Can A Magellan Meridian Do This?

[+user13371]

Would it be possible with any version of MapSend to make a complete set of maps of the United States and put them on CD? I was thinking this would be ideal for me as a Mac user: once I was done with MapSend I'd never have to load it (or Virtual PC) again. I could change maps just by copying a pre-built map file from CD to memory card.

 

How large can individual region files be? How many regions would it take to completely cover the US, and how long would it take to compile them? Has anyone else done this?

 

I've tried to glean some of this from Robert Lipe's excellent info & review site, but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details.

 

And being completely in the dark about Garmin models, is there any comparable Garmin model that stores maps on non-proprietary memory cards?

[+Stunod]

Would it be possible with any version of MapSend to make a complete set of maps of the United States and put them on CD?

Yes, you can make regions and save them to a hard drive or CD. Then use a card reader/writer to upload them to the SD card as needed.

How large can individual region files be?  How many regions would it take to completely cover the US, and how long would it take to compile them?  Has anyone else done this?

Not sure...hopefully someone else can fill in the details.

[robertlipe]

Kinda sorta. The excuses differ somewhat depending on which strain of Mapsend you have, but you could reach your basic goal if you tried hard enough. Region size, number of regions per file, and so on vary from version to version. For example, DirectRoute will only let you have one region up to 64MB per file and you can't autoroute between files. The others will let you have four 16K regions per file. Both have undocumented/unsupported knobs you can turn, but the "can't autoroute beween regions" limit remains.

 

Spend an afternoon with Mapsend precooking maps and choosing the "store to disk" option. Reach behind Mapsends back and copy them off to your network or CD or whatever. Those files are ready to be squirted right to the SD card.

 

With those newfangled 1GB cards falling in price, a suitably determined cacher could probably come pretty darned close to getting the entire US on one card. (I doubt DR maps would fit with all the routing and POI's turned on.)

 

Interestingly, this same desire is what inspired my 'magxfer' program from my 330 days; I wanted to precook a small handful of maps and flip them in and out of my 330 serially from my UNIXWare system. (You _don't_ want to do the whole coutnry that way...)

[+graldrich]

Mapsend Topo,To load the whole country is about 650MB,you could load the country on a 1gigabyte SD card!

[+user13371]

... Spend an afternoon with Mapsend precooking maps and choosing the "store to disk" option.    Reach behind Mapsends back and copy them off to your network or CD or whatever.  Those files are ready to be squirted right to the SD card.

 

With those newfangled 1GB cards falling in price, a suitably determined cacher could probably come pretty darned close to getting the entire US on one card.  (I doubt DR maps would fit with all the routing and POI's turned on.)

...and I just happen to have a 1 gig SD card

 

Let's say I'm using MapSend Topo and want to build a complete U.S. map set. Any rough idea if it would really be an "afternoon" or a much longer project? And any "better than rough" idea how big the final map set would be?

 

I've been playing with Lowrance's MapCreate 6.2 US, and trying to decide if my new iFinder H2O can really replace my Meridian Gold. With MC 6.2, I've already figured out it will take about 6-7 hours (on my very slow mac/VPC setup) to produce a complete set of maps that will be just over 1 gig. Since MC 6.2 doesn't have MapSend's size limit on regions, I only need to make 6 region files (they'd be 160-190 meg each). On any given day I could have 4 or 5 of those loaded - "plenty darned close" as you say to the entire US - and map swaps would be quite infrequent And it still leaves plenty of room for other user data,

 

On that basis, how do you think MapSend Topo (or Streets & Destinations) would compare? Not interested in DirectRoute at this point.

Edited September 20, 2004 by lee_rimar

[robertlipe]

Let's say I'm using MapSend Topo and want to build a complete U.S. map set.  Any rough idea if it would really be an "afternoon" or a much longer project?  And any "better than rough" idea how big the final map set would be?

Given a suitably manly computer and a bit of planning, I'd bet you could do it in an afternoon of computer time. But you wouldn't be having fun. Planning time would be the bigger problem.

 

In my notes, I have it that the continental US as one honkin' huge region (which will NOT work and would drive you crazy if it did) in Topo takes:

 

558799KB "raw"

580155KB with POIs

629802KB with Topo lines

651159KB with both.

 

The head-scratcher would be to figure out how to divide this up into 16MB hunks that make sense on your unit. Rectangular states are a minority in this country.

[+user13371]

... The head-scratcher would be to figure out how to divide this up into 16MB hunks that make sense on your unit.  Rectangular states are a minority in this country.

That was my puzzle with Lowrance's MapCreate as well. While MC doesn't have a hard limit on region size, there are practical considerations of memory requirement and build time. 200M is about the upper limit on my Mac/VPC setup. And though you CAN describe non-rerctangular map shapes, it's a lot of fiddling work; hard to minimize overlap while not missing any areas.

 

I gave up on making regions for each state because of the fiddling bits, and looked at MC's map border files. They're saved as simple text; mostly just mercator meter coords for the vertices of each polygon you describe. So I wrote drew a big rect around the 48 states, noted the coords, and then wrote my own defs dividing the US into 60 regions (10 blocks horizontal, 6 vertical). I didn't build them, but used MC's "estimate size" function to see how big each one would be. Then I regrouped everything into six rectangular regions (Northwest, West, Southwest, Central, Northeast, Northwest) based on a max target size of 200M.

 

Could you do the same thing with MapSend, generate the region definition files in a grid with some tool outside of the MapSend program? Even if you ended up with 60 or 100 files, you could name them based on your grid definitions, and not worry about states lines, etc...

[robertlipe]

That was my puzzle with Lowrance's MapCreate as well.  While MC doesn't have a hard limit on region size, there are practical considerations of memory requirement and build time.

There are probably limits in the handheld, too.

Could you do the same thing with MapSend, generate the region definition files in a grid with some tool outside of the MapSend program?  Even if you ended up with 60 or 100 files, you could name them based on your grid definitions, and not worry about states lines, etc...

Yes, you could certainly do them based on lattitude multiples or such.

 

If you're navigator enough to know "gee, it's time to change my active detail map to N35W90" while you're driving to Memphis, you probably don't need a GPS anyway.

 

I tend to clump them by states and even that isn't totally satisfying. In short, this whole region thing of Magellans really starts to fall down when you scale it to hundreds of megabytes. It made some sense on the 330.

 

Do you really need the entire country in your handheld?

[vagabond]

You can enlarge your regions from 16 meg to 32 or 64. I tried 64 megs but it took to long to load and it seemed a little buggy, so I settled on 32 meg works great for me.

Here's how

 

click on start

click on my computer

click on local disk (C:)

click on program files

click on magellan

click on mapsend topo (if thats your mapping program)

click on mapsend.ini

scroll down to conv_memory_size= if it shows 16 something you can change it to 32768

then close everything

 

that will give you 32 meg regions.

It shows how to do it in the yahoo magellan group. Hope this helps.

[+user13371]

There are probably limits in the handheld, too.

Only issue I've noticed so far (with a couple of 180 meg regions on the IFinder H2O) is that it does takes a few seconds longer to show the opening screen when it powers up. Doesn't seem to make any difference after that, it just works fine.

 

If you're navigator enough to know "gee, it's time to change my active detail map to N35W90" while you're driving to Memphis, you probably don't need a GPS anyway.

Good point. Of course, on the iFinder you don't have to change the active detail map the way you do on the Merdian; everything on the card is active all the time. It's more a matter of swapping files when the need arises.

 

In my original 6x10 layout of regions, I was figuring on a simpler coordinate system of A0 through F9, and maybe keeping a printed map/cheat sheet with the CDs for when I did have to change regions. But when I figured out I could build just six regions, I laid them out like this:

 

 

... it's simple enough that I don't need the cheat sheet. And since I can have 4 or 5 regions loaded at one time, I only have to be navigator enough to know "I'm going to San Antonio next week, better load the Southwest map and dump one I'm not using.

 

Of course, this happens more often than when I travel - I use this same card in my PDA and my camera. It gets wiped and reloaded a lot - if it was multipurpose I couldn't rationalize the expense.

 

Do you really need the entire country in your handheld?

 

Gor blimey, no. I don't even need the GPS, it's just a convenience. And the more maps I can load (and less often I have to swap), the more convenient it is. Especially since running either Magellan or Lowrance map software on the Mac is such a pain. Get the job done once, save the complete set to CD, and never bother with it again.

Edited September 21, 2004 by lee_rimar

[+TotemLake]

Have you considered doing it by timezone?

[+user13371]

Have you considered doing it by timezone?

I suppose I could, but I'd kinda like the regions files to be similarly sized. From what I already saw in Lowrance MapCreate, Eastern and Central time zones probably be huge files, while Mountain time would be sparse and a much smaller file. I imagine the ratios would be similar with Magellan's MapSend.

 

Academically, the region sizes themselves give an interesting view of population density - if not population, them of land development or something

[+Z_Statman]

I just got topo but the detail of the terrain is not what I expected. I thought I would get a 'real topo' map, was I wrong or have I installed wrong?

 

Tks,

[+TotemLake]

The Mapsend Topo is not a very detailed map and it does lack features the other highend map programs have, but it is the only topo map you can load into a Magellan GPS. It is proprietary to the brand.

[+Z_Statman]

Thanks, TotemLake

[+E = Mc2]

  The others will let you have four 16K regions per file.

Huh? If I remember correctly, my older copy of Mapsend Topo -was- preset to a 32MB file size per region. Of course, this is easily fixed per vagabond's post.

 

Goodness! I'm long winded...

 

The major problem I've encountered with using larger map file sizes is that the larger the map, the slower the GPSr draws it. Near as I can tell, the receiver searches the entire map file (in my case, a 128MB map) every time it updates the map screen. When using large map files, it can take several seconds for your speed and map to update while you're driving down the road. Yuck...

 

32MB seems a reasonable limit for the map file size, since it covers a fairly large area, and still keeps the GPSr up to speed. It seems that it takes less time for the computer to do it's thing when processing them, too. Personally, I would simply create single 32MB or smaller maps (not regions, maps) and name them accordingly (by State or State pairs) works for me. It takes just a couple of button pushes to change maps on the card, and as far as I know, there is no preset limit to the number of map files you can store and access.

 

On further reading of the OP, YES you can create as many maps as you want and store them on your HDD or CD-Rom to upload to the card at a later date. You must remember to rename the map files when transferring them from Mapsend's 'Export' folder, as Mapsend uses the same file name (MAPS.IMG) each time it creates a new map, thus overwriting the old file.

 

How large can individual region files be?

As large as you want them. However, I'd steer clear of anything larger than 32 MB for the reasons stated above.

 

How many regions would it take to completely cover the US...

-Roughly- 21 maps at 32MB each, if you include topo and POI's.

 

...and how long would it take to compile them?

How fast is your computer and how much memory does it have? I just ran a sample region of 32MB through my machine, and it took 10 minutes to convert the file. That's a Duron 1300 at factory clock, 512MB of SDram, and my son's fairly slow HDD (My RAID array needs attention). It would take me about five hours work to get the whole country divided up, processed, and saved to disc. Your actual mileage may vary.

 

Has anyone else done this?

More than likely. I'll do it for a small fee...

(Just kidding. It would be a large fee)

 

...is there any comparable Garmin model that stores maps on non-proprietary memory cards?

Not yet.

If they had SD expandability with no limit on region uploads on, say, the 60CS, I'd be going in hock to buy one today.