Today’s experiment will involve loading a custom set of POI’s, stored as a MOSS 2007 list, onto a Garmin nüvi 660 GPS device through our Visual Fusion for SharePoint (VFSP) product.

The POI set which will be used in this experiment is a list of all In-N-Out Burger locations. Since the GPS unit needs geocoded POI’s, I set up a VFSP Geo Custom List in SharePoint which geocoded the addresses of the In-N-Out Burger locations.

To transfer the POI set to the GPS unit, we will use Garmin’s POI Loader utility (available for download here). POI Loader is used to export POI sets in either a .gpx or .csv file to a compatible Garmin device. For this experiment, we will use a .csv file format due to the redundant nature of our data set. If your POI’s are strongly dissimilar, you may want to work with a .gpx file.

The GPS unit expects the records in the .csv file to be ordered as such: longitude, latitude, title, and details. By creating a new view for the list we can order it in this manner.

Create a standard, public view and position the columns in the correct order. You might also want to hide unnecessary columns, as I did.

You should now see the list in the view you just created. Export the list to Excel by selecting Export to Spreadsheet from the Actions menu, this will launch Excel and open the list as a workbook. Save the workbook as a .csv file.

If you choose, you can create a custom 24 px x 24 px icon to be associated with your POI’s. The icon must be a .bmp file with the same file name as your .csv file (for example, “xyz.csv” and “xyz.bmp”) and reside in the same directory. I created the icon below to indicate the In-N-Out Burger locations.

Now that we have our .csv and custom icon, make sure the GPS device is connected to the computer and then run Garmin POI Loader. When prompted, select the option to “Install new custom POI’s onto your device”. On the next screen, specify the directory which contains your .csv file and icon bitmap, select either metric or English measurement, and select “Manual” mode, which will allow us to specify a proximity alert for our POI set.

On the next screen, check “This file contains proximity alerts points” when prompted regarding the correct .csv file. Then specify an alert distance. This will cause the GPS unit to alert you whenever you come within your specified distance of a POI.

Now that the points are loaded, it’s time to try it out. When you are within the specified distance of a POI, the unit should raise an alert.

Touching the alert banner will bring up the details of the alert and enable you to set that POI as your destination.

You should be able to see the custom POI icon as you approach your destination.

If you are getting hungry and have not received a proximity warning recently, you can go to Extras > Custom POIs on your nüvi 660 and you will be presented with a listing of the 52 closest of your custom POI’s. You can select any of the entries to set it as your destination.

I don’t know about you, but this is making me really hungry.

Thanks to Eric Hunt at Microsoft Consulting for the idea behind this experiment.

P.S. You can download a zip file containing the .csv file and .bmp file I used in this experiment here.