Hi
It probably has been asked a thousand times but I have searched high and low and wound up as confused as hell, which is a standard OSM experience!!!
I am a mad keen OSM mapper with the name Ent. My interests are bushwalking or depending on your country, hiking, trekking maps. I have used OSM extensively in Polatch 1 and 2 and now finally JOSM to create the mapping data in OSM. I have used OSM Australia website to download the Garmin .IMG files and successfully installed them directly on my Garmin 62S, Rino 650 and even Fenix watch and regularly use them. I am a happy OSM mapper but would like to go further. I like the routable files as they are great given the huge issue Garmin maps have for bushwalkers. Standard maps are vehicle based and so fade out highway=path at low zoom levels and useless for displaying mountains and huts/campsite at any sensible zoom level. If your walk in the wilderness you will understand that major highways do not exist and you can be thirty kilometres away from a hut or campsite using mountains twenty kilometres away to get your bearings. Also tags like natural=scree or natural=fell are not rendered on the Garmin IMG files that I have been using. The walkers will amongst you will understand how important this information is. I have download Contours Australia 5m and use this on the 62S and the Rino 650 with OSM data overlaid. But this does not give contour shading and frankly confuses people that I am trying to interest into OSM mapping. I have set up many Garmins but every user has complained that paths disappear and they can not see the mountains without zooming into ridiculous levels. Plus on more than a few Garmins the searchable POI tables appear broken.
I found links to OSM Composer and thought that this would do the job but then in true OSM style it referred me to half a dozen things that need to be installed like mkgmap with instructions that could best be described as ancient geek. Yes I have installed Java and got JOSM up and running but that was a nightmare as you got lost in what version of Java and half a dozen other issues. Gave up in frustration trying to install Scanaerial even though that would be an immense help getting tarns mapped. I am more than happy to help and and write install instructions that are better than, “install Java, install A, install B and then use the application”. I use Windows and though once a Unix command line guy can not fathom the half Windows and half command line approach that many applications use. If I click on a exe file up flashes a command line response and then it drops out. So I am forced to type cmd and then navigate a directory structure longer than the Nile in Windows to get to the directory. Also no idea what is a sensible amount of data to download and manipulate. I am only interested in the state of Tasmanian in Australia at the moment but for the life of me can not get the raw data from OSM downloaded as half the world wants me to take all Australia and the other half only allows me a few square kilometres.
So what I am after is simple instructions how to set up and use a suite of applications to generate Garmin *.IMG files that have contours and my preferred zoom levels that can render on the Garmin huts, campsites, scree and fell. Please do not refer me to sites like OpenMTB as that site is for MTB, not walking, and nothing annoys me more than a site that claims to be an organization asking for donations when in fact it is a commercial business. No problem if the developer wants to make money but drop the “donation” hogwash. Plus their maps are useless for walking and barely know where Australia is.
I access the internet via mobile phone so prefer small data sizes to frequently update my Garmin. On OSM Tasmania routable Garmin file generated by OSM Australia is 5MB which is brilliant. Once I get the maps working I would like to have a site like OSM Australia make them freely available to fellow walkers so I can encourage more people to map as they can see the result of their hard work. OSM is not much help if all it has is blank spaces. And as we all know many hands make light work.
Any way sorry for more a rant than a question but I on and off for six months have been hunting for a way to do the above and hit countless dead ends. My operating system is Windows Home Premium 64. Please, please someone help me.
Cheers Brett (Ent)