Micro SD on VIA 1535 - What for?

[sneakersteve]

How does the via series make use of the memory card? I know on my old 930 you had access and could put stuff there. But why to they have a slot on this series?

 

[dhn]

For additional maps the user might want to purchase besides the one that came with the device.

 

[canderson]

Or tons and tons of POI files!

 

[sneakersteve]

If I wanted to add tons of POI's does the Add Community data install to the SD Card automatically?

 

[canderson]

No, it will add POI files to internal memory until you run into a file that will no longer fit, then it will begin to occupy the space on the uSD card.

For most users, odds are slim of using up that much space since POI files, even ones with large counts, don't eat up that much space. I have one that contains over 5,000 entries, and the file size of the *.ov2 is under 200K bytes.

 

[dhn]

So, you are saying that POI files need NOT go into the specific map folder??

 

[canderson]

Keep in mind - Nav3 plays by some different rules.

As far as I can tell so far (and it's a bit of a black hole, as you understand), POI files are not necessarily going to the same physical location as the map itself. As you're aware, we have been seeing some oddities when it comes to 'available memory' (I know Andy has been fighting this issue on one of his units, too) that is making me wonder about several things ... for example, I believe that an entire map folder must reside on a single 'partition', but after that, it appears (appears) that not much else matters. My 4GB uSD card itself is being broken into two Unix type ext2 partitions as well. I imagine we'll start to understand a bit more about this as we see how people are finding things are being stored on their devices. At present, some of us don't have a whole lot of visibility when using Manage Content (on THAT server, anyway).

 

[Andy_P]

So, you are saying that POI files need NOT go into the specific map folder??

Yes, definitely.

In fact, POIs are not map specific now. So if you are in a situation where you have two maps covering the same territory, then loading one set of POIs will be visible on both maps. That's how I discovered it (and mentioned it "over there").

 

[sneakersteve]

This is all clear as mud to me. It sounds like it's a waste to put an SD card in the TT VIA.

 

[dhn]

Don't get confused by the discussion of pois or other stuff.

Simply put, if you want to get a map other than the one that came on the device, you CAN install it on a device with a sd card without having to run into space problems on internal and having to worry about MyTomTom properly doing the job of moving an existing map to the computer.

In other words, devices with sd slots are much better than devices limited by internal space, whether they be Nav2 devices such as your old unit or Nav3 devices like the new one.