Navigation in the USA

[greekislandlover]

Hi, I'm living in the UK but next year we are planning a driving holiday in the USA. Planning to fly into las Vegas, have a car for a few days to do the Grand Canyon, then get a Winnebago to do a big loop to SF and back. We plan to drop into WalMart and pick up a TomTom as our first task after checking into the hotel.

What I'm looking for is any helpful tips about the best way to navigate in the US to the places we are going. EG, are zip codes enough information to find somewhere? Is the pre-loaded POI file likely to have most of the tourist places on as well as finding a place by an address? Is it an idea to get map reference points from Goolge earth to the places we plan to visit before we leave the UK and tap them in when we get there?

All help appreciated!

Thanks

 

[Arno]

We plan to drop into WalMart and pick up a TomTom as our first task after checking into the hotel.

What are you using now? Maybe you can just buy a map for your current unit.

What I'm looking for is any helpful tips about the best way to navigate in the US to the places we are going. EG, are zip codes enough information to find somewhere?

Differently to your post elsewhere in sparsely populated areas in the US and Canada the code may only bring you into a 10 sq.mi. area. A US poster will have to say if the 5+4 ZIP code is implemented by TomTom in which case it may come close to your Postcode.

Is the pre-loaded POI file likely to have most of the tourist places on as well as finding a place by an address? Is it an idea to get map reference points from Goolge earth to the places we plan to visit before we leave the UK and tap them in when we get there?

The quantity of POIs may depend on the TT model you choose. Low cost ones with smaller memories and no SD card option may not cover 'everything'
I have not used .kml/.kmz on my 930 but made a new POI and put in any of the addresses of places I wanted to go to. I used Tyre (which attaches itself to HOME) edit to make exact location changes.
One of the, to me, annoying parts of the POI is that they are sorted by distance to "current" location. I wasn't aware of that until after I came back from a 3,250 mile trip to the UK. It was very frustrating to find the next POI because the visible area starts with a distance and a street address and usually the town drops off to the right of the screen and every time I opened it the sorting had changed from the last time. Even though the sorting will still not be changed, I found out that a POI can easily be renamed in Tyre. As it keeps the location internally as coordinates it is east to "rename" the street address by prefacing it with a name or place or anything that will trigger the mind. Leaving 4-5 spaces between that and the street name will make for a very manegeable find of the next POI.

 

[flyer1024]

Hi, I'm living in the UK but next year we are planning a driving holiday in the USA. Planning to fly into las Vegas, have a car for a few days to do the Grand Canyon, then get a Winnebago to do a big loop to SF and back. We plan to drop into WalMart and pick up a TomTom as our first task after checking into the hotel.

What I'm looking for is any helpful tips about the best way to navigate in the US to the places we are going. EG, are zip codes enough information to find somewhere? Is the pre-loaded POI file likely to have most of the tourist places on as well as finding a place by an address? Is it an idea to get map reference points from Goolge earth to the places we plan to visit before we leave the UK and tap them in when we get there?

All help appreciated!

Thanks

first make sure you buy a tomtom that can handle a sd card. that way you can add the very large and excellent POI database of the more erxpensive tomtom units. download that database posted by pedro here

https://www.tomtomforums.com/showthread.php?t=10554&page=2&highlight=flyer1024

post number 18

then in additon you can use google earth to mark all the places you want to visit and load them into your tomtom before you leave. to do that open google earth and make sure the "my places" option is clear. delete any references that already may be there.

now look up and mark any places you want to visit. they will appear in the "my places" pane. when done save the "my places" as a .Kml file on your hard drive.

download poiedit from www.poiedit.com and open that .kml file. save the file as an .ov2 with name of your choice and load this into the tomtom (inside the map folder)

you now can look up any of these on your tomtom.

hope this is of some help to you.

 

[greekislandlover]

Hi, and thanks for the replies!

As regards out current SatNav, it's a ViaMichelin and the only maps available are for Europe. They never made a US version. So obviously that would be option 1, but not possible.

Option 2:- I've been having a look at Ebay, and I note that there are several on offer from fellow Brits who have obviously purchased one out there and are selling it on after using it for two weeks. I think that it's probably best to get one of these and pre-program it with places we know we are going to stop, and the POI database you suggest before we go. I'm not too worried if it's not the most recent map version, as we will be having an RV, and obviously most of the miles will be on the major roads that would be mapped on the older versions.