Does the Go 910 have limits on numbers of POIs?

Joined
Jul 21, 2014
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TomTom Model(s)
Go 910
Apologies if this is a weekly question!

Hopefully mine is slightly different.

I already use the Go 910 for assisting with Geocaching, and upload a bunch of geocaches to it, presumably as POIs.
They come with their own icons.

I'm doing a long road trip in the US soon, and hope to upload (using GSAK) several pocket queries of up to 1000 caches into one GSAK database, and export to the Go 910.

I'm likely to get of the order of 8000 and up as the mapping conversion to a pocket query along the route is going quite coarsely point to point, cutting off corners in roads etc, so I'm having to use further from the route than I would like. My first 500 mile route is maxing out at 1000. Trip is 4000miles+.

I'll also be running smaller centre point based queries on areas we will be stopping at, which will add some more.

Also, I have some actual trip POIs I'm adding, but that will be under 100 most likely, so negligible in comparison.
(although I may manually add those as favourites instead actually, so I can navigate to them easily)

So are there numerical limits on the POIs, or is it storage based? I don't keep much on the HD in the 910 so should have a lot of space.

Thanks.
 
In theory, there isn't a limit to the number of poi points in any custom poi category. One of our mods, canderson, is a serious geocacher and likely will see this thread and post to it the next day or so. Check back.
 
In theory, there isn't a limit to the number of poi points in any custom poi category. One of our mods, canderson, is a serious geocacher and likely will see this thread and post to it the next day or so. Check back.

Ah cool. that'll be great.
 
So are there numerical limits on the POIs, or is it storage based? I don't keep much on the HD in the 910 so should have a lot of space.
I thought there was a limit of 96 POIs per category but an unlimited number of categories (your disk space permitting).
 
@cadtenchy
OK - you have a HUGE trip ahead of you, and I'd be glad to help with the project. As you know, using the gc.com 'caches along a route' hasn't worked for ages, so you've got your work cut out for you with GSAK. First, I'm going to ask if you are familiar with a couple of GSAK and TomTom features, and I am going to assume you are a Premium member at gc.com. I'm going to further assume that you're looking to catch caches all along your route, not just in major cities, though the tools I'll mention apply to both.

Item 1. Use of the following: 'Geocaching.com access' tab / Basic / Rectangle
This allows you to create a rectangular area that is bounded by the NW and SE corners. If you use the "Google Map" button and mapping tool, it limits you to a total area of around 67 square miles. That's not much in the grand scheme of things. Depending upon where you are driving, a mile wide band 67 miles long might be OK. It's easier out here in the western U.S. where there's some pretty cache-sparse territory. However, I've discovered that if you hand enter the values in the "Bounding box", the geographic limitation doesn't seem to be enforced, so you could create a long stretch of I-70 half a mile tall and 400 miles wide and it should pick them all up. Give me a better idea of your route and we'll talk about making boxes! It beats the heck out of trying to do this with multiple radius-based circles. I gave up on circles ages ago, and all of my local queries are now done as rectangles through GSAK. This has the secondary advantage of completely avoiding any overlap between queries, so I get the full benefit of each query without duplication between them. The overlap that circles creates blows through the 6,000 per day limit pretty quickly.

Item 2. Since you won't need to pick up the cache details in order to stick icons on a TomTom map, the second thing you might want to consider is, while doing the TomTom part, switching what you are collecting in your query. If you move to the Geocaching.com access / Advanced tab, you will see a radio button called "Light (quicker)". It's not only quicker, but allows you to pull down the basic location information for 10,000 caches a day instead of 6,000.

Item 3. GSAK does not create the TomTom icons you will want for caching. Once you have all of your caches assembled into a single database, you will want to filter (using Search / Filter / Other) into multiple *.ov2 files to separate cache types. For example, you may well want filter for and export separate files for traditional.ov2, multi.ov2, virtual.ov2, earth.ov2, etc. I am attaching the *.bmp icons that you would need to associate with each so that the cache type is correctly indicated by the icon. These are 25x25 'transparent' icons that should work just fine with your 910.

Anything you can describe about the nature of your trip and your prior experience with GSAK will help me get an idea of what to advise.

As to your original question, 8000 is a piece of cake, even for an old 910.
 

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I thought there was a limit of 96 POIs per category but an unlimited number of categories (your disk space permitting).
Not hardly, Arno. One of my POI's (the OP will understand it as 'traditional.ov2') runs to about 4500 entries every week.
 
Hi canderson. seems there are lots I don't know can be done.
first the info.

I am a premium member on geocaching.com. I'm familiar with round and along route pocket queries.

I'm not a power user of GSAK. I load the PQs into a database, and use the macro "tomtom.gsk" v3.5.5, "cache and child waypojnt exporter for TomTom navigators" to put the caches onto the tomtom. It does give me some icons, mainly traditional cache icons for all, and a micro icon for micros. I'm OK with that. I also use a couple more macros for profile stats, that sort of thing.

TomTom wise, although I have had it years, I only just discovered it can do itineraries. I tried one, but didn't really seem to work out for me. I can do the usual numpty basic navigation, add favourites etc, even name them sensibly so they group...

Route wise, brief synopsis, in order:
San Francisco
South Lake Tahoe
Bodie and Mono Lake
Yosemite
Fresno
Giant Sequoia NP
Red Rock Canyon
White Mountain
Death Valley
Vegas
Valley Of Fire
Hoover Dam
Route 66 (Kingman to Williams)
Grand canyon south rim
Page area (slot canyons and Gunsight Butte, Horshoe bend)
Bryce Canyon
Salina
Arches NP and Moab
Canyonlands
Blanding
Four Corners
Monument Valley
Chinle (Canyon de Chelly National Monument)
Petrified Forest
Route 66 to flagstaff (inc meteor crator)
Sedona
Kingman
Joshua Tree NP
Barstow
Route 66 to LA.

Hope you are still awake at this point :)

So a pretty meandering route to capture.

The trip is primarily for sight seeing, and I am going to have to drive right past a massive series of cach and dash on the way to Joshua Tree NP for example, as 3 of our group do not geocache, and we have to get around. But I will stop at convenient ones, ideal for a quick break etc.
As many caches are placed at convenient viewpoints typically, I hope to grab some on photo stops..

I have just thought I better re-check the specs of my Garmin GPSMAP 62S as I recall some limit to caches on that too.

I'm off to gc.com to check out what you mention.
 
@cadtenchy
Item 1. Use of the following: 'Geocaching.com access' tab / Basic / Rectangle

If you move to the Geocaching.com access / Advanced tab, you will see a radio button called "Light (quicker)".

Hmm. I don't seem to be able to find anything like that anywhere?

Edit: Doh! Googled it, it's in GSK. Was looking on gc.com

Edit2: Hmm. my GSAK is 7.7.4.36, which doesn't seem to have it. Looks like an update is required...
 
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Oh wow! Yes, by all means update your copy of GSAK. Many new features related to direct API access to gc.com have been added over time! I'm running 8.4.something these days.

I used to pull down PQs directly from gc.com and load them into GSAK, but for reasons explained above (difficulty keeping circles overlapping so as not to miss any, but then getting redundant entries in the limited number we are allowed each day), have blown that off in favor or using GSAK itself to obtain the caches from within abutting rectangles.

Also, there is no reason that I can think of to use the macro to export for TomTom. GSAK has natively supported that in the File / Export (at the bottom of the list in the pull-down) for quite some time.

Once you have GSAK updated, let's talk again about how we might resolve your rather substantial problem! The bigger issue, I suspect, will be dealing with your handheld GPS -- unless you've purchased one of the latest Garmin units based upon Android which are 'limitless' in terms of cache count. What sort of handheld will you be using?
 
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"I'm familiar with round and along route pocket queries."

Again - a warning on that. The 'along a route' feature is and has been broken since late last year per gc.com. Lots of complaints, especially as vacation season approached. Something about the Google API changing and gc.com lackeys not being able to keep up. If you discover to the contrary, let me know!
 
I do know Google have changed the api recently because it has affected TPE, an app I use for planning sunset shoots.

Also I also noticed that the new Google maps routes when saved to my places cuts corners (number of points I guess) and is very poor compared to the classic maps, which I have been using for planning the trip.
The gc.com maps must use the new ones as it was poor too.
 
Once you have GSAK updated, let's talk again about how we might resolve your rather substantial problem! The bigger issue, I suspect, will be dealing with your handheld GPS -- unless you've purchased one of the latest Garmin units based upon Android which are 'limitless' in terms of cache count. What sort of handheld will you be using?

OK, that's me on GSAK 8.4
 
Great. Now - back to Post #5 items 1 and 2 above. Check those tabs and see what you can set up with them. Once set up, you can give each rectangle its own name so you can keep them (sorta) straight in your mind and map.
 
is there an easy way to get the co-ords for the boxes?
I can get some from google maps using the What's here, but the corners are never where I want them, so judging where the top left should be when my extreme is 500miles away top right is a PITA..
 
On the GSAK page where you create and name your rectangles, you can either manually enter the data, or hit the box on the far right for Google which brings up a map you can use to create the rectangles.
 
been doing that, but I can't seem to get success overcoming the 100km limit on box size, even putting the lat/lon in myself.
 
The map definitely restricts square miles (or km) to a fixed upper limit. However, once set to something it will tolerate, try manually extending the length of one of them out a ways by, for example fudging one of the E/W coordinates to see if you pick up everything within the bounds. You can recheck to see if it picked up the additional caches in the extended direction by running the rectangle and comparing to the gc.com map of the same area. You won't be able to refer back to the map - it will complain. Just keep each one < 1000 caches, and use the upper right and lower left rectangles to determine where you want to set up the next one, if contiguous rectangles are desired.
 
Rats. I wonder how I did that previously? It seems that the current version is trying to stick you with the same 62 mile (100km) corner to corner limitation forced by the map entry method. What that will mean for you in sparsely populated areas will be more rectangles, I'm afraid.

I have a couple that do not complain for which I extended the coordinates just a BIT. If I open these up in the Map view, I get the complaint only then (e.g., "Separation: 66.6 miles (maximum 62.1 miles)"), but they still seem to run correctly, capturing everything within the bounds I've set. I wonder if I set those in a prior version before Clyde was properly bounds checking manual entries?
 

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