Free Geography Tools

This is part 3 of my review of the Garmin 62s GPS; part 1 is here, and part 2 here. Today I’ll look at the Garmin 62s’s worst functionality – the way it handles waypoints and tracks. And I’ll sum up with my final thoughts and conclusions, both on the 62s, and on proprietary GPS units in general.

Waypoints

The ability to mark and save a location, or use a saved location for navigation, is an essential function for any handheld GPS unit. My older Garmin 60Cx does a great job at this, and using it as a model should have made the 62s comparable if not better. But Garmin made some bizarre choices with the 62s that make its waypoint functionality markedly inferior to the 60Cx.

Let’s start with the most basic function: marking a point. For both the 60Cx and 62s, you can do this just by pushing the “Mark” button from any screen. This is a huge improvement from the Oregon series, which often required you to exit your current screen and go to new one to mark your location. Here are the waypoint creation screens for both models:

Garmin 60Cx

Garmin 62s

Pretty much the same, except that the 60Cx has a button that lets you average the position measurement to improve accuracy, while the 62s doesn’t. Why not? There’s plenty of room, and there actually is a waypoint averaging function on the 62s. If you check the 62s manual, there’s no mention of this option anywhere on the page that describes creating a waypoint. But if you push the “Menu” button on the 62s ..

Bang – there’s the Averaging option, along with many other options, none of which are mentioned anywhere in the manual. How exactly is a normal user supposed to find this out? And why is the averaging option only accessible from this screen, instead of being a separate button? Basic functionality has been removed for no good reason that I can see.

You might notice that the waypoint icon in the 62s screen is an odd non-standard shape. The 62s, like the 60Cx before it, supports custom waypoint icons, up to 56 on the 62s versus 20 on the 60Cx; this is a really useful function for mapping. Want to use this function? Good luck …

• It’s not discussed anywhere in the manual; I found out about it at the Oregon wiki site
• Naming conventions for custom waypoint graphic files are different for the 62s than for the 60Cx
• The 62s requires BMP files in 24-bit color, and won’t accept the 8-bit color BMP files required by the 60Cx. So if you have both models, you have to maintain different graphic files for each unit. Bizarrely, though, Custom Garmin POI files with 8-bit graphics will work fine on the 62s, so it will support 8-bit graphics; Garmin just decided not to, presumably to make everyone’s life more difficult.

There’s another way to create waypoints on a 60Cx – use the cursor pad to move a cursor to a different location on the map, and press the Enter button; you’ll get a screen with options to Save that location as a waypoint, show it on the Map, or automatically generate a navigation reference waypoint and “Go” to it. Try something similar on the 62s, and only the “Go” option shows up:

Garmin 60Cx

Garmin 62s

Huh? So I can’t create waypoints on the map by selecting a map location on the 62s? Well, actually you can, though it’s not documented in the manual; pressing the “Menu” button on the unit brings up that option:

Except that if you push this button, unlike the 60Cx, you won’t get the option to set the waypoint name and icon, or other parameters; instead, it will create a waypoint automatically with a number ID, and the waypoint icon set to the last used icon. If you want to change the name, you’ll have to go to the waypoint manager, select that waypoint, and change its parameters manually. And on the 60Cx, if you move the cursor, the geographic coordinates at the cursor point show up, along with bearing and distance; on the 62s, you get no coordinates, only bearing and distance, even though there’s more than enough room to display them.

So, on to waypoint management. On the 60Cx, you push the “Find” button, then select “Waypoints” to get a list of waypoints on the unit. You can do the same thing on the 62s as well:

Garmin 60Cx

Garmin 62s

Now select a waypoint from that list:

Garmin 60Cx

Garmin 62s

On the 60Cx, you get a standard waypoint info/edit screen; pressing “Map” will show the waypoint on the map. On the 62s, though, you get the mapped waypoint, and only the option to “Go” to that point. WTF? If you try pressing the “Menu” button, to get more options, you do get some:

But they’re pretty useless. “Review Point” brings up an info screen, and that’s all (location blacked out on purpose):

Turns out that if you want to edit an existing waypoint on the 62s,or delete that single waypoint, you have to go to an entirely different screen, the Waypoint Manager, which is accessed via the main menu. Why you can’t access it through the Find => Waypoints option, the same way you can with the 60Cx, I have no idea – makes no sense.

Garmin 60Cx

Garmin 62s

On the 60Cx waypoint list, if you press the Menu button, you can screen waypoints by distance, name, the current map reference unit, or the icon symbol, the last of which is really convenient. And under the “Delete” option, you can choose to delete all the symbols, or just the ones with a specific icon symbol, handy for deleting temporary waypoints you don’t need anymore. On the 62s, for some bizarre reason, Garmin decided to leave most of this functionality out. The default is nearest waypoints, with Spell Search required for searching by name. And the only option for deleting waypoints is to delete all of them; no filtering by waypoint icon. This is a huge pain.

So is the 62s’s Waypoint Manager any better than Find => Waypoints for handling waypoints? Nope. First screen looks identical:

Select a waypoint, and you’ll finally get the option to edit a waypoint:

But where’s the option to Delete it, which shows up clearly in the 60Cx waypoint info screen? Once again, you have to press the Menu button to bring up that option.

This is actually mentioned in the manual (!), but all the other options listed above aren’t. And you can’t delete all waypoints with a common icon; you either have to delete all of them, or delete them one at a time on the unit. Awesome.

One final idiocy. If you select “Go” to navigate to a waypoint, there’s no “Stop Navigation” option available from the menu on the map page, as there is on the 60Cx. You have to press the “Find” button to stop navigation. But if you do that, go back to the map page, and press the menu button, you will see a “Resume Navigation” option. Help me out, Garmin – why can’t you “Stop Navigation” from the map page, but you can “Resume Navigation” from the map page?

Tracks

I was going to go through a similar look at the idiotic way that Garmin has implemented track management on the 62s, but after writing about the idiocies with waypoint management, I don’t really have the heart. But here are some bullet points:

• There are actually some real improvements with track data storage on the 62s compared to the older 60Cx. The 60Cx had a maximum track point capacity for all tracks of 10,000 points, and a maximum of 20 stored tracks, each with no more than 500 points. The 62s allows up to 200 named stored tracks, each with up to 10,000 points. And it will actively archive the active track, so that you can have every point permanently recorded, up to the free memory available.
• Unlike the 60Cx, tracks saved on the 62s include the date/timestamp for every point and the altitude.
• However, turning track recording on and off is a pain on the 62s. On the 60Cx, there was a simple page that let you turn tracking on, save the active track to memory, then turn tracking off and clear the active track. This made recording linear or areal features easy. On the 62s, you can turn tracking on in the Track Manager, but you have to dive back into the Setup menu to turn it back off. And you can clear the current track out, but that’s at the bottom of the options list, and easy to miss.
• Options for changing track color/name, reversing it, showing/hiding it on the map, displaying track length/area used to be centralized on a single screen on the 60Cx; now on the 62s you have to go to multiple screensfor the same options.
• Sometimes a saved track simply refuses to show up on the regular map display, even if you’ve specified that it show up on the map.

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

I guess I’ll start with a Pros/Cons list for the Garmin 62s.

Pros

• Solid hardware
• Excellent screen visibility in all conditions
• Improved interface
• Improved map styling for better visibility
• Support for raster imagery (super-awesome)
• Terrific digital compass

Cons

• Expensive
• Appallingly bad documentation
• WAAS performance slightly improved from Oregon 450t, but still pretty bad
• Limitations on size of Custom Maps raster imagery
• Incredibly lame waypoint and track management

If the Garmin 62s had come out three years ago as the first model with the new Garmin OS, I probably would have recommended it; the hardware is solid, and given my many positive experiences with past Garmin units, I would have anticipated that most of the negatives would quickly be fixed. But Garmin’s been releasing models with this new OS for over three years now, and the fact that these issues still exist gives one pause. If someone told me that I could only take one GPS unit out in the field with me, and I had to choose between my old trusty Garmin 60Cx and my newer 62s, the choice would be very easy. If I absolutely had to have aerial imagery in the field, the 62s would be my choice by default, since the 60Cx doesn’t really do aerial imagery well. But in every other situation, I’d take the 60Cx, hands down. If I’m recording position location, or navigating in the field, I don’t feel like wrestling with my GPS unit’s idiosyncrasies, and that’s what I’d be doing with the 62s.

Looks like there’s a lot of people that apparently feel the same way; at Amazon.com, the Garmin 60CSx (same as the 60Cx but with a compass and altimeter) is the top-selling handheld GPS with a color display, five years after it was first introduced. And there are two other older Garmin GPS units (the eTrex Venture HC and eTrex Vista HCx), and the Magellan Explorist GC, on the bestseller list before you get to the top-selling new Garmin model – the Garmin 62s. When five-year-old technology outsells a newer model from the same company, you know it has issues. I think an open OS like Android is the future for portable navigation systems of all kinds, and that proprietary GPS OSes are going to have a tough time competing. If a manufacturer is going to stick with its own proprietary OS on expensive GPS units, it’s going to have to supply a lot of added value with that unit. Frankly, I just don’t see that with the newer Garmin models, including this one. There’s finally been a ruggedized Android phone announced, the Casio Commando, and I expect more models will be along soon; if Garmin doesn’t get its act together quickly, it’s not going to be a major force in this market in a few years.

A little over a year ago, I posted my wish list of features for a GPS that would be useful for navigating and recording information for field work. A few months later, I reviewed the Garmin Oregon 450t, and while there were things I liked about it, overall I found it less than ideal for that purpose. About half-a-year ago, I posted on why I thought that Android represented  the future of handheld GPS units, over those with custom proprietary interfaces. Since then, I’ve been hoping that a rugged Android-based GPS would come out.

But late last year, I needed a rugged handheld GPS receiver capable of displaying aerial imagery and raster topographic maps. While my Android phone has that basic functionality I needed, it wasn’t rugged enough to handle the abuse it was likely to see,and no rugged Android GPS units had yet come out. I’d seen a number of reviews of the new Garmin 62 series of handheld GPS units, which supposedly address some of the shortcomings of models in the Colorado, Oregon, and Dakota series. I’ve been a Garmin fanboy for over 10 years now, love my Garmin 60Cx (same as the bestselling Garmin 60CSx minus the compass and altimeter), and am deeply immersed in the Garmin ecosystem. So, I decided to stick with Garmin and pick up a Garmin 62s, instead of switching to a model from deLorme or Magellan. Having had it for three months now,I’m now ready to pass judgment on it, both in comparison with my tried and trusted 60Cx, and with the potential I see in Android models.

Available Models

The Garmin 62 series currently comes in three different models. The fundamental GPS capabilities are the same on all three, but there are some distinctions:

Garmin 62 – $305 at Amazon.com – The base model; has 1.7 GB of built-in memory, which can’t be expanded. I dismissed this model because of the lack of memory expandability, but turns out that 1.7 GB is more than adequate for most applications, and I could have easily lived with it.

Garmin 62s – $390 at Amazon.com – Adds a digital magnetic compass, barometer, wireless ANT radio, also 1.7 GB of memory, and you can expand the memory capacity with microSD cards up to an additional 16 GB. This is the model I got.

Garmin 62st – $470 at Amazon.com – Like the 62s, but has the Garmin Topo 2008 mapset for the entire US installed (equivalent to 1:100K USGS topos); this leaves you with only 400 MB of free base memory, but you can expand that using microSD cards. I don’t recommend this model under any circumstances; you can get better topo maps for free from the GPS File Depot site, and upload only those that you plan to use. Even if you want the Garmin Topo 2008 maps, you can get them in DVD format for about $70, which makes the combined total for the 62s and topo mapset less than the 62st.

I have to say, the prices of high-end handheld GPS units are getting to be very unreasonable. For $400, you could buy two netbooks, one semi-decent laptop, or an Android tablet; what is is about these units that makes them that expensive, comparatively? In other areas of consumer electronics, prices have plunged dramatically over the years, while the feature set has expanded greatly; not so with Garmin’s GPS models.

Note: The Garmin 78 series has the same basic electronics as the 62 series, but is designed for marine use, so they float and have map options more appropriate for marine navigation.

Hardware

Basic unit

After 2.5 years of Garmin releasing model after model with touchscreen interfaces and patch antennas, with limited commercial and technical success, the 62s is a return to the classic front-panel pushbutton and helical antenna design made famous by the 60 series. In fact, from a distance you’d have a tough time telling them apart:

Left: Garmin 60Cx; Right: Garmin 62s

But if you hold them in your hand, you can quickly see and feel the differences, most of which are in the 62s’s favor:

• The 62s is thicker in the upper part, but tapers down to thinner at the bottom, which makes it easier to hold.
• The buttons and cursor pad have been enlarged and angled on the 62s, which makes them easier to identify by touch, and easier to use, especially the cursor pad.
• Most of the 62s is covered by a rubberized coating, which makes your grip more secure, especially when wet. Both models are IPX7 water-resistant. One downside of this is that it moves the lanyard attachment loop to the bottom of the unit, less convenient than the side loop on the 60Cx.
• 62s is about a half-ounce heavier than the 60Cx (8 oz with batteries vs. 7.5 oz), but that’s barely noticeable.

Overall, I’d call the 62s a big step up ergonomically from the 60Cx (which was pretty good to begin with). And I’m glad that Garmin finally realized that touchscreens aren’t always the best solution for everyone. Early units apparently had a “creaking” problem, where they would make noises when you pushed the on/off button; my model was apparently a later production run, as I didn’t hear that problem.

Screen display

One of the biggest problems I had with the Oregon 450t was screen visibility in sunlight; while not horrible, making out map details could be a chore, even with the high 240 x 400 pixel resolution screen. The 60Cx’s 160 x 240 256-color transflective screen had lower resolution and color depth, but you could actually use it outdoors, which is a good thing. I’m happy to say that the 62s’s 65K-color transflective 160 x 240  display is a huge improvement over the Oregon 450t. I’d go so far as to call it equal, maybe even slightly superior, to the screen on the 60Cx. As an added bonus, the LED backlight is much brighter on the 62s than the 60Cx (or Oregon 450t), which helps with visibility in shaded or dark conditions. Full props to Garmin.

Having said that, though, Garmin’s use of the screen space and capability leaves something to be desired. For example, some Garmin mapsets support shaded terrain display on maps, and this is set as the default view. Looks great in a screenshot, but in daylight use it renders some maps virtually unreadable. Fortunately, you can turn this off, and I recommend that as one of your first things you do with a new unit. A bigger problem is that the 62s is running an OS originally designed for use on units with higher screen resolution, and usually a larger screen size as well. When it runs on the 62s, with a smaller screen and lower resolution, there can be issues. Text rendering, especially for small fonts, can show aliasing issues. And there’s a whole lot of extraneous detail on many screens that uses up valuable screen real estate. Compare these two satellite screens from the 60Cx and the 62s:

Garmin 60Cx

Garmin 62s

The first time I made this comparison, I had to pull out my ruler to check the screen sizes of the two; it almost seemed as though the 62s had a smaller screen. Turns out that they both have the same screen size, it’s just all that extra “box framing” on the 62s, which uses up so much screen space that they had to reduce the actual data display size; this problem crops up over and over again on the 62s. On the Oregon series, with a larger screen and higher pixel pitch, this isn’t an issue, but for models with smaller screens and lower resolutions, I think Garmin needs to customize the screen displays a bit better. I also have to say that I find the fonts on the 60Cx superior as well; they look better, and are more easily readable.

Battery life

Not quite as good on the 62s as the 60Cx, but still solid; I got 15-20 hours on hybrid NiMH rechargeables, about 3 hours less than on the 60Cx. The improved screen visibility helps with this, as you don’t need to use the backlight as often. The 62s comes with a “Battery Save” mode that supposedly turns the screen off after a few minutes while leaving the GPS receiver on; touching any key brings the screen back. I tried using this feature, but couldn’t get it to work for me.

GPS Reception

Overall, pretty good on the Garmin 62s, but my subjective opinion is that the 60Cx picks up more satellites more quickly, and in tougher conditions (e.g. indoors). WAAS performance on the 62s is a big step up from the Oregon 450t, but still isn’t perfect; both the 62s and Oregon use the same Cartesio chipset, and Garmin has been struggling for almost three years now to fix WAAS reception problems with that chipset. There are three WAAS satellites high in the sky where I live, and sometimes the 62s will cycle through signals from all three without locking in; other times, it will lock in immediately on a signal, and not drop it the way the Oregon 450t would. My 60Cx never has a problem getting a WAAS signal, even indoors; I find it difficult to understand why a newer model is so inferior in performance. Once a WAAS signal was acquired, the positions of both the 60Cx and 62s were identical to within a meter or two.

4/9/2011: After a week in the field, I’m far more disappointed and disgusted with WAAS on the 62s. I was out in an open area, no topography to speak of, and all three WAAS satellites fully visible, and more often than not the 62s couldn’t pick up a single WAAS satellite. That’s just pathetic.

Some people have noted issues with distance tracking at low speeds using the 62s’s built-in odometer; I tried to check that, but discovered that the odometer settings was frozen and couldn’t be reset. I am using the latest beta version of the firmware, so that might be responsible for this issue. Given that I’ve owned it for 3 months and only discovered this today, it tells you how often I use that feature; but if it’s important to you., you probably should check it immediately after buying the unit, and/or avoid beta firmware.

Compass

One thing I really did like on the Oregon 450t was the three-axis compass, and the 62s doesn’t disappoint on this score; these digital compasses on the newer Garmin models are the best I’ve ever used. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the performance or utility of the compass on the Garmin 60CSx, but the 62s compass has changed my mind. A digital compass lets you rotate the map to match the direction you’re pointing, or rotates the map location cursor to point in your direction when you’re standing still. Garmin’s new Sight N Go feature is also a terrific use of the compass; if you need to move in the same compass direction over a long distance, just point your GPS in the desired direction, push a button, and the Garmin will guide you to maintain that direction.

Wireless

The 62s and 62st come with built-in ANT low-power wireless capability; you can use it to send waypoints to another compatible unit, interface with heartbeat/cadence sensors, and receive signals from Garmin Chirp beacons. I didn’t experiment with this since I didn’t have any compatible equipment, but naturally I still have an opinion. I think having wireless is a good idea, but I have to wonder why Garmin chose the ANT standard instead of the more common Bluetooth standard. Bluetooth would have opened up the ability to wirelessly communicate position with computers and phones, which would have been incredibly useful.

Documentation

The 62s only comes with a quick start manual, no full guide. I understand this; paper manuals are expensive, and can’t be kept up to date the same way electronic documentation can. So I went to the Garmin website and downloaded the PDF of the latest manual. To call it bad is to praise it; it’s horrible, execrable, totally inadequate. These GPS handheld units do not have intuitive interfaces and obvious functionality; they absolutely need a full, complete manual that clearly documents all their features. The Garmin manual is hopelessly insufficient for that task; it barely covers the basic functionality adequately, much less the full feature set. This is a very expensive consumer hardware product, and for it to have only this lame excuse for a manual as the only official documentation is a disgrace. Garmin should first be ashamed of themselves, and then fix this problem.

I’ll bring up several examples of critical/important features that aren’t in the manual further on, but let me just highlight one an egregious example that affected me. If you go to the section in the manual that talks about the USB computer interface, you get this:

Looks like this unit supports the serial NMEA interface for position data that many programs require, right? Except …

• You need a special USB to DB9 cable, or a custom cable to hardwire a connection; that’s an extra $20. Not mentioned in the manual
• You also need a serial port to hook the cable up to; most computers these days don’t have one, so you’ll need to buy a USB-to-serial adapter for an extra $30. Not mentioned.
• If you set the Garmin to any of the interfaces listed above, and connect a USB cable, the unit will automatically go into Mass Storage mode; there’s no obvious way to keep the unit in standard GPS mode while externally powering it from a USB cable.
• The manual doesn’t list or describe any option to transmit GPS position data from the unit to a computer, for use with compatible programs like Google Earth that take the Garmin USB connection format.
• But if you go to the actual unit screen described by the manual, you discover an additional interface option not mentioned in the manual called Garmin Spanner…

Using this option lets you power the unit off a USB cable connection, and also transmits position information to a computer via the standard Garmin USB protocol. This isn’t mentioned anywhere in the manual!

• Furthermore, Garmin has a program called Spanner, which converts the standard Garmin USB protocol to the serial NMEA protocol that many programs require; it even lets you split the signal into multiple virtual NMEA connections so that you can use it with multiple programs at the same time. I assume this is why Garmin labeled this connection as “Spanner”. The problem is, the Spanner software only works with Windows XP; Garmin has specifically stated that it will not update it to work with Vista or Windows 7. This is retarded!

Magellan did it right with the Triton series; if you set those units to NMEA and connected them to a computer with the USB cable, a virtual serial port was created through which the unit could send data to programs that require NMEA. Why Garmin couldn’t figure out how to do that, I have no idea.

While some might consider this an obscure technical detail,  there are dozens of important 62s features that get no mention at all in the manual (I’ll highlight a few later on). The only place I know of to learn of many of them is the Oregon Wiki site; while not all Oregon features have a counterpart in the 62s, many do, and this wiki does a good job at explaining many of them.

Tomorrow: The OS interface and maps on the 62s –  the good and the not-so-good.

Joel emails to announce that his GPX2IMG program is finally ready for official release. GPX2IMG imports standard GPX data files (tracks and waypoints), lets you edit them, converts them to IMG Garmin-compatible format, and even installs the map file into MapSource or BaseCamp for easy upload to your Garmin GPS unit. The program isn’t fully free; regular price is $20 (available for $13 until 9/23/10). However, the demo version will let you import up to two GPX files, edit them, convert them to .img format with a watermark, and even install them in MapSource; the registered version removes the file limit and watermark.

Interface is clean and simple; load in your files and view the data in a map window. GPX2IMG lets you select waypoints and tracks, edit their names and other info, and set their appearance to standard Garmin point/line types:

You can’t modify the actual track point data itself, nor can you move a waypoint/POI. You can create a waypoint by double-clicking the map area, but the inability to set the specific latitude/longitude of  that waypoint is a drawback. You can use custom TYP files to create your own linestyles; instructions are in the comprehensive help file (and there are videos on the GPX2IMG website).

Once you’re done with adding/editing data, set the desired parameters in the Preferences window:

Then click on the “Convert Checked Files” button to start the process. In the unregistered version, you’ll have to wait 15 seconds. GPX2IMG will compile the GPX data into a .img file, and then install it for use in MapSource or BaseCamp for uploading to your Garmin:

A few minor issues:

• A waypoint file of mine didn’t import successfully; I’ve passed it on to the author, and I assume that issue will get fixed shortly.
• You can only have one GPX dataset created by GPX2IMG loaded into MapSource/BaseCamp at a time; I would hope this will change, as that really is a major drawback.
• You can’t uninstall the mapset from within the GPX2IMG program; you can use a separate program like MapSet Toolkit to do this, but I’d like to see that option directly within GPX2IMG.

You can create your own Garmin map from GPX files using fully-free tools; see my many-part series on Tools For Custom Garmin Vector Maps. Doing it yourself is more complicated, takes longer, and there’s a steep learning curve, but you’ll have more flexibility in the final results. But if you want to bypass those complexities, and just quickly generate simple Garmin map files from your own data, GPX2IMG works and is easy to use. Even the limited demo version has enough utility to make it worthwhile.

Note: See comments section for Joel’s info on updates/fixes.

Took a while, but this is the final installment of my epic 18-part series on free tools for making custom Garmin vector maps. I covered the free map compiler mkgmap in part 13, which converts OpenStreetMap data files (.osm) and Polish map files (.mp) to Garmin’s binary .img format. It’s command-line only, which can make it a pain to use. I wrote a simple Windows GUI for it a while back, but it wasn’t very good:

• It required the compiler to be in the same directory as the data file.
• It only worked for .osm files, not .mp files.
• It assigned every compiled map the same default Map ID number (63240001.img), which meant that you could only use one compiled map at a time without having map conflicts.
• It didn’t allow use of any of mkgmap’s more advanced options.

I’ve finally gotten around to fixing some of these issues, and now have a newer version of the GUI available; download it here (it comes with a copy of the mkgmap compiler), and unzip it into the folder of your choice. You’ll need to have Java 1.6 installed on your system; which you can check at the Java website. Run the executable:

Use the button at upper-right to select the .osm or .mp file you want to compile. Hold the mouse cursor over each of the variable options to see pop-up help text describing their use, derived from mkgmap’s original documentation. The most important variables in the General Options section are:

• Map ID Number, which should be a unique integer value between 65536 and 99999999 to avoid conflicts with other maps
• Description, which identifies the mapset in the GPS unit

The other General options don’t seem to make that much of a difference.

Optimization options include Reduce Point Density with the Douglas-Peuckel algorithm to shrink the map size and speed up display; default is 2.6, and higher values simplify even more (mkgmap’s author recommends 10 as a good value). Turning Merge Lines on attempts to merge features together to simplify a map; haven’t noticed it making that much of a difference. For miscellaneous options, Draw Priority determines in what order vector maps are drawn; higher values mean the map is drawn later, on top of maps with lower values, obscuring those maps completely. Transparent maps have the higher priority of all, but you can see all parts of the vector map below them that aren’t obscured by the features in the transparent map (like a clear overlay on top of another map).

Once the options are set, pressing the “Compile” button creates a batch file called “compile.bat” that is then executed to compile the map code into the binary .img Garmin format; you should find the resulting file in the same directory as the map code file. Opening the “compile.bat” file in a text editor will show you the command line usage of mkgmap, and you can modify it there for further use if you like. You’ll find the compiled map in the same directory as the original map code file, with a filename that’s the same as the Map ID Number, and the file extension “.img”. See other posts in this series for info on how to upload this file to your Garmin GPS unit.

“Reset” clears out the option values, “Help” takes you to this blog post, and “Exit” does what you’d expect.

This isn’t the full set of options supported by mkgmap; I’ve left out all of the routing options, and a bunch of others associated with creating full mapsets. I may wind up slowly adding some of those options on in the future, but this version should be good enough for basic map compilation. As usual, use at your own discretion/peril, and report any bugs to me.