Of topic a little, but has anyone been able to use the voice command, "nearest mini center". It's listed in the manual but mine always goes to the units screen when I try it.

 

"the ability to search AND FIND over 6 million POI's....".

I can't find Staples, OfficeMAX, Pep Boys, a Winery on Long Island (there are 100's of them). And the problem I have is ALL of the noted places, ARE in the db, they just can't be found withoout searching 1000's of possabilities of catagories...

So for me, the problem would be resolved when I can select "SEARCH", NOT select a catagory, type in "STAPLES" in the name field and hit Search. The screen should bring up a list of STAPLES stores (anything that starts with "STAPLES") in proximity order (closest to my current location first). Unless I selected a location as well, then they should be listed in proximity order to that location.

That's it, that SIMPLE!

Instead, I currently have to Select A main catagory (none of which make any sense even though all other GPS units do make sense), then select a sub catagory, then a sub-sub catagory...., then hit search. If it's not found (cause it's not in that catagory), everything is blanked out, and you start from scratch. I took my wife 1 hour 45 minutes searching each catagory combo to find a winery on Long Island. We had already arrived in the parking lot when it was found. THAT does NOT work, and needs fixed!!

In addition, it would also be helpful if we could search for a catagory. Most other units, let you type in "Winery" as a catagory, and hit search and they list anything in that catagory in proximity order. That would have taken all of 10 seconds to get a list of all wineries on logn island up, choose the one we want and off we go.

Instead I had a paper map in my hand from the back of a magazine add for the winery we were looking for!!

MINI is lucky I drank a bottle of wine before typing in this problem, beleive me, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IN ALL CAPS!!!!!!

 

My attorney informed me today, "this problem will be fixed". He has a brand new $80k BMW with the same problem that has been driving him nutz for a few months!! :impatient He is a class action attorney in Manhattan. I have a funny feeling allot of people have been seeing this issue, and nobody ever says anything.

Weeeee hawwwwwww!! A fix is now on the horizon.

 

I hope you're right, but I'm not holding my breath...

 

I would prefer Paypal? I can pm my email address.

The funny part is that it was the only one it found. Even though there are tons of them in the Bay Area.

Attachment 26508

Attachment 26509

Attachment 26510

 

You found it under 'Transportation/Car Rental'.
This illustrates the problem perfectly. You should email those to corporate.

 

Since it's the only Pepboys listed, looks like a problem with Navteq's data.

 

It is indeed a NavTeq problem as all of the POIs and the categories they are placed in are controlled via the NavTeq map DVD and not the BMW/MINI nav unit's firmware. This is a VERY easy fix for NavTeq. All they need to do is better organize the categories and the POIs within the categories. Apparently they don't care though.

Note that this is probably why companies like Garmin don't buy their POI information from NavTeq. They probably get much better results going with another company or doing it for themselves. NavTeq map data goooood, NavTeq POI information baaaaad...

 

Let's be very clear though, there are two separate problems.

1. NavTeq's poor categorization of POIs.
2. The Nav's requirement that one must know the category of a POI before searching for it by name.

Either one by itself is a very serious flaw. Combined, they make the Nav POI functionality a big joke.

 

I think it's not clear who should get the blame for the categories. Did BMW spec to Navteq which categories they wanted, or did they simply take whatever Navteq offered?

Are the categories hardcoded in the BMW firmware, or does it read a list of categories off the disc? The question I'm most interested in is whether the BMW firmware does show every POI stored on the disc. Are there are "hidden" POI's on the disc where the information is there but the goofy categories prevent it from being displayed?

In any case, it is the search by name-only feature that would be most useful to me.

 

In older releases of the nav firmware, the categories were indeed hard coded into the nav unit's firmware. You can still see vestiges of them in the firmware when you view the navboot file in the NavTweak program. However, at some point, the categories (and POI icons, etc.) were migrated over to the nav data DVD instead. My guess is that NavTeq specified the categories to the nav maker originally and then it was decided later on that it would be better for NavTeq to control them via the nav data DVD instead of requiring a whole new firmware update any time a change is needed/required.

 

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

GREAT TRY!!! But I'm sorry to inform you, you have NOT won the $10,000. The reason is, whle you have found a Hertz Rental car location which is located at a Pep Boys store and thus named "Hertz Rental - Pepboys", you still in theory have NOT found a Pepboy in the MINI Nav system!!

But, if you come to NY, I will certainly buy you lunch and beer, for the galiant effort!!

And to add, that is TRULY a crack up, and even more an absolute EMBARRASEMENT to MINI and BMW. My goodness. If I worked for mini or BMW right now, I'd be mortified.

 

THAT is EXACLTY CORRECT!! And if either of these problems is solved (and I know for a FACT that #1 can be solved with the Pimp Nav software), mini/bmw would be off the hook because the Navigation system would then "function as advertised". As is, the $2,100 Navigation system DOES NOT FUNCTION AS ADVERTISED, as you can see from this very simple example.

But it is very important to keep this in perspective. Weather the cuase and/or fix of the problem is Navtech, SiemensVDO, .... makes NO difference to us. That is MINI's/BMW's problem. We bought our system from MINI. And MINI will FIX IT! How they go about it, is there problem.

 

The answer is: YES, in fact, there are literally millions of POI's on our DVD data disc that we can NOT get to. In evaluating the data on the disc, I estimate we can get to aprox 25% of the POI's on the DVD. That means 75% we can NOT get to. Since MINI advertises there are 6 million POIs on the DVD that we can search for, that means about 4.5 million of them can not be found (call them "hidden").

They don't know it yet, but they will HAVE to fix this problem.

 

Actually the Hertz is located at 901 S Cherokee lane. The Pepboys is at 1401. I haven't been there, but seems like a big jump in addresses for some thing inside another store.

I'm not done looking...

I agree with what others are saying. The bad choice of categories combined with the lack of a search all POI function is really a mistake.

 

The PMN solution may allow search-by-name, but I still want to be able to search solely by category too. If the categories aren't very well thought out, or mis-applied, it doesn't work too well.

 

The categories are bad.

More.

Attachment 26532 Attachment 26533

This $10k is going to put some fancy Alta stuff on my Mini!

 

Yes, but that's the beauty of the PMN solution as it allows you to create any custom POI category you want and fill it full of any POIs you want. You can even completely reconfigure the existing ones if that's what you choose to do.

 

But I won't know what I want ahead of time. Maybe I'm not understanding. Is there some automated way of populating the database with properly categorized POIs across the nation?

 

Not automated per se, but you can search the Internet for large sets of custom POIs (that were built for use in Garmin, TomTom, etc. portable nav units) and add them to your existing DVD in a custom searchable category (or within one of the existing default categories).

I'm not saying that this lets BMW/MINI/NavTeq off the hook, I'm simply saying that it is possible to restructure and/or customize the map DVD so that its POI searchability is a bit better.

 

Sounds like a lot of labor to get to where we -should- be now. I.e., having a nationwide database of POIs, all organized by useful categories (as you would expect on any navigation system). Don't get me wrong - I'm really looking forward to hearing what you guys come up with. Just being able to search the entire DB by name will be huge win.

BTW, can you flag a POI with multiple categories (e.g., 'All', 'auto parts', 'shopping')? Or do you have to duplicate the POI entry for each category?

 

Yes, my guess would be that it would be duplicated in each category. That's not really a problem though as a POI is simply one line of text that identifies the name of the point and it's physical coordinates. Thus, not much space is used really. The space issue only comes in to play when we're talking about millions and millions of them (according to BMW/MINI there should be around 60 million on the DVD).

 

@office,
I beleive it is 6 million, not 60.


@Pasta,
You hit the nail on the head!! It is a TON of labor, not to mention you would have to BUY (for $40) a piece of software (the pimp stuff for example), install it. Configure it, then sign up for all the GPS and POI forums. Some of those require a payment to download files. Then you have to figure out what you want, who has it, who has it right and/or good, then organize it, then upload to the software, then burn a copy of the NEW maptech DVD. The Maptech DVD of course is copyrighted, so doing this breaks a copyright law which I can garantee maptech would enforce if they knew about it, because that is there data. Then MINI would say, "I'm not supported you and your warranty is void.." because we now have "modified there system". Even though you could just pop the original dvd back into the car and that issue is gone cause your right back to factory.

It does not takle a rocket scientist to figure out the VERY UGLY picture here!! All this, including possible jail time, large copyright fines.... to fix a TINY little STUPID problem MINI and BMW has left in ALL of there vehicles with a $2,100 navigation system that should have cost $200. MINI WILL fix it, NOT ME!!! :impatient :impatient

 

Oops... Typo on my part. Sorry about that. It is indeed 6 million.

 

My conclusion would be that the hidden POI's are in hidden categories, and that the firmware is hardcoded to display only certain categories. The firmware would have to be modified to show the missing categories.

If I've understood correctly this thread so far, it should be possible to have full alphabetic search if you copy all 6 million POI's into a single category (you would choose one of the categories that the firmware displays). What I wonder now is whether the Nav unit has enough memory and processing power to handle a category of 6 million POI's. Even if it were able to handle it, searches may take minutes to perform (possibly many minutes).