The software in the Mini lets you search city/town names without entering a state, ie a search all feature. Why they didn't do the same for POIs is ridiculous.

How many cities and towns does it contain? It must be in the millions. There's no problem having enough processor power to handle all of those at once. It even adjusts the listing as you spell to only show names that are with that spelling. The code is in there, they just need to implement it with the POIs.

 

@rkw,

The firmware is not an issue as you can use the PMN software to add a category (like "Speed Cameras") to the nav disc and it shows up just fine without touching the firmware. Thus, all of the categories are indeed under control of the map data disc and not the nav unit's firmware. I'm not sure about the hidden POIs. I just received my copy of PMN and will check things out over the next week. I'll definitely keep everyone posted.

The nice thing for me is that we have both a 1st gen and a 2nd gen MINI with OEM nav and so I'll be able to resolve the problem for both sets of cars (I hope anyway).

 

 

Not even remotely close. The U.S. Census counted 25,375 incorporated places (cities, towns, villages, etc) in 2000. But think about it -- with 6 million POIs there cannot be anywhere near millions of cities and towns.

A database table of 6 million records is a large amount of data for the little Nav processor to grind through, and I really doubt they had engineered it to handle that many in a single category.

That's very interesting. I had based my comment on the original thread on MINI2 which described adding speed cameras. That technique essentially added the data into the car rental category. I'd be interested to know what are all the categories on the disc and whether they can individually activated/deactivated.

 

rkw,
I've also bought and installed the PMN software (as Office did). I've analyzed the data (I'm and IT guy, programmer for 20 years prior).

Here's how it works, and why it is SO SIMPLE for MINI/Navtech to fix it for us. The data on the disk is arranged like this:

POI Name, CITY, STATE, Address, Country, Phone, Lat/Long

That is IT!!

So there are no catagory's in the data. A catagory is just a folder on the disc basically. So if you create a folder called "MINI/BMW NAV SUCKS", and copy all the Gas stations into that folder, when you put that new disc into the mini, and hit Search Informaton, you will see a new Catagory: "MINI/BMW NAVE SUCKS". Listed in there would be all the gas station you put in it. So basically, when you select a catagory, your just selecting a folder of data. There is no real "functionality" behind it.

That why with this PMN software, we should be able to simply create a folder "ALL POI's", then copy ALL the data into it. Then when you search that "catagory" for a name, it will be found, because everythign is in that folder.

And for those worried about the 6 million entries, I doubt it will be a problem. 6 million records of data is actually a small amount of data to search. It might take a few seconds, but so what, it's better waiting a few seconds than NOT being able to find anything at all, right?

So again, the problem is two fold:
1. The data is a mess, things are NOT stored in the proper catagories, there are lots of missing catagories...
2. The fact we can't simply do a name search for something, regardless of what catagory/folder it is in.

The fact the data has not catagories is retarded. And worse, the fact we can't search for a catagory name is rediculous. There are so many sub catagories and combos, it just STUPID.

I just can't fathom for the life of me, HOW IN THE WORLD BMW/MINI's qaulity assurance dept allowed this to be sold this way??????? Or, maybe they don't have a QA dept?? If they do, they should be fired, for real. If I was a manager at MINI, I would NOT even give the QA dept the time to explain themselves. It would simply be: "YOUR FIRED"!!! (with the pointing of the finger as per Trump ).

 

So it sounds like an ALL POI folder might fix one of your (and my) objections. How about giving it a try? I would but I don't have a DVD writer yet. My wife just ordered a new computer with one and I should be able to play with this soon.

 

Just curious, how is the data layed out for restaurants? I noticed last night you can search by a particular cuisine, or simply search 'all'. Is that an artifact of the data organization, or of the firmware?

 

@pastabatman,

It is indeed a result of the way the POIs are organized on the map data DVD. In the restaurants folder there is an "All Restaurants" sub-folder that is a culmination of all the POIs that are in the other restaurant categories/sub-folders. This shows that making a "All POIs" master category will indeed work as long a the sheer number of POIs don't overwhelm the nav firmware/CPU.

Also, as Birdman mentioned, there are LOTS of sub-categories and so it's going to take quite a bit of work to export them all and then dump them back (i.e. import them) into a single category. It may just be easier to do it all manually.

 

Another problem I just thought of is that if you make one large "All POIs" category then it's going to absolutely overtake the nav screen with whatever POI icon you assign to it.

Lets say that there are 200 POIs in your immediate map area, then all 200 icons for those POIs would appear on the nav screen after doing an "All POIs" category search. Wow!

Of course you can always turn off the display of icons in the nav system. Or... We could simply create a blank/transparent icon so that they won't be displayed on the map. Or better yet... Just make a really tiny POI icon so that the icons don't overwhelm the entire map screen in high POI density areas.

This is going to be fun.

 

And... Apparently all of the POIs are replicated in three languages on the map data DVD (i.e. English, French, and Spanish), and so you have to make modifications to the POIs for each of those if you want to switch languages in your nav system. Personally, I only ever use English and so that doesn't represent a problem for me.

Interesting...

 

It looks like there are 105 different sub-categories for POIs. Thus, all you have to do is export each of those sub-categories as a text file (or whatever format you wish), create a new "All Categories" menu (i.e. main category), and then re-import all 105 of the sub-categories you exported into the "All Categories" main category. Not too bad at all.

To free up space (if needed), you should be able to delete all of the duplicate POIs for the BMW and Rolls-Royce systems since you won't be needing those for our MINI-only application.

Looks completely doable to me.

Here are my plans:

1) Create a new "All POIs" category to resolve the search issue.

2) Update all the various POI icons to use better color images (including a transparent one for the "All POIs" category).

3) Add some of my own custom categories (such as my favorite motoring spots, favorite Starbucks locations, friends and families houses, etc., etc.)

4) Repeat it all again as soon as the 2008-1 map data DVD becomes available.

 

Actually there are a ton more, literally in the thousands of city names that aren't incorporated. We have dozens of city names surrounding here that don't exist at all, but are on the nav system. I'm sure that is the case for many places. Old cities and towns that have become incorporated.

 

Is "All Restaurants" an independent folder that merely has duplicate copies of all records in the other restaurant folders?

That matches with the brochure you photographed, which said over 6 million POIs in 102 categories. The brochure also implies that all 102 categories are accessible on the Nav (I haven't checked). Every POI is under a category. So does it appear that every POI stored on the disc is accessible? Birdman asserted that as many as 75% of POIs on the disc might not be, but now I'm starting to think that the disc simply doesn't have Pep Boys locations.

Okay, let's be generous and say the number is 100,000 -- 4x the number in the Census. My point is that the Nav being able to handle a list of 100,000 gives no hint about its ability to handle a single list of over 6 million.

 

Yeah but really the nav system doesn't have to load all 6 million POIs or however many cities, towns there are.

It could be programmed to wait until you pick the first letter to only load those that start with the letter. That would reduce the load on the processor. No real need to load all POIs before you started entering the name of one. It would be better if it only loaded those with that spelling, as you went along entering letters. The same way it works when entering cities, but without it giving you a list before you start with the first letter.

 

Yes, it appears to be exactly that.

It does to me. I'm not sure why Birdman said that. There are a whole bunch of POIs hidden under the BMW and Rolls-Royce categories that would indeed be hidden to MINI users, but they're just duplicates of what's available to the MINI (i.e. NavTeq simply replicates all of the POI information on the DVD for each of the three different car manufacturers - and for the three different language types on the DVD as well).

Thus, I'm sure that it's simply a matter of no Pep Boys locations being available on the disc at all. If you think about it, 6 million POIs across ALL of North America isn't that many. I know that other GPS programs (such as OnCourse Navigator 6) offer as many as 12 million POIs. Something has to be left out with 6 million fewer POIs I guess.

 

Agreed. This is exactly how it works I'm sure. Querying a database to narrow down the search by location, name, etc. is standard practice when dealing with large volumes of data. Besides that, the mapping data is MUCH larger than the POI data is and the nav unit/CPU doesn't have any problems whatsoever dealing with all that data.

 

It could work fine depending on their software and hardware design. I am a software engineer who works in mobile and embedded applications, and performance is a frequent issue. In the MINI Nav, search POI is different from entering a city or street which are alphabetized lookups. Searching POI matches against any part of the name. This may not require much memory but is potentially sluggish in performance.

 

I guess all we can do is give it a shot and see what happens. At most, I'll only lose the $40 I spent on the PMN software and the time I spent trying to make it work (which is no biggie). I'll try to get to it tomorrow or Monday and will let you all know what happens.

 

Any updates on this guys?

Still waiting for that 10 grand btw...

 

I've been playing with it in my spare time, but there are LOTS of sub-categories that need to be exported and the PMN software is quite slow (even on my powerful Core2Duo workhorse PC). It's also qite unstable when dealing with the larger categories. It keeps crashing on me!

BTW, I've decided that it's probably best not to try and create one HUGE "All POIs" category, but rather build smaller "All POIs" sub-categories under each of the separate top-level categories (just like the "All Restaurants" sub-category does by default). This should help to speed up searches a bit I'm hoping.

Also, I'm starting to get a bit leery about putting the work into the 2007-2 version as a new 2008-1 update is just around the corner I'm sure (Jan or Feb I believe). I'd hate to have to redo all of this in just a month's time.

 

Is that because of performance of the Nav or of PMN? If the latter, than perhaps there's a reasonable chance BMW will fix up the categories in the 2008-1 update. If this PMN solution is as much work as it sounds, I doubt it will be a viable alternative for most folks.

BTW, how do Nav DVD updates work with the Mini? Do you have to pay full price for it? Lexus gives you one update for free.

 

So far it's due to performance issues with PMN. There's a LOT of data to move around (file sizes from the exported sub-categories range anywhere from a few KB to nearly 70 MB - with all of the POI data being around 740 MB in exported ASCII text format). Thus, with millions of POIs to shift around, it really takes its toll on the PMN software. I'm looking at other methods of merging the exported data right now that might work a bit better. Once merged, it should be quite easy to import it back into PMN as long as the program can handle the large size of the merged data files.

As for the map DVD updates... Are you kidding! BMW/MINI would NEVER give away anything. You have to purchase the updates when they come out (which is generally twice a year). You can get them from the dealer or direct from the map data provider (i.e. www.NavTeq.com). It's faster and cheaper to get them direct from NavTeq. I believe that the updates are a whopping $200 each.

 

Oh, and BTW... I'd be willing to bet good money (not $10k though ) that the 2008-1 disc's will be EXACTLY the same as the 2007-2 versions. Of course there will be newer map and POI data for sure, but the structure of the data will be the exact same I'm sure. Trying to get MINI/BMW to make changes is like pulling teeth. It'll NEVER happen... IMHO anyway.

The ONLY way to solve the problem is to work through it for ourselves.

 

Or for we less saavy folks to wait for Mike to do the heavy lifting, then grovel and thank him for his largess.