Favourites DAT format

whelanp · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 08, 2006 Posts: 8

Hello All

Can anyone shed any light on the format of the binary file used to store favourites. I find it really annoying I cannot create this file without using the Favourites importer. Currently it is the only reason I have a windows install!!

Is there some script that can convert the csv favourites file to the favourites dat. Or does any one know how the dat is created??

Would be cool to have Smile

Thanks in advance

Paul "Hill Walker"

Oh and I use Destinator PN

glynny · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:16 am Post subject: DAT files

This seems to be the holy grail of Destinator.

I've searched for about 2 months to find the answer & nada.

Best I found were some hexidecimal editors that would read it - but it's still a jumble of numbers & letters.

If you can find out you may even get to change some of the inbuilt POI - so then you can delete some of the really useful ones like mountain Passes & yaght basins.

Glynny
_________________
Acer N35
Destinator 3

I can never think of anything clever to put here.....

Jonisinimo · Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:16 am Post subject:

Hello,

in the german forum is a tool that can convert favourite data from formats: .dat, .csv, .asc into the formats: .dat, .csv, .asc.

Adress:
http://www.pocketnavigation.de/board/tid77293-sid.htm

You can find there following link:
I2C Format Konverter (Formatkonvertierung DAT, CSV,ASC) auf PC

For simple converting use the version 1.72.

Also you can find the source code of a VBA-macro which reads the relevant data from DPN-favourites. In this code you can find the known data format of the favourite database. The VBA-code is running under Excel.

Adress:
http://www.pocketnavigation.de/board/thread.php?postid=608868#post608868

Jonisinimo

glynny · Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 2:04 am Post subject:

impressive - well done
_________________
Acer N35
Destinator 3

I can never think of anything clever to put here.....

whelanp · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 08, 2006 Posts: 8

Thanks Guys Smile

Pity I did't pay more attention in German class.

whelanp · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 08, 2006 Posts: 8

Can anyone please convert the comments to english for me?
Thanks I want to code it up as a java app.

Regards
Paul

glynny · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:08 pm Post subject: Translation

Try http://babelfish.altavista.com/

It's not foolproof but it will certainly give you the gist of whats being said.

Hope it helps

Glynny
_________________
Acer N35
Destinator 3

I can never think of anything clever to put here.....

TheRock · Regular Visitor Joined: Aug 24, 2005 Posts: 126

translation:

'Nach der PLZ stehen immer folgende Daten in der *.DAT Datei
'im Hex Format: 00 00 00 00 00 01 DD 02 12 3C 00 00 00
in the *.dat-file the zip-code is always followed by 00 00 00 00 00 01 DD 02 12 3C 00 00 00 in HEX-format

'Diese Werte lese ich als Dummy Werte ein
I read these data as dummy-data

'Nach der letzten Koordinate stehen immer noch 16 bytes in der *.DAT Datei
after the last coordinate there are always another 16 bytes in the *.dat-file.

'Diese Werte lese ich als Dummy Werte ein
I read these data as dummy-data
_________________
D7
loox n500

ed_m · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 01, 2004 Posts: 11

hi all... now just imagine for a moment i have no idea what i'm talking about.

my wife got a gnav10 from somewhere or other and now i'm trying to program some favourites on the laptop.

i created a new category on the unit today and entered a few favourite points

1) not sure how to use the activesync interface but used the browse option to go and find a dat file of the same name as the favourites category i created.

2) i used the german poicon utility to convert it to csv and yup its the stuff i programmed on the unit

3) modified the csv and converted back to dat.. copied it back where i found it...

4) the category no longer appears on the unit.

basic questions:
am i missing some configuration or header for the dat file?
am i putting it in the right place?
etc.

good to find people on here getting to grips with hacking this unit about!
i have a technical & software background so i shouldnt get scared by big words.. just obviously dont know the ins & outs as well as i oughta.

ed

ed_m · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 01, 2004 Posts: 11

ok.. more fool i Laughing

the addition of a .dat file extension worked a treat.
assumed the convertor would have done that, silly me.
that combined with windows trying its best not to display file extensions had me fooled.

ToMMY2k · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 03, 2006 Posts: 3

Hi All,

Did anyone actually get this working?

Id love to know how, as Im stumped!

Cheers,
Tom

ed_m · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 01, 2004 Posts: 11

...yes i did.

was all a bit last minute.
will see if i can remember the procedure over the weekend.

ToMMY2k · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 03, 2006 Posts: 3

If you could that would be great!

I did make a start on attepting to run the VB but Im no VB progammer (Perl is what I do). I didnt get very far.

Cheers,
Tom

ed_m · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 01, 2004 Posts: 11

ok.... best bet is to take one of your current POI favourites groups and convert it to see the format.

copy DAT file from unit

i'm using microsoft activesync to talk to the satnav, browse the files can't remember the path offhand but you should be able to find NAME.dat where NAME is the heading of your favourites group.

this file contains the POI/waypoints within that group, copy it locally.

Convert DAT to CSV

i ended up using POIcon207 after errors with earlier versions (downloads linked above).

opening it you'll want to use the aktion section, click einlesen to open a window that allows you to read the file.

click quelle & browse to the dat file and open it, then click start to read the data in and ok to the next question. if its happy you'll get a 'daten wird eingelesen' message (data was read in).

close the window (schliessen)

using the andern button in the aktion section you can browse through the waypoints & edit them (i think).

to write the file in a more sensible format click schreiben (write) and on the right hand side select .CSV and ziel to browse where you'd like the file to go.. and put a filename in the box.

click start and you should get 'daten wird geschreiben' (you can work that one out).

schliesen & schliesen and you can go open your CSV in excel or similar.

Edit / Create CSV

you'll see col 1 contains the name, C & D contain lat and long... and others have address info etc.

so now you know the format you can go build your own csv file with your own waypoints. i used multimap to centre on the places then pasted the url into excel and wrote a formula to pull out the lat & long data.

i havent tried leaving the lat & long blank and putting only postcodes in (cos i can do that on the unit manually!).

Convert CSV to DAT

once you have your csv file with the waypoints in reverse the above process to convert it back to a dat file. use einlesen to load the file having selected .csv, and schreiben to write the file as a dat.

Copy back to unit

copy it back onto the device and it should appear in your favourites as a new group.

not terribly detailed but hopefully enough.

ToMMY2k · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 03, 2006 Posts: 3

ah man I feel really bad...thanks for spending the time to write all that! I did actually mean did anyone get the VB script working from the germal gps website.

Cheers,
Tom

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