Free Geography Tools

Apropos of the previous post on Garmin maps from Open Street Map (OSM) data, there’s a listing of Garmin mapsets for a limited number of countries at the OSM wiki site. Some come with installers, others are .img files that you will need to install into MapSource using MapSet Toolkit. Included are a set of Garmin map tiles for the entire world from computer:teddy, which you could use to create a Garmin mapset for any country. But the process is a bit time-consuming, and the instructions on the web page are in German; if you don’t read German, you may be better off with the CloudMade maps.

HT to Rich Owings of GPS Tracklog.

Just found out about this feature recently: if you enter a location into the search box in Google Maps, you can download the result as a waypoint directly to some GPS systems, including Garmin and TomTom. After you get a search result in Google Maps, click on the “Send” link in the upper left:

You’ll get a box that comes up with the default to email the map link, but there are additional links for Car and GPS:

Click on GPS, and choose your brand: Garmin, Pioneer or TomTom:

Click on Send, and you’ll be directed to a page that lets you download it to your GPS:

To use this feature, you’ll need to have the right software installed on your computer to use it with your GPS:

• Garmin communicator plugin
• Tom Tom Home
• Pioneer Feed

Clicking on the Car option brings up the option to send the waypoint to a BMW or Mercedes-Benz built-in GPS if you have a BMW Assist or Mercedes Tele-Aid account.

- ShonkyMaps has topographic maps (based on 1:250K data), with roads, for Australia

- “Peter Pan” writes about free Garmin road maps for Malaysia and Singapore; you can also find maps for Malaysia, Singapore and Borneo at MalsingMaps.com.

- Garmin-compatible 2-meter resolution topo maps for Israel, with topo contours and bike trails/roads. Instructions on the web page walk you through installing the maps into MapSource.

An earlier post covered MapUpload, a free program for uploading .img files to a Garmin GPS; another option for this operation is IMG2GPS. This is actually a limited front-end to the command-line program SendMap (included in the IMG2GPS install package), but it supports most of SendMap’s upload features you would normally use.

You don’t select .img files for loading into the selection list individually; instead, you specify a folder using the “Load Folder” button, and all .img files in that folder are automatically added to the list. Selecting another folder will add those .img files, while not erasing the ones already there. To erase all the files in the list, click the “Clear” button at the bottom; this clears all the files in the list, regardless of whether they’re selected using the check box. You can save a list of selected files with the “Save” button, and load that list with the “Load” button; it also supports the .gdb format created by MapSource. Finally, you can search through the list of files for a text string in either the filename or the map name using the “Search” function at the top.

To upload one or map files to your GPS, select them with the check box, make sure your GPS unit is turned on, and click “Upload to GPS”. In “Auto” mode, the program should automatically detect a connected GPS, running through all the options (USB and all COM ports). If the program has difficulty recognizing that you have a GPS connected, you can use the “Test Connection” function at the top to help diagnose the problem; you can also manually specify the I/O port your GPS is hooked up to. You can also set a mapset name label for all the maps being uploaded by checking the box below, and entering the desired label.

Unlike MapUpload, IMG2GPS supports uploading to a data card (like a microSD card) in a card reader, which can be faster if the card reader is USB 2.0 (most Garmin GPS units are USB 1.1). Oddly, it doesn’t seem that you can do it directly using the “Folder/Card” option for I/O Port. Instead, you have to combine all of the selected maps into a single “gmapsupp.img” file, and then upload that file to the “Garmin” folder on the data card (see this post for more info on the “gmapsupp.img” file). To do this, check the box at the bottom marked “Create File instead of Upload”; this will change the button below to “Create File”. Press the button, and then select the “Garmin” folder on the data card to save the “gmapsupp.img” file in (create the folder if it’s not already there). When you put the card back into the GPS, the “gmapsupp.img” file will be recognized and read as a map file.

There’s another front-end for Sendmap called GPS Send Map, but it’s obsolete, doesn’t appear to be in development anymore, and doesn’t have the features that IMG2GPS  has.