Some additional Garmin GPS Mapping Sources

[Shardik]

I will be going to the Pyrenees and am in the planning stage. Picked up my lightweight Garmin GPS and needed maps. Not easy to find.Garmin doesn't seem to have too many detailed international mapping programs for backpacking, in Europe.The Metro Guide for Europe is useless.I prefer to stay away from some of their third party manufacturers, outside of North America.

After quite a lot of digging I have been able to get some reasonable maps out of these two free programs.

This program gets the .img files posted on the internet.
http://garminmapsearch.com/
Click on a flag, for your language, and select the area(s) that you want.
After you save the .img files, you may have to use your GPS to view them. You can't display them in Map Source. See how on the next link below. Please note that every time you load new maps in, you erase the previous maps from the memory card on your GPS.You will always have your base map though.

This program loads .img files directly into your own Garmin GPS.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mdipol/img2gps/

This system is not perfect. Seems to lack support from the referred forum. I have loaded over 400 M so far using Windows 2000,XP and Vista.You should confirm the maps, with a hard copy.Because I have used multiple maps of the same area, they have overlapped and confirm themselves.Some were off by a bit, but generally not too bad.

There is another website that I am using for the waypoints:
http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/home.do

This runs well with Google Earth http://earth.google.com/ and I hope to connect them all and transfer all the data into my GPS.

Please note that I am not a programmer, nor expert in the GPS and Mapping field. Just someone who likes to backpack. Please keep this in consideration , with your replies.

If you have any other ways to do this , please share with us. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thank you,
Dave

 

[Kevin Rooney]

Thanks for posting this, Dave. I've also used GPSBabel (a freebie program) to convert data from one format to another. Don't know whether it would apply in this instance, but if this thread evolves into a "How-to" it will be useful info.

Have a great trip. Would love to get there sometime myself.

 

[SAR-EMT40]

Considering how poor most of the maps are (IMHO) in the non-national park series, including the 2008 mapsource maps. This is of considerable interest. I will have to play with this. It may make my mapping Garmin GPSes useful enough that I will start using them again in areas that aren't covered by the parks. Of course even if these do work, nothing would be routable is my guess.

Thanks,
Keith

 

[Shardik]

Thanks Kevin,

Will add the converter to my arsenal, and I wouldn't mind this thread to have a good run, wherever it brings us.

Keith,

I would appreciate you having a good look at this. The files are being created from many sources. A lot of them are being shared from here:
http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com/
Here is an idea of the work being put into these projects.
http://www.ourfootprints.de/gps/mapsource-island_e.html


For any of you visiting Canada, here is a free one...but without street names, made with our own Government files.Unlike the ones above , this works well with Mapsource .
http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/#Legal

 

[SAR-EMT40]

I will be more than willing to try that but I am going to be at an EMS conference tomorrow and through the weekend. I will try to get to it soon though.

Regards,
Keith

 

[Shardik]

I will be more than willing to try that but I am going to be at an EMS conference tomorrow and through the weekend. I will try to get to it soon though.

Regards,
Keith

Please keep in mind that the available maps that I have found on line do not have very much in regards to USA.I was looking in Europe, not USA.
I'm guessing , because of the Garmin maps availability.

Found one in Hawaii though.

But, I'm hoping something interesting will arise from these discussions.

Thanks Keith,
Dave

 

[DougPaul]

Considering how poor most of the maps are (IMHO) in the non-national park series, including the 2008 mapsource maps.

These are 1:100K scale maps, total size about 2.85 GB. (The original Garmin topo is ~1.4 GB.) Equivalent 1:25K scale maps would probably be 40-50 GB.

The USGS has the 1:100K DLG topos, which were probably the starting point for the Garmin products, available free online. I am not aware of readily available 1:25K US DLG topos. (edit: one of the posts in the thread linked below refers to some 24K DLGs.)

The Garmin 2008 maps appear to have added DEM (digital elevation map) data and interpolated the original 1:100K contour info (perhaps with help from the DEMs) to provide a smaller contour interval.


Making one's own maps seems to be a growing cottage industry... It can involve a lot of work.

There is a recent thread in sci.geo.satellite-nav ("Garmin HCx in India") http://groups.google.com/group/sci....min+Vista+HCx+in+India&qt_g=Search+this+group One of the posts describes how to take SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) data and produce a low resolution topo map. There have also some prior threads in this newsgroup on the topic.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/map_authors/ looks like another good place to look for info.

There is lots of relevant info and links on the excellent http://www.gpsinformation.net/. However, a quick search didn't yield any direct info on how to make maps.

http://www.gpsmap.net/ is also worth a look. The links page has a section on software for creating your own maps. http://www.gpsmap.net/Links.html

Doug