The US Government’s National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has placed online 21,000 maps, downloadable in both JPG and MRSID high-resolution formats (see this post for several free MRSID viewers and converters). The maps are mainly historical nautical maps dating from 1655 to 2001, but there are also a fair number of Civil War battlefield maps, many of them contemporary with the war, and not all of them nautical in nature.
Archive for February, 2008 Page 2 of 3
In the comments to a previous post, someone asked if there were any place where you could find a legend for Garmin GPS unit waypoint icons. I pointed him to this Garmin page, which has a partial legend for Garmin MapSource icons, but it turns out that MapSource icons don’t always resemble the corresponding icons on a Garmin GPS unit.There’s no legend for Garmin GPS unit waypoint icons anywhere else that I could find, either on the Web or in Garmin’s own documentation. For future reference, I’ve put together the following tables of Garmin waypoint icons by category. This is how they’re displayed on my Garmin 60Cx, but they may well be different on other Garmin models. In parentheses below the label is the MapSource Symbol category which contains this icon. If your unit has different or additional icons, and you can send a copy of them to me, I’ll add them to this post.
As a supplement to my recent posts on creating custom waypoint icons for Garmin GPS units (1, 2, 3), I’ve put together a list of Garmin units that I believe, based on first-hand reports, and my interpretation of their manuals, support custom waypoint icons. It’s hard to say for sure, since Garmin doesn’t specifically mention custom waypoints in any any of their manuals; in fact, they seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to find out how to use this capability. So I can’t assure you with 100% certainty custom waypoint icon support for any models other than the GPSmap, Rino, and Astro models.
Currently-available models
| GPSmap 60Cx | GPSmap 60CSx | GPSmap 76Cx | GPSmap 76CSx |
| eTrex Venture Cx | eTrex Vista Cx | eTrex Legend Cx | eTrex Vista HCx |
| eTrex Legend HCx | Astro GPS | Rino 520 HCx | Rino 530HCx |
| eTrex Summit HC | eTrex Venture HC | Quest | Quest II |
Note: The new Garmin Colorado series (300, 400t, 400c, 400i) does *not* currently support custom waypoints; I know some people have flagged this to Garmin as an issue, and perhaps they’ll add it in future firmware updates. Given their lackadaisical support for this function, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
6/11/2010: Newer models in the Oregon series (the Oregon 450, Oregon 450T, Oregon 550 and Oregon 550T) do support custom waypoints, but in a different way than older Garmin models; see the Oregon wiki for more info. The new GPSMap 62 and 78 series support them as well.
Older models (no longer sold)
GPSmap 60C
GPSmap 60CS
GPSmap 76C
GPSmap 76CS
eTrex Legend C
eTrex Vista C
Rino 520/530
Note: Version 6.15.3 of MapSource accidentally dropped support for custom waypoint icons; version 6.15.4 puts it back. Make sure you have the most recent version.
The two previous posts in this series dealt with creating and uploading custom waypoint icons to supported Garmin GPS units. But while third-party software for handling GPX data (both upload and download) will download the waypoints, most (if not all) don’t support display of these custom waypoint icons. For that, you’ll have to use Garmin’s MapSource program (aka Trip and Waypoint Manager), and set up custom waypoint icon graphics so that MapSource can import and use them.
Note: Version 6.15.3 of MapSource accidentally dropped support for custom waypoint icons; version 6.15.4 puts it back. Make sure you have the most recent version.
In the first post of this series, I started describing the process of creating and uploading a custom waypoint icon to a Garmin mapping GPS unit; little of what follows will make sense unless you read that first. Today, the thrilling semi-conclusion!
Continue reading ‘Creating Custom Waypoint Icons For Garmin GPS Units II’
Note: Version 6.15.3 of MapSource accidentally dropped support for custom waypoint icons; version 6.15.4 puts it back. Make sure you have the most recent version.
Modern handheld Garmin GPS units with map displays come with an absurd number of icon choices to use when designating and displaying a waypoint. My Garmin 60Cx comes with:
- 18 Transportation
- 12 Markers
- 18 Civil
- 24 Outdoors
- 24 Marine
- 18 Navaids
- 24 Signs
- 24 Points of Interest
But if those aren’t enough for you, or a specific icon graphic you’d like to see isn’t included, it’s possible with many Garmin units (like my Garmin 60Cx) to create your own waypoint icons and upload them to your GPS unit. To find out if your unit supports Custom waypoint icons, create a waypoint, select the icon image, and see if “Custom” as a subcategory of waypoint icons, along with the others listed above:
Continue reading ‘Creating Custom Waypoint Icons For Garmin GPS Units I’
Yesterday, I posted about a NOAA site where you can download Raster Navigation Charts (RNC), maps of coastal and inland waterways. The charts are currently only available in BSB format, which many GIS programs can’t handle; I linked to a few free viewers that will let you view the maps, but not export them. They’re also only available in the Mercator NAD83 projection/datum. Peter Guth (the author of the terrain analysis GIS MicroDEM) let me know about a free utility available from NOAA called the Digital NOAA Nautical Chart Reprojector. It lets you re-project the BSB maps into one of 32 projections (e.g. geographic or UTM) and over 100 datums, then exports the chart in BSB, RAW or TIFF format with a world file; the latter virtually every GIS program and graphics editor can open. It looks like it was originally a command-line utility, since a DOS box pops up when you run the program, but it now comes with a GUI:
The Input File and Output File dialog windows are a bit clumsy to use until you figure them out, but for the input file, you’re looking for the .kap file that came with the zip file you downloaded from the NOAA mapsite. Choose the desired output parameters at right, including choice of output file format (TIFF here), projection (UTM) and datum (WGS_84). The GUI doesn’t set the UTM zone automatically, but you’ll see the West and East Bounds for the map in the Input Info window at left, and can use those as a guide for setting the correct UTM zone with the Projection Parameters dropdown at right. In this case, clicking “Run” will create the TIF file specified as the output file, along with its worldfile. The file extension for that worldfile will be .tifw; if your GIS program doesn’t accept that, try changing it to the more-commonly seen .tfw extension.
NOAA also has a free extension called Chart Viewer that lets you open BSB charts natively in ESRI’s ArcView and ArcGIS, and Leica Geosystems’ Imagine.
NOAA’s Office Of Coast Survey has downloadable copies of regularly-updated RNCs (Raster Navigation Charts). The updated charts are in BSB format, not supported by many GIS and graphic software programs, but there’s a list of links to free and demo software packages capable of displaying BSB files in georeferenced format (like Caris EasyView and GPSNavX). The site indicates that NOAA will issue GeoTiff versions of these charts at some unspecified point in the future, but those charts will not be as regularly updated as the BSB charts will. Selection is either by chart number or a graphical viewer (requires Java):
To choose a chart for downloading in the graphical viewer, click the “Selection Mode” button at the top, then click on the rectangle defining the chart area (clicking inside the rectangle does nothing). Click “Add To Cart” at left, which adds it to a list of charts to be downloaded. When you’re done selecting charts, click on “Place Order”, and follow the directions to get a zipped copy of the BSB chart (response time to the button-pushing may be slow):
Native map projection for the georeferencing is Mercator NAD83, in meters.
