quotes) within the text.


4. Create a "Data" folder under your main POI folder, this folder must contain the folders specified in the 6th parameter of the text file.

5. Place your media files (icon/image/sound) in the "Data/WpFolder" folders.

6. Convert the enhanced csv-like text file to gpx format by dragging and dropping the .txt file into the POI Converter JavaScript. This will create the gpx file with the same name as the txt file, but with a .gpx extension.

7. Run POI Loader, and you are ready to go.

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Code:

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