Defence of Britain Database upload to Garmin sat nav

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HypoBoy

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Today looks to be a washout, with little chance to get out exploring (although as I type this, the sun has suddenly decided to show itself again!) so I decided to set about trying to convert the Defence of Britain Database to Garmin format so I could upload it to my Nuvi satnav.

In practice, this didn't turn out to be too difficult a task, but there are a couple of points that are useful to know so I thought I'd share them in case anyone else has difficulty doing the same thing. Before attempting the process, ensure that you've got 50mb of free storage on your Garmin device. If not, you may have to clear some existing data from the unit before you can begin.

Firstly, you'll need to download the DoB Google Earth database from the Council for British Archaeology's website. The download can be found on this page.

Secondly, you'll need a copy of WinRAR (or a similar zip file utility for your host operating system). A 40 day trial version can be downloaded from their website.

Most Garmin owners will probably have a copy of POILoader already installed. If you don't, you can download it for free from their website.

Finally, you'll need a copy of GPSBabel, which is a free open source download. Download this and extract it to a folder on your hard drive.

Once you've got all of the above installed, launch WinRAR and browse to the Google Earth Defence of Britain Google Earth .kmz file. Double click the file and WinRAR will decompress it into .kml format. Highlight the .kml file, click on "Extract to", save the .kml file to your hard drive, then close WinRAR.

Next, browse to the folder where you extracted the GPSBabel files, then double-click GPSBabelGUI.exe to launch the convertor.

Within GPSBabel, click the drop down list for the input file and select "Google Earth (Keyhole) Markup Language (.kml)". Click the input file dialog button, then select the .kml file location for the unzipped file which you extracted using WinRAR.

Next, select the drop down list for the output file and select "GPX XML (.gpx)". Click the save file dialog button and pick a location to save the prepared file ready for upload to your Garmin device. The button marked "Let's Go" should now be ungreyed in GPSBabel's user interface. If so, click the button and the file conversion will start. The command line parameters being used will then display in the lower pane and not much else will appear to happen for a period of time. Depending on the speed of your system, this may take a while, but wait and a pop-up dialog will appear confirming the file has been converted successfully. Once this happens, close GPSBabel.

The file is now ready to upload, so connect the Garmin nav unit to your computer using the Garmin USB data lead and launch POILoader.

Follow the command prompts within POILoader, selecting "Garmin Device" as the output location then connecting to your device when prompted. POILoader will then ask whether you want to replace or update your existing points of interest. You'll probably just want to install the new POIs unless you've got a lot of data you don't need on the unit at the moment.

POIloader will then ask for the file location. Browse your hard drive and select the folder where you saved the output file from GPSBabel. Select your preferred measurement unit, then ensure that the import mode is set to "Express"*. Click on next and the upload to your device will now begin.

The full Defence of Britain database is getting on for 50mb in uncompressed gpx format, so uploading will take a fair amount of time. During the process POILoader may appear to be locked up and Windows may report it as "Not responding". Ignore this and leave the upload to progress. DO NOT unplug the data lead or attempt to kill the upload process within Windows. It may take 5-10 minutes for the upload to complete, but you'll eventually find that POILoader can be selected again and will report that the file has been uploaded successfully. In my case, I got a dialog advising that 15449 POIs had been added.

Disconnect the data lead, wait for the Garmin unit to restart and you can now select the Defence of Britain locations within the Garmin menu. If you're out and about and want to know what's in the local area, fire up your Garmin, select "Where To?", then "Extras" then "Custom POIs". The unit will then produce a list of local sites which you can select and navigate to or view on the map.

One minor issue with this method is that extra HTML formatting is left in place, which looks a bit unsightly on the site summary. This doesn't really bother me, as you can simply select "More" and get a nicely formatted page with full details of the site. There doesn't appear to be any easy way to remove it during the above process, so I may code something to strip the HTML from the summary field in the XML at some point but, then again, I may just live with it and spend the time exploring instead :)

All of the above works for my Garmin Nuvi 200w, so should work with similar or newer units.

*You could if you wished select "Manual" in place of "Express" and set up a proximity alert on every database location in the country so it alerts you as you drive past anything interesting but, if you use your satnav for non exploration purposes, this might get a bit annoying after a while!

Screenshots

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You sure have put a lot of work in here fella....for me,the screenshots arent working..thanx all the same for your effort
 
You sure have put a lot of work in here fella....for me,the screenshots arent working..thanx all the same for your effort

I wrote it up to post elsewhere, but thought I'd share it here as it's pretty cool once you get it working and great for picking extra places to visit if you end up with time to spare when out exploring.

Not sure why the screens are not working? Anyone else got the same issue?
 
I wrote it up to post elsewhere, but thought I'd share it here as it's pretty cool once you get it working and great for picking extra places to visit if you end up with time to spare when out exploring.

Not sure why the screens are not working? Anyone else got the same issue?

I can see it no probs :)

Tip top work, as Klemps says, you must have put in a lot of time & effort -thanks!
 
I did something similar many moons ago before the DoB actually had the keyhole markup download.

One thing I'd suggest is that you use the DoB keyhole markup version from the google earth community forum (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=58&page=1) rather than the York University Archaelogical Data Service site as it has some useful updates.

(there are quite a few other keyhole markup files there that people on here will find interesting/useful)
 
Some good info there though I use an Etrex but the data base is worth downloading, could that be transferred on to my Anquet mapping on my Laptop.:)
 
Some good info there though I use an Etrex but the data base is worth downloading, could that be transferred on to my Anquet mapping on my Laptop.:)

I would think so...I use Memory Map (on my laptops and phone) and the features of Anquet are very similar

gpsbabel will output in most popular formats (not Anquet as that isn't all that popular except with tramplers!)
 
could that be transferred on to my Anquet mapping on my Laptop.:)

Anquet's site mentions that you can import .gpx file format routes, but doesn't make it clear whether it can import points of interest in the same way. It might be worth investigating further but, as they're clearly making a lot of their money from the map data itself, I'd suspect it might not be feasible.
 
Tigger it works brilliant means I can now pring off my maps with the position on and put them straight on to my Etrix.:)
Ps I take it by tramplers you mean walkers.;)
 
Tigger it works brilliant means I can now pring off my maps with the position on and put them straight on to my Etrix.:)
Ps I take it by tramplers you mean walkers.;)

Excellent...glad they worked.

(tramplers....members of the Ramblers Association specifically......I love walking......but recognise that other people are entitled to their own views.............)
 
Ah forgot them, they tend to go round in groups and are handy to have around. Only reason I got Anquet maps was it was half the price of Memory map and seemed to do the same. I also have some of the maps on a PDA which means I can take that in my pocket. I did notice some errors coming up when I first loaded the database but it seems fine. If they reoccur I'll email them to you.:)
 
It might seem a silly question but can you convert them to the format for a tom tom?

Can certainly convert them to POI's for CoPilot and TT7 though in each case I've only ever used a small subset as both programs slow my poor old phone down to crawling pace when they have large lists of POIs loaded.
 
It might seem a silly question but can you convert them to the format for a tom tom?

Should be fairly easy to do in theory. GPSbabel can output in TomTom .asc or .ov2 formats, so if you follow the decompression process, amend the output of GPSbabel, then transfer to whatever device you have, you should be good to go. Only thing to watch out for is that your device has enough storage capacity.
 
Small update on the database. I took GPS readings of some pillboxes on my Etrix the transferred then to the data base to check if they were the same and they where just about the same which is very encouraging as it means if you use the GPS reading of teh Data base then when going to the place it should lead you to with in a few yards of where it is.:):)
 

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