Any interest in a POI file section on this site?

Map Monkey · Post by **Map Monkey** » 09 August 07 8:42 pm

I can see it now.....

Rabbitto · Post by **Rabbitto** » 09 August 07 11:37 pm

Map Monkey wrote:I can see it now.....

<p>Ow.... Now will somebody please stomp on your darn avatar.

Map Monkey · Post by **Map Monkey** » 09 August 07 11:49 pm

What avatar

mm

ian-and-penny · Post by **ian-and-penny** » 10 August 07 10:00 am

Pesky! wrote:have a look here, You may already have their BP list, but it may help you get started, if it is not comprehensive,or up to date.

http://www.gps-data-team.com/poi/australia/petrol/

I looked at that site some time back. Their BP POI seems to be missing many servos (in Vic) hence my determination to build my own.

Does anyone have a complete Aussie listing of BP service stations?

Would someone from BP like to sponsor my effort?

BigON · Post by **BigON** » 19 August 07 6:33 pm

Great minds think alike, or is that fools seldom differ, I set up a poll type of message in the general chit chat session along similar lines to this. I dont know how to Xref these so take a look.
The difference being a cache type of a POI for example 'Canberra POI: Hospitals' or 'Canberra POI: police stations', maybe this would need to be in a restricted area such as the ACT or Sydney to work properly.
I was thinking that the finders could populate these type of POI by having a logging requirement of either finding and logging the co-ords of a POI or confirming a previously logged POI as well as finding a simple cache nearby a central example of the POI's.
Once a POI has been confirmed a couple of times it could be added to the cache site as a waypoint, when all the POI of that type have been found in the nominated area cachers can still log by confirming an existing POI still exists and finding the cache.
This way the cache finders are populating the POI and increasing their finds at the same time, a win win senario, I thought. So far there has been little interest maybe I will have to set up a couple and see if it works out as planned.
This information would be usefull for the caching community as a whole especially with things like hospitals, petrol stations and police stations included.

BigON · Post by **BigON** » 22 August 07 7:42 pm

Thanks 'Pesky!' for a well thought out and expressed reply.
I will still consider placing one or two around Canberra as an experiment. I believe that this may still work as anticipated in a restricted area more than just a general 'find all these points in the country' situation.
Thanks again

SUBYDAZZ · Post by **SUBYDAZZ** » 26 September 07 10:18 pm

Almost all the POI files I've foudn on the internet (the free ones anyway) are poor quality AS mentioned before, they don't have up-to-date locations of places and the co-ordinates are rarely close to the actual location. In some circumstances I am finding POI locations over 1km from where they actually are, or in different suburbs with the same street names. I have started one for Shell Servos by editing ones I find to update the co-ords. It msut be something about the process used to create GPS locations from street addresses that is not very accurate at my guess. I though the point of POIs was to find what you were looking for, not to go looking somewhere in the general area to find it...

Cached · Post by **Cached** » 27 September 07 10:04 am

The Shell ones I have on my TomTom always seem spot on.

Is there anyway to convert the TomTom POI files to other formats?

Mr Router · Post by **Mr Router** » 27 September 07 10:06 am

You could make a gsak data base of any ozi or gps data you want, adding your comments before exporting that as a gpx file for babel to convert to poi!
Then everybody contribute somewhere here and yee ha one set of poi's

for all Who will host it ?

Mr Router · Post by **Mr Router** » 27 September 07 10:09 am

Cached wrote:The Shell ones I have on my TomTom always seem spot on.

Is there anyway to convert the TomTom POI files to other formats?

as above but use babel to convert poi back to whatever.

Grank · Post by **Grank** » 27 September 07 10:13 am

ian-and-penny wrote: Would someone from BP like to sponsor my effort?

With the proliferation of in car navigation it is surprising that businesses that rely on travellers don't actually publish the POIs themselves (or their industry body).

Map Monkey · Post by **Map Monkey** » 27 September 07 10:29 am

I have a Navman N60i with a "special" button for nearest fuel station......it sucks.

The only database stored in it is for Shell and Caltex, so when travelling past a BP etc the silly thing just doesn't recognise it.

Seems to me that only some companies have taken the time to build a usable database. As said before, with the proliferation of in-car navigation devices, surely all of the fuel companies would be on the bandwagon?

I could imagine the usefulness of having a BP database, for example, for fleet owners locked into certain fuel outlets. Might be worth emailing someone to find out.

mm

Geocaching Australia

Any interest in a POI file section on this site?

RE: POI files off the internet