FreeNAV POI 5

Posted by JD 01/22/2013 at 15:00

Using FreeNAV on Android is mostly good, but it lacks a few capabilities that would be really nice for any GPS user.

  • Add POI data
  • Import POI files
  • Export Favorites
  • Transfer Favorites
    The POI DB is definitely missing many, many, many POIs. Looking for a specific pizza place found 6, but none of them are the two within 3 miles of home that have been there longer than I’ve lived here. It seems to list places 100+ miles away.

Good News

There is some good news. The favorites are stored in a text file on your device here:

/sdcard/Android/data/com.navfree.android.OSM.USA/files/UserData/Favourites.txt

Be certain to use a smart editor, not something like Notepad, but Notepad++ or vi work fine. The fail seems to have UNIX-style LF, not MS-DOS CRLF.
Favorites are not ideal, but at least it is a way to add lat/lon data for relatively easy lookups later.

POI Database

There are definitely POI Databases for each map available too. These are in a YDB format, whatever that is. More research will be necessary to understand it as a quick google did not locate any specific information. I am hopeful that this ydb is the same used, but don’t know for sure.

Favourites.txt File Format

I haven’t looked into the specific file format, but it looks simple enough to understand that creating a GPX to Favorites conversion tool should not be too difficult. It looks like a simple filter, at least going from GPX to this format. At the top of the file there seems to be a count of the entries inside. When merging, getting this correct will be important. I wonder if it really matters or if I can just put a number large enough inside?

Perhaps a few hours of perl or Ruby is all I think it will needs, even if I need to count entries.

Hopefully, the order inside the favorites matters too. It would be nice to re-order what is displayed inside FreeNAV.

Sadly, our Favorites are not part of the Search POI feature in FreeNAV. Manually scanning them will be needed.

Google Maps?

Why use FreeNAV when Google Maps exists? Data.

  • Google maps wants a data connection. Even in cache-mode, it still wants to connect, share and get data. I suppose that placing my phone into airplane-mode would stop that. I’ll give it a try shortly.
  • In some parts of the world, Google Maps is blocked.
  • Sometimes you simply are not near an internet connection.
  1. guest 03/08/2013 at 20:46

    Thanks for mentioning navfree Favourites.txt. I have just successfully converted 50 poi (I use often) to Favourites.txt and it works perfect. Note that, after lat,long, there is a big number I don’t know what it is about. I gave a big but unique number. And there is one line accepting phone number. The order the entry in this file is reversed when display on the phone.

  2. JD 03/09/2013 at 11:53

    Glad it was helpful to someone.

    I’ll search the POI DB, not find what I want, and completely forget to search the Favorites that I already loaded.

    BTW, all of this really started because I wanted a Schlotzsky’s sandwich when in a different part of town and none were being shown nearby in FreeNAV. Seems fast-food places that I avoid are always in the DB, but places I want never are.

    For my previous GPS tools, a Nokia N800 with external BT tethered GPS, I had downloaded numerous POI files from POI Factory, then loaded them into the DB.

    Don’t get me started about trying to find a Krispy Kreme shop on the way to a meeting. Bringing HOT glazed doughnuts seems to brighten the entire meeting mood. At least until everyone has a sugar crash 90 min later. ;)

    I also wish there were a way to have freenav just start and show me where I was on the map without having to do anything else. I guess a workaround for that is pressing HOME, then Current Location to get it started, but it is still not intuitive.

    Life has been too busy for me recently to look at this with any more detail. I had intended to import about 30 different POI DBs into the favorites, but without a way to search/filter, that just doesn’t make sense.

  3. MymsMan 11/01/2013 at 16:04

    Did you or Guest ever come up with any automation for converting other formats into Navfree favourites or understanding the file structure further?

    I would like to add a number of entries from Google maps in KML to use within NavFree

  4. JD 11/01/2013 at 19:49

    Geoitem Database Version 1.0.5 is the type of DB according to the header.

    Seems that every entry is 20 lines.
    The 1st 2 lines are the DB format and the count of entries.
    Figuring out the purpose for each line inside an entry looks easy.

    To reverse engineer this, I’d create a new “Favorite” and fill in every field with the description of that field, the grab a copy of the newly modified file … simple. I’ve done this with a few other text file formats over the years like the Quicken Addressbook – worked fine.

    Hope this helps.

  5. MymsMan 11/02/2013 at 14:59

    Thanks for info but I’m trying different approach.
    Installed wifi keyboard app to allow me to paste from PC into Navfree search.