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Open Street Maps on Garmin


user13371

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Good to know, thanks. That was the batch I was looking at, was thinking of loading just Oregon & Washington on my eTrex.

 

For my primary interest (cycling) I don't really need auto routing or extensive POI data. Are there other functions or features where it fails in your estimation against Garmin's map products? E.g., significant problems in accuracy or completeness of road data?

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They're free and you can load them in minutes, so there's not a lot of reason to not at least look at them.

 

In areas of the world where maps aren't avaialble, OSM seems to do pretty well. I have the impression in the U.S. that they have a lot of catching up to do. They seem to have started with the Tiger data set, but there are serious issues of freshness and categorizations with their data in the areas I've looked at. They seem to have some labels that are just plain wrong. Weirdly, TN 840 was in the Tiger data set before the road was actually built, and it's not in the OSM set except in pieces and fragments.

 

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35....168056&z=13

 

vs

 

http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=35.8197&...;layers=B000FTF

 

I get that the whole point of OSM is that I could go fix all of these things. I have my own free software project already. :-)

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I've loaded OSM data to my 60cx, though using the Export function on their website I am only able to get a small area of OSM data at once. It's still really nice since I can edit the maps and add details most others are lacking.

 

I used Mkgmap to convert the OSM data to an .img file that I could load to my microSD card. The only issue is the program needs to be run from the command prompt, so its not for everyone.

After I made the image file I just renamed it gmapsupp.img moved it to the card & everything worked great.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mkgmap

 

I'm really hoping someday that someone makes a program that makes using Openstreetmaps this way with a garmin gps much easier.

Edited by hogrod
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I wanted to also say I own garmins City Navigator NT 2009 and topo US 2008. Since OSM maps are fully editable they are much better than garmins topo maps, otherwise they have the same errors you would find in those maps. on the other hand garmins city navigator maps are Way better as of right now for accuracy.

 

I mostly use the OSM maps for displaying hiking trials I have added(via tracklogs I traced), its so nice to go hiking and actually have all the trails correctly placed on the gps map.

 

All the streets in my town that were wrongly placed or named I fixed, having my town loaded on my gps is great when going for a bike ride. I have even added a few POIs to the map and those even show up in garmin GPS find menu.

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Well, I've had a project a long time in the works to create routable Garmin maps from OSM data, but unfortunately it's still stuck in the concept phase... Early on, I created a quick & dirty XSL template that wrote a cGPSMapper file, and it worked, but it died on even a moderate amount of data. Anyway, in the mean time, some Russians beat me to the punch and wrote a perl script that creates routable cGPSMapper files. I haven't used it myseld, and I don't like perl, so I'll probably still create my own. Nice to have options, right?

 

I got into OSM because I wanted to have (free) routable trails and the only data set that was available even commercially was the Garmin national parks, which has limited coverage. And even the non-routable trails in Garmin's Topo products are lacking. So, I'm hoping OSM can be a good resource for cataloging trails.

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Try this. They are very accurate and install through Mapsource just like Garmin Maps.

 

Check out this thread.

 

I have used them through several versions.

 

I've tried them(V2 most recent), and really like the work being put into all these free map options, but at least in my state there were numerous errors that no other maps have, and whole sections of the state where it was just blank(at least mapsource never showed anything).

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Try this. They are very accurate and install through Mapsource just like Garmin Maps.

 

Check out this thread.

 

I have used them through several versions.

 

I've tried them(V2 most recent), and really like the work being put into all these free map options, but at least in my state there were numerous errors that no other maps have, and whole sections of the state where it was just blank(at least mapsource never showed anything).

It would be really cool if Ibycus or the other free map authors could use OpenStreetMap as the base for the road and trail data, and then as OSM improves, they could release new versions of their maps and they would get better and better. If I ever get my program written, that will be one possibility.

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It would be really cool if Ibycus or the other free map authors could use OpenStreetMap as the base for the road and trail data, and then as OSM improves, they could release new versions of their maps and they would get better and better. If I ever get my program written, that will be one possibility.

Perhaps I will investigate including these roads on my topo maps since they at least start with the tiger data that I've been using.

 

What language are you writing your program in?

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It would be really cool if Ibycus or the other free map authors could use OpenStreetMap as the base for the road and trail data, and then as OSM improves, they could release new versions of their maps and they would get better and better. If I ever get my program written, that will be one possibility.

Perhaps I will investigate including these roads on my topo maps since they at least start with the tiger data that I've been using.

 

What language are you writing your program in?

I've been contributing to a tool called Osmosis, which is written in Java. I'm planning on writing the OSM-to-cGPSMapper translator as a plugin for that, because it's a very well-designed tool and it has the XML parsing already done, as well as a bunch of handy utility classes. I have to write some other tools for it first, most notably a task to slice the planet file into tiles. (I know there's a tool called osmcut, but it's not flexible/configurable enough and doesn't cover all the scenarios needed).

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Hi,

Im using OpenStreetMap alot now.

(sorry i havent been Geocaching) ... my goal is to help out all GeoCachers, and create a free mapbook for everyone to use.

 

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OS...Garmin/Download

This site shows how to download all the OSM data and make it shown on the Garmin Device.

 

Enjoy :blink:

...

And yes... it would be wonderful for the Ibycus mapset to be included with the OpenStreetMap. .. however, the challenge there is in the licence. ... Geobase Canada owns that data and only allows for personal only use.

The openstreetmap licence allows for anyone to use for any reason. ... OpenStreetMap just asks that whoever uses the information just states that it came from openstreetmap.

...

So if you see a problem with the map, please do add in your corrections.

 

I plan on making a Ibycus topo Western Canada mapset, and an eastern Canada, and northern Canada mapset. (just waiting to hear back from Ibycus)

 

If anyone is interested, let me know. Then i can start making it.

 

Cheers,

Sam

Across Canada Trails

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I've been using UK maps built from OSM data for over a year now (using mkgmap, so I can include the features I want). Coverage is obviously patchy, since it's an open source project, but I find them really useful for geocaching because things like footpaths are often marked.

 

I also built a map from OSM data when I went on holiday in the Toronto area in May. Toronto itself is very well mapped, although I did manage to grab some tracks of unmapped roads when we took a bus trip to Niagara.

 

I also find mapping to be quite addictive. Having found maps of other areas useful, I'm sure that somebody out there has probably found some of the things that I've mapped to be equally useful. I know there's at least one other local geocacher who contributes to OSM because I've encountered several places where a footpath is only mapped as far as a geocache. :D

Edited by Crid
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Next to a selection of City Navigator and topographical maps from Garmin, covering the Netherlands and some of the countries around it, I have also loaded some OSM maps found on http://emexes.powweb.com/osm/ in my Vista HCx. (The site provides nice MapSource installers)

 

These OSM based maps are routable, but most of the time I just use city nav. for routing and the topo maps while geocaching in forests etc. I mostly loaded the OSM maps just to see whether such a free alternative really is a proper alternative to Garmins products. I must say they are quite up to date around here, pretty comparable to City Navigator 2008, CN 2009 definitely is much more up to date though. The CN maps are more complete and detailed as well, Garmin's Topo maps are even more detailed of course, but those are not routable.

 

So, I think the OSM maps, or at least the maps from http://emexes.powweb.com/osm/ have quite a long way to go before they are on the same level as Garmin's (or should we say Navteq's) products. However, if it comes to value for money, they might be quite an interesting option for those of us who can't afford the rather pricey official products.

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