Importing Satnav Destinations from External Satnavs to the Car's System

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Importing Satnav Destinations from External Satnavs to the Car's System

As a sister post to this thread that deals with importing POIs into the car's fully fledged navigation system (Ateca Seat Navigation / Navigation Plus)

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=437989

The basis is you have your new car but you have been using an external satnav system stuck to the screen or mounted on the dash somewhere and want to import your historic destinations from the unit. Some computer skills are required but it is possible. Dependent on what your system is. A small number you may wish to enter them again by hand, a high number and you might wish a more automated approach although some effort is required at the end to convert the imported POIs into destinations, but easy enough to do.

Preamble

Some preamble there are VCards which you can import into the Ateca's navigation system but these are single files for each destination, you would have to generate one for each destination so does not offer a level of automation. It's highly likely that if it's a company address or a service the car's inbuilt navigation system POI system database will already have these so you can just look them up.

Tip

The HERE Maps app available in Android and iOS is generally in synch with the car's POI database since they are both HERE maps based. A short cut to going out to the car when entering destinations of this type is to check in the HERE maps app if in, there is highly likely to be in the car's system.

There are several sites which generate VCARDS

(in German)

http://rollout.volkswagen.de/content/de/brand/de/navigation/discover-pro/adressnavigation.html

(in English)

http://mydestination.skoda-auto.com/

These sites are handy possibly for generating a small number destination address and for import although another option is to just enter the address in via the car's system or via the POI screen as degrees, minutes and seconds (DMS) if you have them like that. Apps are available to convert decimal degress into DMS which is what most car systems use including VW based on the front screen, back end decimal degrees.


BULK IMPORT OF POI COORDINATES & CREATION OF DESTINATIONS

Often mapping system show the destinations on the maps as points, the VW system does not, so this approach has the advantage of creating in the system your destinations on the map, to make them a destination you just tap on each POI and save as a destination. The default destination name will be the name put along side each POI in the import file.

This approach is limited by whether you can export out your existing destination file with the decimal degree coordinates. The VW POI import site referenced in this sites takes third party POIs and creates an upload file to the car's system.

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=437989

Uses the following formats:

.ASC (such as TomTom, IGO, NAVIGON)
.CSV (for example, Garmin, Navman, route 66)
.GPX (such as Garmin)

The personal POI records (* .asc, * .csv, *.txt) need the following structure:

Column 1 + 2: Coordinates (longitude / latitude)
Column 3: POI name
Column 4: City + postal code (prefixed E.g. D town with country code,)
Column 5: Road
Column 6: phone number

The task is to get your existing coordinates into this format.

NOTE

  • the format above reverses the normal order of lat and lon, so lon must come before lat else it won't work !
  • columns 4, 5 & 6 can be filled with the characters A,B,C they are not used as far as navigation is concerned

An example personal POI import file in TXT comma separated format:

14.30467,46.62362,A KLAGENFURT Hotel Sandwirth,A,B,C
14.30298,46.62433,A KLAGENFURT Parking for Hotel Hiligengeistplatz,A,B,C
13.05037,47.73615,A SALZBURG Esso on border road,A,B,C
4.95054,51.30373,B BELGIUM Fuel E34 Route,A,B,C
3.33896,50.61982,B BELGUIM ... FRANCE BORDER,A,B,C
6.1534,50.75432,B BELGUIM GERMANY NORTH ROUTE SHELL,A,B,C
3.73613,51.01963,B Gent - Campanile,A,B,C

If you can get your existing destinations from your external satnav device into that format then these can be imported as an adjunct to setting up the speed camera (safety camera) database. A tip also is to put some structure onto the naming convention of your destinations if you don't have them already. I use country car plate, gap and the name.

Once imported into the car's system you just pick each POI shown on the map and save as a Destination (you then have a POI on the map and a destination saved into the car's destination memory). My recommendation would be to enter residential addresses into the car's system directly since the car contains a database of the street number to the exact location and tells you whether the destinations is on the left or right, you won't get this by importing the destinations from the POI. It should be said that for the UK not all street address in the car's system have the house number database in them which gives the exact location. For the street address mapping generally enter the town, street and number rather than the postcode method which is less accurate.

For addresses, where tender loving care isn't required as to whether they are on the left or right taking the Destination from the imported POI is a lot quicker. Note if the imported POI is a distance from the road then the car's system may route you directly to that point when you are close to it rather than via the access road if it doesn't have the access road on the map. If this is observed when you use the destination, easy enough to fix, resave the correct one over the name and it will work next time.

Basically you print out the file to be imported and work down the list creating the destination by picking it off the POI map shown on the cars screen imported and saving it as a destination or entering the exact address into the car's system if you want exact guidance to the point with destination on the left or right.

Hints for CoPilot Users

CoPilot does not support direct export of the destination file possibly for commercial reasons so you are locked into the product. This can be got round by creating a trip file. You plot a trip around as many destinations as you can and save a TRP file. Then use the shareware PC mapping app ITN Convertor to generate a GPX. Pick a CSV as output and you get the destination and the X, Y cordinates written out for each of your destinations. Repeat the process as many times as required.

Concatenate files, ensure lon and lat in the correct order and add the spacer names as noted above. Should be all good to go follow the steps in

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=437989

Other GPS apps worth looking at for GPS manipulation is GPSBabel if ITN Convertor is not useful for your existing external satnav file structure.

Happy Mapping :).
 
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