Garmin "safety camera" custom POI database(s)

I've had a Garmin US/Canada safety camera database in my 1490T for a few years but only recently visited an area (large city) where warnings appeared on my unit. At first I didn't know what the unit was indicating as I was busy driving (in traffic).

Anyway now I know (from device warnings and physically seeing the camera's) where some of the POI's in the database are located. I went to those locations in BaseCamp and searched for nearby POI's (custom ones, including "safety cameras", were enabled) but no safety camera POI's showed up. This just confirms what I suspected in that these databases are "black boxes" probably so you can't route around any cameras.

PS: I was also surprised to see a number of Junction Views while traveling on the interstate in the city. I use the large JCV database.

0 Former Member over 10 years ago

On my Zumo 550 the POI files are located in \GARMIN\POI and called xxx.GPI.
These files can not be read by BaseCamp or MapSource.
If you want them you need to convert the GPI into GDB or GPX.
Some of the GPI files are secured and can't be converted (probably your safety cam's too).
You could try this converter http://garmin.gps-data-team.com/poi_manager.php, or this one http://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html#downloading
It didn't wanted to convert the original Cyclops file that was on my Zumo when I bought it.
It did converted a homemade POI file.

0 stuartmw over 10 years ago

Some of the GPI files are secured and can't be converted (probably your safety cam's too).

Correct, my US/Canada Safety Camera POI (.gpi) file cannot be converted. I've tried before.

It would appear that Garmin has a way of hiding the actual POI's (Camera locations in this case) while leaving alerts functional. In the case of user created Custom POI's one can assign alerts to them but the POI's are always visible/searchable.