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Free Topo Maps for Garmin GPS


ibycus

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Dale, thanks for the hard work.

 

I dl'ed 2.1 off the website and installed it without a hitch.

 

Now, this isn't directed against you but it's a question I pose....

 

Metroguide Canada 4 has better stream coverage than, IMO, your maps and obviously better than CNNA.

 

I know you're wokring with the data you download from some canadian agency. I'm just curious where DMTI gets their data with the really good stream information from? Thoughts?

 

edit: NM. It appears your data for streams and MGC 4 are the same after I looked closer

Edited by ubern000b
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Dale, thanks for the hard work.

 

I dl'ed 2.1 off the website and installed it without a hitch.

 

Now, this isn't directed against you but it's a question I pose....

 

Metroguide Canada 4 has better stream coverage than, IMO, your maps and obviously better than CNNA.

 

I know you're wokring with the data you download from some canadian agency. I'm just curious where DMTI gets their data with the really good stream information from? Thoughts?

 

I've always found the stream coverage in mine to be as good or better in mine. Can you point out some lat/lons for comparison?

 

Also I should mention I'll be working on a new version fairly soon (there are new roads in Manitoba available), so if there are any outstanding bugs, let me know now.

 

Dale

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......so if there are any outstanding bugs, let me know now.

 

At N51°05.325' W114°09.248' there is a POI (Navaid 0x1700). It shows as a big question mark icon on a Colorado.

 

Any idea what is actually there? I'm thinking about just removing the entity entirely.

 

I found a type called 'disc_pt' which is a 0x1700.

 

Dale

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Any idea what is actually there? I'm thinking about just removing the entity entirely.

 

I found a type called 'disc_pt' which is a 0x1700.

 

No idea. Is there a description file that comes with the data? It is at the end of a road. I'll try and remember to drive over there tonight and see if there is anything worth having as a POI.

 

Also the 0x1800 seem to have the same icon (example at N51°01.344' W114°04.500')

 

178.jpg

 

672.jpg

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There's tons of those "navaid" POIs on (navigable) Ontario lakes. For instance, take a look around N44 47.468 W79 46.399

 

I've done some comparing with other maps, and they seem to correspond to navigation hazards -- rocks and islets that were deemed too small to on the map, that sort of thing. It's not a perfect correspondance, but it's enough to say that what they seem to be representing (around here, at least) are marine obstacles. They are definitely not buoys or navigation markers.

 

Having the data could be useful, but I wish the icon was something smaller and more appropriate. That big black question mark thing is sorta annoying.

 

Have you fixed the issue with the "seams" that show up between polygons in some places? It's not important, but I'm still seeing a few here and there -- for instance, at N44 51.541 W79 42.871 there's a slice of vegetion missing, and N44 52.418 W79 41.123 shows a sliver of land cutting through water. (Both of those are visible in both MapSource and on my Oregon when zoomed in sufficiently close.) If it's a fault with the source data, don't worry about it; I only bring it up in case there's some sort of numerical accuracy issue in the way the map set gets compiled.

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I downloaded this to my 8g flash drive with U3. I tried running it from the falsh drive and the exe file never ran. Ended up not responding. Did I do something wrong? Do I need to run it off my HD? Do I need any other program?

Sorry for such a noob question.

 

No worries! You shouldn't need to have it on the hard drive for it to work.

 

A couple of questions,

 

1) Operating System?

2) Does it do *anything8 when you try to run it?

3) I assume it unzips OK?

 

There is a way around the problem if you can't get the installer to run, so don't delete it (its just mildly more difficult).

 

I'd like to figure out where the problem is though.

 

Dale

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Found something odd at N43 24.231 W80 20.185 while I was out on Sunday:

 

302.png

 

As the roads might suggest, that's a subdivision (with a school in the centre-left section); nothing else but houses there. I don't think it's all that new.

 

And yet: there's that beige outline saying it's industrial complex, there's some odd water polygons, and another one of those navaid POIs, none of which seem to have any relevance with what's there. I'm prepared to believe that there WAS an industrial complex there before the houses, but the water and navaid wouldn't make much sense with that, either.

Edited by Westacular
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The problem in the post above is the mix of data. Water data is from the federal topo maps, which are not updated very much (OK ever...). Road data is very current. So it is quite common to find communities built where water used to be and thus the overlap problem.

 

No idea about the industrial complex.

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The problem in the post above is the mix of data. Water data is from the federal topo maps, which are not updated very much (OK ever...). Road data is very current. So it is quite common to find communities built where water used to be and thus the overlap problem.

 

No idea about the industrial complex.

 

Its the same problem... I'm thinking for the next version I might try using the CanVec dataset rather than the NTDB dataset. I think this version is updated a little more frequently...

 

Dale

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I downloaded this to my 8g flash drive with U3. I tried running it from the falsh drive and the exe file never ran. Ended up not responding. Did I do something wrong? Do I need to run it off my HD? Do I need any other program?

Sorry for such a noob question.

 

No worries! You shouldn't need to have it on the hard drive for it to work.

 

A couple of questions,

 

1) Operating System?

2) Does it do *anything8 when you try to run it?

3) I assume it unzips OK?

 

There is a way around the problem if you can't get the installer to run, so don't delete it (its just mildly more difficult).

 

I'd like to figure out where the problem is though.

 

Dale

 

I did not think I would have to, but I am not the most knowledgable when it comes to computers.

 

1) Xp

2) You can hear the puter "trying" to do something, but nothing ever comes up

3) I think it unziped ok. I am not at home where my flash drive is. You know. Come to think about, I am not sure I even saw that it needed to be unzipped. Hmmmm.. I have to check tonight as maybe this is a case of user error. I will let you know tonight.

 

I just want to get it on my 4 gig micro sd card that I got for 12.99 ;)

 

Oh and I forgot to add that I only have 1gig of HD space left. I thought that might be part of the issue.

Edited by D-Roc
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The problem in the post above is the mix of data. Water data is from the federal topo maps, which are not updated very much (OK ever...). Road data is very current. So it is quite common to find communities built where water used to be and thus the overlap problem.

 

No idea about the industrial complex.

 

Its the same problem... I'm thinking for the next version I might try using the CanVec dataset rather than the NTDB dataset. I think this version is updated a little more frequently...

 

Ahh, ok. I figured there could be a mismatch of old water data and new roads, but I wasn't sure if the land use stuff was coming from an additional, also potentially out-of-sync dataset.

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FYI, you can't really do this AFAIK. The Garmin map format only allows compiled maps up to 2 GB.

 

I am not going to max it out. I just figured that why not get a 4 gig for the same price or even a bit cheaper than a 2 gig.

Edited by D-Roc
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I downloaded this to my 8g flash drive with U3. I tried running it from the falsh drive and the exe file never ran. Ended up not responding. Did I do something wrong? Do I need to run it off my HD? Do I need any other program?

Sorry for such a noob question.

 

No worries! You shouldn't need to have it on the hard drive for it to work.

 

A couple of questions,

 

1) Operating System?

2) Does it do *anything8 when you try to run it?

3) I assume it unzips OK?

 

There is a way around the problem if you can't get the installer to run, so don't delete it (its just mildly more difficult).

 

I'd like to figure out where the problem is though.

 

Dale

 

I did not think I would have to, but I am not the most knowledgable when it comes to computers.

 

1) Xp

2) You can hear the puter "trying" to do something, but nothing ever comes up

3) I think it unziped ok. I am not at home where my flash drive is. You know. Come to think about, I am not sure I even saw that it needed to be unzipped. Hmmmm.. I have to check tonight as maybe this is a case of user error. I will let you know tonight.

 

I just want to get it on my 4 gig micro sd card that I got for 12.99 :blink:

 

Oh and I forgot to add that I only have 1gig of HD space left. I thought that might be part of the issue.

 

 

OK stupid me I never unzipped it. I did that and all went well, I think. However, I assume that I need to use the mapsource trip and waypoint manager that came with the GPS to transfer the TOPO mpas to my GPS. Well I had that already loaded. Went to launch and received an error and it would not launch. So no biggie. Removed it and re-loaded it. Same error came up. See below. FYI - computers have never been nice to me. Ever!!! ;)

 

Error Information:

 

App: MapSource

At: 12/17/2008 9:47:29 PM (UTC)

OS: Windows XP Service Pack 3

Processor: x86, Processor Level: 15, Processors:1, Model: 2 Stepping: 9, RAM: 523760

TDB_PRODUCT.CPP-219-6.13.7.0

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OK stupid me I never unzipped it. I did that and all went well, I think. However, I assume that I need to use the mapsource trip and waypoint manager that came with the GPS to transfer the TOPO mpas to my GPS. Well I had that already loaded. Went to launch and received an error and it would not launch. So no biggie. Removed it and re-loaded it. Same error came up. See below. FYI - computers have never been nice to me. Ever!!! ;)

 

What version of mapsource are you using? I know some older versions of mapsource have had problems with these maps. You can download an update off of Garmin's website. (If you can get 6.13.x, a lot of people prefer it to 6.14)

 

Dale

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Just downloaded v2.1 to replace an old version which I uninstalled.

Upon trying to open mapsource I get an error saying to reinstall. So I look through the registry and find the old version was still there, delete it and everything works (and boy is there a lot more regions done).

 

I hope your v2.1 uninstall removes its registry files, else non tech savvy people will go crazy.

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Just downloaded v2.1 to replace an old version which I uninstalled.

Upon trying to open mapsource I get an error saying to reinstall. So I look through the registry and find the old version was still there, delete it and everything works (and boy is there a lot more regions done).

 

I hope your v2.1 uninstall removes its registry files, else non tech savvy people will go crazy.

 

Oops. Must have goofed the installer for that old version. Do you recall the version you had on there?

 

Actually 2.1 doesn't have an uninstall at all <_<. When it becomes necessary, I'll write one (in the mean time, I'm just sending people to mapsettoolkit who need to uninstall), I'll possibly incorporate it in to the installer for the next version (i.e. would you like to uninstall the old version first? pop up when you install).

 

Dale

 

***edit I wonder if this was something to do with the history of your machine. Did you install from the single file download and use mapupdate at some point? This might have moved around the registry entries so that they couldn't be found any more. This is (part of) the reason why I didn't include an uninstaller recent versions. They are generally (fairly) hard coded, and things have a tendency to change. If the uninstaller comes out with the new version, it can take any changes in to account since the last version.

Edited by ibycus
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I just wanted to pass along my thanks to those who are seeding the BitTorrent of this file. I had to install on a new laptop and the torrent worked perfectly. I'll leave my VM which I use specifically for BitTorrent seeding as well, but my ISP has some pretty tough bandwidth caps, so the more people we can get seeding the better it will be for all of us.

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I just wanted to pass along my thanks to those who are seeding the BitTorrent of this file. I had to install on a new laptop and the torrent worked perfectly. I'll leave my VM which I use specifically for BitTorrent seeding as well, but my ISP has some pretty tough bandwidth caps, so the more people we can get seeding the better it will be for all of us.

 

It does not matter much. Dale is using a web seed right from his server which runs at a high upload speed.

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hi, I just downloaded the Non-Iso version and for some reason when I go to unzip it I get : "The Compressed (Zipped) program is invalid or corrupted"

 

I then tried WinRar and can manage to see the files in the archive. I noticed that Setup.exe is missing.

 

Bad download? It was downloaded using Firefox 3.0

 

thanks

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hi, I just downloaded the Non-Iso version and for some reason when I go to unzip it I get : "The Compressed (Zipped) program is invalid or corrupted"

 

I then tried WinRar and can manage to see the files in the archive. I noticed that Setup.exe is missing.

 

Bad download? It was downloaded using Firefox 3.0

 

thanks

 

Hi,

 

I agree with Red90, probably a bad download, but I should mention, I've had reports that some versions of WinRAR don't like the big file, so if you have trouble with the torrent, you might want to try a different unzip program.

 

Dale

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Hi Dale,

 

Any idea if your maps will be compatible with the new basecamp software garmin is introducing?

 

Bryam

 

No clue. I know little to nothing about the new basecamp software garmin is introducing :cry:.

 

If the older mapsource maps are compatible, then I would say yes, likely. If not, then I would say (for the time being) no.

 

Dale

 

** edit: After a quick google search, for the 3d... no. For the 2d stuff. Probably.

Edited by ibycus
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dang your quick, that is pretty much what I figured.

 

thanks for everything.

 

Bryan

 

(btw, how is school going)

 

You just caught me at the right time :cry:. I was waiting to go meet with someone so had some time to kill.

 

School's pretty good. Weird to think I'm more than 1/8th the way there already though.

 

Dale

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Ok I have a question that is probably very simplistic, but I just do not know.

 

I have unzipped and ran the setup on my hard drive. Now, how do I out the topo maps on my micro sd card? Do I use the trip-waypoint manager?

Sorry for such a noob question.

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I have tried to use the mapupdater for several days and everytime I get this error "Unable to get update listing... site might be down for updates"

 

And because of that I cant open Mapsource anymore either because it complains with the NTDBDATA installation.

Anyone knows how to fix this?

Thanks.

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I have tried to use the mapupdater for several days and everytime I get this error "Unable to get update listing... site might be down for updates"

 

And because of that I cant open Mapsource anymore either because it complains with the NTDBDATA installation.

Anyone knows how to fix this?

Thanks.

 

Hey,

 

Mapupdate is no longer used. I'm surprised this was the failure mode though. My appologies. To fix the failure, run "Mapsettoolkit" by cypherman, and delete the entry for Ibycus Topo.

 

The latest version can be downloaded either direct from my website (http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/) or through BitTorrent (get a torrent client like http://www.utorrent.com, and then google "ibycus topo torrent").

 

Let me know if you have any trouble.

 

Dale

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Thanks for solving this one for me.

Does this mean that the maps are not being updated anymore?

 

Nope, it just means I'm not using mapupdate anymore. It was too buggy and my future releases are going to be complete updates, rather than regional updates, so the usefulness of Mapupdate was questionable.

 

Dale

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