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Hacking TomTom 300/500

Black Hole said:
My new unit includes WiFi as well as Bluetooth, and is able to download map updates directly instead of having to connect it to a PC by USB. All well and good, but it wants a map update out-of-the-box... 7GB! On my bandwidth and with a 10GB monthly cap?!!

Even if it managed to achieve the full 3Mbps for the whole download (as if), that would take nearly 7 hours.
Click to expand...
I have a TomTom GO 6200, and one of the first things I did was to remove the default Europe map (almost 7GB), and replace it with the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland map (I can't remember the actual size, but think it is less than 500MB). This was free as part of the included lifetime maps (world). Obviously, if you intend to travel abroad, you will need to install relevant maps, but for UK use, map updates are fairly quick.
 
That's a very good tip, thanks, I will look into it immediately.

I also need to look up how to transplant favourites and PoIs from old to new - I know how to find them in the old filing system, but when I plugged in the new one it was not immediately recognised as external storage (or even by TomTom Home).
 
Brian is right, I have done that with the car built in SatNav, particularly as even copying the files for all of Europe over from a usb drive was likely to take longer than I wished to stay in the car, and could not be interrupted. I even had to have two goes at a software update, taking 30 minutes. Putting just the UK maps on took minutes. On mine, I just tick the countries I wish to tranfer to the car, but all the data has already been downloaded to a usb drive.
 
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Currently pissed off that there is no easy way to transfer Favourites from the old one (other than one-by-one converting them to a PoI category), and no way to transfer PoI icon files! And even without custom icons, PoIs don't show up when displaying a map area that contains any.

This strikes me as two steps forward and one back.
 
It's easy with Garmin.

Re Humax, must try it with my two Panasonic boxes.
 
Have tho tried Pocket GPS World BH? There are a few TomTom black belts over there. If it can be done, then they will know.
 
Good idea, although I think it is more a case of pestering TomTom about it (and they are more responsive than Humax). I was a ninja on my old one...
 
Mike0001 said:
This gives the impression it is easy. Does it not work?
Click to expand...
.ov2 files (PoIs) - no problem;
Favourites (buried in the mapsettings.cfg file) need converting to locations in a favourites.ov2 file first;
.bmp files (map icons for PoIs) - no go, the new TomToms don't seem to support them.

The original Go series paired <category>.ov2 with a <category>.bmp which got displayed as an icon when selecting a PoI category in the menus, and the user could select which PoI categories to display on the map. This was very handy for (eg) public loos - I could spot there was one in the vicinity without having to specifically ask the satnav to route me to one.
 
I've used a shareware utility POIEdit to extract favourites from the old mapsettings.cfg file and create a Favourites.ov2 PoI file to sync to the new TomTom. Whether I donate to the author depends on whether the sync process works and if I find the utility useful for further massaging of PoIs.

Note: the POIEdit installer has a "portable installation" tick box, and if ticked it is worth revising the default installation directory to somewhere outside your OS.
 
Can you not copy mapsettings.cfg from one device to another? I know that the method of preserving stuff from a map update was to copy over a backup of it.
 
As far as I can see there is no direct access to the file system. Everything works by syncing via MyDrive, a web service which has a user account and is linked to the satnav and any computer devices you want to plan routes on etc. MyDrive provides the facility to import PoI files (.ov2), and nothing else.
 
Damn! Can't connect it to the hotel WiFi because the hotel WiFi is behind a login that requires a web browser on the device, and the unit won't accept map downloads via Bluetooth (having connected my phone to the WiFi). It was happy to sync with MyDrive that way though!

(The UK map is 824MB)
 
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