Let me clear up one thing. That is, that Mini voice command is better than most others. It does recognize the voice VERY well, and gets it right "most" of the time. I have 480 contacts in my phone, and I can dial probably about 20% of them via a voice command which is better than most. But it doesn't like compounded names (like two first names, middle names, similar last names....) and that can be a problem. But it does work better than most. And like I said, switching screens is fine with it.

BUT, the problem is as mentioned previously. It takes way too l-o-n-g to enter any real commands, like a new number to dial, or a new destination. The conversation back and forth, and repeating back to you and asking if it is correct, is just tiresome. And one little mistake along the way, and BAM, your done and you have to start over. So from that perspective, it's uselss. And again, that is NOT mini's problem, it is just an inherent problem with the voice command technology today.

If we could simply say: "New desitnation, 1234 Hilltop Street, Miniville, NY",
and it responded with, "Calculating route...."

Then I'd be all for it. But it just can't do that yet.

Is it "cool" to show your buddy, "hey, look, I can say "PERSPECTIVE" and have the screen change from the radio display to the Map display? Yes. Is it really functional, No.

 

Nope, it's GREAT to be me!! You seem to be the problem. Is MINI not paying you enough? I find that hard to beleive when they are charging $2,100 for a system nobody tested. Seems like they saved plenty in the QC dept, you should ask for a raise!

 

Send them your resume!! You have my vote!!

 

I came across this link posted on X5World, which has information about the Professional map DVD: http://www.bmwnavaddpoi.co.uk/default.htm

 

Bwahaha! Not sure why you'd say that...my stuff works great...your's is broken.

I've got two more posts like this to do and then my NAV is free.

By the way, Test Engineering is the group that's responsible for trying to "break" the system...not QC. In some organizations Test Engineering falls under the QA department, but QC generally tests to a scripted procedure written by the engineering groups...but then I'm sure you knew that.

 

That is just great, thanks for that information. Maybe if you guys at mini spent less time worrying about what dept you work for, and actually checked the QUALITY of the product which is what QC and QA should be doing, we would'nt have 1000's of posts, websites, and software dedicated to nothing but fixing the problem you let out the door!

Why don't you post QA/QC lesson #2 for us, "Corrective Actions".

 

Okay...Corrective Actions are written in response on non-conformances. All units perform the same way, so this is not a non-conformance. It is the way it was designed. If your unit had a faulty POI search, but others worked as you wish yours did, then it would be a QC issue worthy of a non-conformance. As it stands, you are whining about a design deficiency that, in all likelyhood, is the result of an engineering/management decision. There...now you know the rest of the story.

 

I was looking at that as well. Apparently their databases work fine with the Professional map disc. I would imagine that PMN's does as well and that I'm just doing something funky. I'll keep working on it when I get the chance.

BTW, there's really no way for us to use their solution seeing as we're dealing with 600-700 MB's of POI info (minimum). That's a LOT of data to try and send to their servers over the Internet and then they'd still have to format it and then send it back to us as well. I'm more than sure that doing so would cause a complete melt down on their end.

Thanks for the heads up though.

 

And as it stands, it looks like the JUDGE will have the final say on that "decision".

Yes, I can just see the meeting now:

Engineering: "Sir, the data we purchased from Navtech is all screwed up, it's all wrong! Should we fix it?"

Management: "No. So what, just leave it. We don't have to use it, we drive Audi's."

 

TheOfficeMaven;

Got a question, I have ordered PMN and already have the v30 software ISO, and I think I'm using the 2006-2 NA disk. I fooled around with burning a backup copy of my disk last year and got it to work fine (well for about 6 months anyway). So I'm back to using the NavTeq factory pressed disk in the car.

Through all of this thread I've been trying to figure out where the POIs are stored. Is it the categories that are on the BMW software disk and the actual POIs are provided by the NavTeq disk? Or what? Again, I have ordered and installed PMN but have not started playing with the software yet (awaiting license key).

My factory NavTeq disk is roughly 3.59gb (from memory) so I'm more than a little astonished that editing and "remastering" the nav disk drives the size up so dramatically (so as to require a DL disk).

Can you see all the POIs that NavTeq have already included from within the PMN software? I read with interest the Pep Boys saga, and had a similar issue with things like finding Home Depot, Lowes, Office Depot, etc. Did NavTeq just not include all the locations or what?

Thanks,

S.

 

Pep Boys is simply not on the map disc (except for 3 locations).

Home Depot is under this category:
Banking and Shopping - Home Improvement - Home and Garden
Note: not found under "Home Center" or "Hardware and Lumber"! Lowe's should be in the same category, but there is something odd. The disc has lots of listings for Lowe's, but none of the San Francisco Bay Area locations are there.

Office Depot (also OfficeMax and Staples) are under this category:
Banking and Shopping - Gifts and Leisure - Specialty Stores
which is simply bizarre, and underscores the need for an uncategorized search by name.

Categories come from the NavTeq disc. The BMW software reads both categories and POIs from the disc.

 

Yes, as rkw already mentioned, ALL of the POIs (and their categories, sub-categories, etc.) as stored on (and controlled by) the nav map data disc. Basically, all of the POIs are stored in databases (i.e. IDX and URL files) and the way they are organized/presented on the nav display is controlled by a text-based LSC file (also on the disc).

For the 1st gen MINIs (which use the "High" version of the NavTeq map data disc), they are located in:

..\TPD\nccBusa_na_20061109 (for the 2007-2 disc version anyway)

For the 2nd gen MINIs (which use the "Professional" version of the NavTeq map data disc), they are located in:

..\tpd\ntcBusa_na_20070102 (again, for the 2007-2 version)

Note that in older firmware versions, the nav computer itself used to store and control the POIs (you can still see vestiges of this in the current 1st gen v30 nav firmware). However, at some point, full control of all of the POI data was moved over to the map data disc instead (rightfully so since you don't really want to have to release a new nav firmware update any time you want to update the POIs - that's better left to the map data disc).

Why should that astonish you? There's something like 1.6 GB of POI data on the disc. Thus, "remastering" ALL of the POIs on the disc is certainly going to take up a LOT of space (especially if you're duplicating them). Remember that EACH POI contains its coordinates, its name (in three different languages), its address, its telephone number, etc. That's a LOT of info!

Yes you can. All of the POIs are on the disc spread out over 102 (104 actually) various sub-categories. In order to "remaster" the disc using PMN, you'll need to export and then re-import all of them (and there's said to be roughly 6 million of them on the disc).

I guess there's no way to get every single POI in the entire area of North America onto the disc. That's why you'll find lots of them missing. Personally, I feel that NavTeq could do a better job at including common retail shops and restaurants (since those are the most common POIs that folks search for), but you can't blame them for not getting them all onto the disc.

I hope this helps some.

 

For disc space purposes, maybe we can delete the other languages? If we didn't need spanish or french, that would save lots of space no?

 

It does, thanks! I do have some database experience to rely on so I think I understand the magnitude of the undertaking a little better now.

I was browsing NavTeq's "store" and selected the Land Rover LR3 disk and compared that to what the Mini disk description said. Interesting that the LR3 gets a three new categories:

over 4,300 Book Stores
over 11,500 Coffee Shops
over 3,200 Cinemas

So how would we as Mini owners get somebody to start including that on our version of NavTeq's releases? Who ya gonna call? NavBusters?

One of the categories that we have that is least useful is the Mini Service category. I mean c'mon, I think we all know where all 25 of them are.

I do like the idea of being able to import KMLs. I'm a Google Earth user and that looks to be very interesting.

Have you had a chance to cruise through some of the categories to see if there are "weird entries' that don't seem to fit in the category they're placed in? I can only imagine that's why we can't find some of the stores using the search function, that they may be in the wrong pidgeon hole on the disk.

I'll have a look when I get the PMN up tomorrow.

Thanks again for the response!
S.

 

That won't work. ALL the databases are shared by ALL the different languages. Thus, if you delete the database for one language you delete it for all.

BTW, there's a bug in PMN that allows it to (wrongfully) delete the databases when you remove one of the languages. It actually shouldn't delete the databases until ALL the languages have been removed (since the databases are shared by all of the different languages).

 

You're most welcome. Just remember that the databases are in a proprietary format (of which the PMN author and a few others have figured out/hacked). Thus, you just can't edit them using any old standard database utility/program.

I imagine that BMW/MINI would have to pay them. Perhaps they'll show up in the 2008-1 maps that should appear around February.

That's just way too time consuming for me I'm afraid. There's a HUGE amount of data (especially in the Business and Services categories) and so I have no desire to go sifting through it all. I did dump out all of the POIs into their top-level categories, and so if I need to search for a specific POI, then all I need to search are the six files at the most (or just let my 1st gen nav system do it since that one has the Search All feature I built working quite well now ).

You're free to move the data around on the disc any way you see fit (with the help of PMN), but it's really time consuming to do so since things come to a complete crawl (in PMN) when you are trying to manipulate large amounts of data. It can take hours to export/import some of the larger POI categories.

Creating your own new categories (such as a favorite coffee shop category, etc.) is quite easy though and works very well with PMN. That's what the program was built for (i.e. for adding in speed cameras to the map, etc.). It wasn't really designed to manipulate LARGE quantities of data like we're doing with our Search All venture.

 

Is there an easy way to just look at the entries for say your local area. Then you can recategorized yourself the POI's in your own local area? That would allow for less reorganization but still have the global searches for everything.
Is it confirmed that using a Dual Layer DVD is ok for the 2Gen Mini's? I would use PMN and create a dual layer to use in my mini if it will work.

 

First, CALL MINIUSA and complain, and do NOT be nice to them, they need to be hounded over this. Second, call your salesperson at your MINI Dealer, he/she needs to be hounded about this. Then, contact the MANAGER at you dealer, he/she also needs to be hounded. Lastly, call the service dept at you dealer, and hound the service manager over it. Each has his own contact at MINI Corp, and each needs to be made aware and complained to. Everyone should be doing this, if not already. If all this fails, the lawsuit will surely fix it the hard way. But that's MINI's choice.


I have. The catagories are setup wrong, and to make it worse, the POI's are ALSO in the wrong categories. So not only is it difficult to just find the correct category to search in, chances are, the POI you looking for is not in the category in the 1st place, s your just wasting your time.

MINI advertised this system as "we can search for over 6 million POI's..."!! That would indicate that we could FIND over 6 million POI's in resaonable manner. We can't. That is callled false advertising in America. BIG Corp no no, the courst do NOT like.

All I can say is, MINI had better step up to the plate and fix this.

 

And lets not forget, Wineries are under "Banking and Shopping". Yea, that makes sense!!

 

because we all know how much people love to help you when you act like an ***.......

 

Well, I acted "nice" many a time. that got me KNOWHERE with MiniUSA. Now we act like "asses", by asking them to FIX THE PROBLEM. Let's see where that gets us?

My guess, nowhere. BUT, the judge will have the last word I'm sure.

 

You keep saying that.... Care to post the law firm and case details so that someone can confirm it? I have a feeling it is about as true as the "ask your dealer" stuff you posted earlier.

 

I'd love to see that info too. If people think a suit based on the fact that while the system works it's not in the way THEY expect it to is going to get any time in front of a judge then they are going to be in for quite the surprise.

 

Birdman is just having fun. Although New York courts are one of the more liberal courts when it comes to certifying class actions for false advertising, when it comes to "implicitly false" claims, the likelyhood of success drops way down, and almost always requires consumer research or market surveys to illustrate the extent of damage as a result of the ad. This would definitely fall under the category of "implicit" because, as Birdman stated, he should be able to "find 6 million POIs in a reasonable manner". There is no advertisement that states this. Birdman made the assumption that it was implied, and he has to prove this.

There is a chance he talked to a lawyer and was told that he needs a consumer survey, hence the appeal for everyone to call their dealerships. It's going nowhere if this is where they are.

 

I'm sure the law firm involved will be more than happy to supply all current BMW and MINI owners with navigation (and another brand they mentioned, I can't remember that one?) their website for registration. You willl get that info from them, not me. As mentioned previously, I have nothing to do with it. I just happen to walk into a bee's nest when visiting my buddy for lunch and bringing this issue up (the mini/bmw nav being so bad).

Don't shoot the messenger.

I'd still like to know why your so "interested"? Is it that you prefer to keep the system as is, not working?? Hmmmmmm that sounds kinda weird!!