Installing speed and red light camera alerts on your Garmin Nuvi
By Derek Fung on 26 September 2008
School zone, speed and red light camera alerts are now de rigueur on portable GPS navigators. While Garmin's Nuvi range has an excellent alerting system, you need to be the Howard Carter of the internet to find them. We show you how, although we make no guarantees about avoiding Tutankhamun's curse.
(Speed Aware image by Chris Chidsey, Royalty Free)
As we discovered when we reviewed the Nuvi 260W and 760, Garmin has a very good safety camera warning system, which will alert you to upcoming red light and speed cameras, as well as school zones. There's a unique voice warning for each camera or zone type, a nice step up from the generic chime and visual warning offered on GPS devices from other makers.
Unfortunately, these warnings don't come preloaded on any current Garmin Nuvi units — a careless oversight considering the brand is being marketed on its ease of use. To get these warnings you'll have to go to Garmin's website, find the special Points of Interest (POI) files and install them on your device. These files don't exactly fall out of the sky and into your lap, so we've prepared this quick step-by-step guide for you.
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Go to Garmin's Custom POI Downloads page.
Note: If you have problems accessing the above link directly or get a "Page Not Found – 404" error try the following steps instead. Go to the Garmin Australia website, select Australia from the "Select Your Country" drop down box, click "On the Road", scroll down and then click on "Custom POI Downloads". - Download the POI files for speed cameras, red light cameras and school zones
- Unzip the .gpi files from each of those zip files
- Connect your Garmin to your PC or Mac via USB
- Go to your Garmin device, then to the "Garmin" folder. If you see a folder named "POI" go to the next step, otherwise create said directory
- Copy all the .gpi files that you've downloaded and extracted into the Garmin's "POI" directory
- Disconnect your Garmin from your computer and — voila! — warnings for school zones, as well as speed and red light cameras.
Topics: garmin, nuvi, alerts, red light camera, speed camera, warnings, poi
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Comments (7)
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outdoorsy commented on 13/09/2009 21:59
I did it but when I unzipped it all I have is unusable files that window doesn't recognise the program that created it or something, what did I do wrong? I have tried downloading on several times with the same result
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suzi-k commented on 27/08/2009 18:27
i bought a garmin 260w for my boyfriend as a gift and i was disappointed that it did not have the standard helpful alerts that other gps' have that make them essential whenever driving...
it has since been sitting in his glovebox, lucky to be used once a fortnight. but hopefully this will change after these installations! thanks! -
LaurenS commented on 20/06/2009 12:39
good explanations. are there general updates available, my new Garmin 255 has many speed limit errors in it
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Rufus commented on 16/06/2009 11:25
Is there a download available that will enable a 255 to display heading and bearing in degrees plus speed in knots, trip duration, time to destination etc
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fab commented on 05/04/2009 10:30
With the Garmin having such a good name, and believing the model (Nuvi 760) was amongst the best, initial use of the gps disappointing, being under the impression speed camera alerts came installed in it.
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icky commented on 12/03/2009 03:02
Hi ,
I am trying to find the Installing speed and red light camera alerts for my Garmin Nuvi 250W. You have it for the 260 series.Does it exist with the 250W ?
Also...What does the 250w95.zip file do for my Garmin 250W ? thank you -
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