Oregon 450t adding customs maps from Google Earth

[iceteeman]

Hi, I`m pretty new to this form and this will be my first post. My question or questions are I have a Oregon 450T have had it since Feb or March and understand how to use this pretty well. I have a lot of customs maps and overlay maps loaded on Google Earth. I know this has been asked a few times on this form and have read alot of them and have read about customs maps on Garmin Oregon Wiki customs maps site.

 

I would like to add them onto my micro sd card that i bought for my Garmin. I do have map source loaded on my computer and have loaded some simple maps onto my sd card but the Oregon does not read these maps because I do not have the name or file loaded the proper way on my sd card.

 

Can somebody show me from start to finish how to create the proper folder and what to call it on my sd card ? Do you have subfolders or just 1 folder thats called Garmin maps?

Rename the maps so I can have multiple maps loaded in the Garmin

 

For most of you this is an easy process but for me I must be missing a simple step or something .

[+bobandrobin]

I've been doing this with Base Camp and Birdseye imagery from Garmin. Very slow process, you actually feel your hair growing. I'll be watching your thread hoping for an alternative, good luck.

[+New Jersey TJ]

First, make sure that you are running the latest official firmware for your 450. I have a an Oregon 400 and had to upgrade my firmware because older versions didn't support custom maps. I'm not sure which firmware version you need as a minimum, but you should be good to go if you upgrade to the latest official one.

 

You need to create a \Garmin\CustomMaps directory and place the maps in \CustomMaps. I place my maps in this directory on the Garmin, but my understanding is that it will work on the SD card as well so long as the folder structure is correct. My maps have a .kmz extension. You don't need any special tool to copy them over. Just copy the .kmz files to the \CustomMaps directory using Windows Explorer.

 

Once the maps are loaded, you should go to Setup, Map, Map Information. You'll see an entry for Custom Maps. Click on it to enable it for your current profile. All custom maps have to be enabled at the same time. I don't think there is any way to pick and chose . . . it's all or nothing.

 

You said that you have a lot of custom maps already, so this should get you going. If you want to make your own, I'd recommend THIS GUIDE which describes how to make them using Google Earth. It's a fairly quick process once you get the hand of it.

Edited August 29, 2010 by New Jersey TJ

[iceteeman]

First, make sure that you are running the latest official firmware for your 450. I have a an Oregon 400 and had to upgrade my firmware because older versions didn't support custom maps. I'm not sure which firmware version you need as a minimum, but you should be good to go if you upgrade to the latest official one.

 

You need to create a \Garmin\CustomMaps directory and place the maps in \CustomMaps. I place my maps in this directory on the Garmin, but my understanding is that it will work on the SD card as well so long as the folder structure is correct. My maps have a .kmz extension. You don't need any special tool to copy them over. Just copy the .kmz files to the \CustomMaps directory using Windows Explorer.

 

Once the maps are loaded, you should go to Setup, Map, Map Information. You'll see an entry for Custom Maps. Click on it to enable it for your current profile. All custom maps have to be enabled at the same time. I don't think there is any way to pick and chose . . . it's all or nothing.

 

You said that you have a lot of custom maps already, so this should get you going. If you want to make your own, I'd recommend THIS GUIDE which describes how to make them using Google Earth. It's a fairly quick process once you get the hand of it.

[iceteeman]

Thanks for the info.