Worldwide routable Garmin maps: URL REMOVED

My favorite editor is the typviewer from https://sites.google.com/site/sherco40/home

Goto Polygons and edit type 050, in the drawing mode, switch the colour from black to white, click on the bucket and pour the white colour on the black field in the right panel.
If you delete it from the typ file, the map picks up the default Garmin colour, which is…green :wink:

Adding content for the Garmin - Experiences and advise

A couple of weeks ago I set out to add routes and interest points for a badly mapped area in Turkey with the intention to use the result on my Garmin. Unfortunately the next weekend’s update on this system did not run, so I could only test my contributions shortly before my return to Denmark.

By and large things did not work. Here are a couple of things that I learned, which I am now correcting and I want to share:

  1. It is necessary to join the roads correctly together. For navigation it is not enough that it looks nice on the map. The side road must end in a node on the main road (Potlatch shows double frame when success).

  2. For this purpose it is important to have enough nodes on the main road. Potlatch does not support addition of nodes in the middle of a road, only deletion/simplification, which may prove a pita (pain the the a… /back end) for the guy who travelled and logged and now wants to add the side road.

  3. For the same reason do not try to translate collected Garmin tracks directly into importable roads. The Garmin will almost for sure simplify the long and winding road. Use the Garmin track only to ensure where you were, but draw the exact road by hand based upon the blue line, but according to the Bing photo.

  4. The Garmin supports only some of the OSM interest point types. For example “my” area has almost solely Turkish and/or fish restaurants. Such do not appear in the searchable Garmin restaurant list, not even under “other”. Only when focusing (enough) in on the map the knife-and-fork-symbol will appear together with the name: Leave cuisine at “unset”. Similarly with attractions and all other types: Use only those that you have vverified up front to be known and searchable on the Garmin.

Apart from that (beginner’s learning) the end-to-end system is just great.

Some 90% of what you see here - roads, tracks, interest points and road names - were added by me when there during the last two weeks: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=36.2487&lon=32.3522&zoom=12&layers=M

Next time I arrive it will all be debugged and working.

A big hooray to and for Lambertus :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Good advice, it looks like you are doing a good job of mapping so far. Just to add a few things:

Yes, proper junctions is important for routing. You can check tools like Keepright, which can highlight these “almost junctions”, then fix any problems. http://keepright.ipax.at/

In Potlatch 2, you can add extra nodes - hold down Shift and click on the way. You can use this for adding junctions for side roads.

Yes, where possible it is a good idea to get several GPS tracks, then you can take an average from them, as well as the aerial imagery, to draw in the roads. Note the Bing imagery is not always accurate, it may be offset in places.
Also, depending on what your Garmin is, you could set it to record more detailed tracks. ie record one trackpoint per second. Then it should follow the road better.

This does depend on how the Garmin maps are produced, ie what options and style files they are using. It is usually a good idea to map as much detail as possible, using the correct tags. If it doesn’t show correctly on a particular map, you can report it to whoever is making the maps, and hopefully it can be fixed.

You can also check these pages, which have some helpful advice: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editing_Standards_and_Conventions

Thanks for sharing Anders,
A few remarks:

  1. With this tool you can check if the roads are connected: http://keepright.ipax.at/index.php?lang=en
  2. Use Shift-Click to add points somewhere in a road or join two roads together that are overlapping but not connected
  3. This is not because it is not supported by Garmin, but because they are just missing in the style sheets. Don’t withdraw them because OSM is much more than just a tool for this Garmin map. There are other maps that can render those items. Better drop a request here to make them visible on your Garmin or make a custom map to make them visible.

Ah Vclaw was just ahead of me with the same answers :wink:

Cool, thanks- yes that one works for me now. I was also trying to put together a single map of Western Europe, but the URL is too long- might have to just use smaller ones.
Thanks for the service, very cool.

Shift-click etc. Thanks, great. I just found out. Good to know as before I knew how to, someone apparently imported some of my first Garmin tracks, and thus those roads are pretty much too straight. Missing joints and multi lane roads with all lanes in one and the same direction which I experienced in the base material from down there was actually also in my near surroundings here in Copenhagen. In fact it also explained some strange behaviour I have formerly seen with Garmin’s own maps. Denmark is a multi-island-country and some (logically necessary) ferry routes were once obviously missing.

Yep debugging is a must, thx. for that link too.

As to the interest points: It DOES appear to me that Garmin shows only what it expects up front. Will keep experimenting to see what is best, and then align the lot.

Hi

In the points style file I tried to have the fuel icon pop up in the lower levels/resolution 18.
amenity=fuel { name ‘${operator}: ${name}’ | ‘${name}’ | ‘${operator}’ } [0x2f01 resolution 18]
However I did not succeed, Seems like for the lower levels this is not accepted to view points? I only need the fuel poi tot pop up earliers , but it is always visible together with the other poi’s.

gr Wim

Whilst you have some control on the zoom level by setting the resolution in the mkgmap style file, Mapsource and GPS units have internal rules about certain POI types that you can’t over-ride. I don’t think there is a definitive list as it seems to vary by GPS unit. To test if this is what’s going on, try using a different hexcode and see if you have better control over it.

Wim, you can try to use another poi type for amenity=fuel on the lower zoomlevels

amenity=fuel [0x… resolution 18-20 continue with_actions]
amenity=fuel { name ‘${operator}: ${name}’ | ‘${name}’ | ‘${operator}’ } [0x2f01 resolution 22]

0x… you have to find out by trial and error, a typ file is recommended to make the label invisible (it will clutter your map otherwise) and to modify the default icon.
The city pois are displayed at lower zoomlevels (0x01 -0x0b) but they also show up in the city search, maybe 0x28… will work?

Hello

Tried over 20 hexcodes, the only one I got to work is the points for city for instance 0x0001 (big green dot). I used:

amenity=fuel [0x0001 resolution 22-20 continue]
amenity=fuel { name ‘${operator}: ${name}’ | ‘${name}’ | ‘${operator}’ } [0x2f01 resolution 23]

But even then, there is a small gap in resolution, maybe I had to switch to level 24 and showed the fuelstations as green dot upto 22. The other POI’s cannot be displayed in zoomed out level.

Well I’ve left the option, and not gonna use it. When driving I always use routed made in MS of BC, so I’ll look for the fuelstations at home, or I’ll do a find in my GPS.

gr Wim

There is a new version of my script: https://sites.google.com/site/openfietsmap/downloads/osm_combi

Settings can now be entered in the configuration file osm_combi.ini

The only thing I’m not happy with is the fact that mkgmap cannot produce an installer. You still need nsis, mapset toolkit or javawa’s mapconverter.
Maybe someone out here can help to improve the batch file to write a simple windows registry installer/uninstaller to install the mapset directly?
Could this be done with the output of the nsi file?

Problem solved by adding makensis to the osm_combi folder. With this standalone nsis version a separate installation is not needed anymore.

Can you give me an idea as to when you will be pulling data from the OSM server again? I have made some updates in the past few weeks to fix “disconnected” paths and would like to have that data included in my map pull.

Cheers,

OK, updated. Thanks!

Does anybody know a site that has contour lines (at least for Europe) now that http://openmtbmap.org does not have them as a separate download anymore.

http://osm.thkukuk.de/ has a lot of European countries (will there one for Europe be available Thorsten?) or Computerteddy for whole Europe: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Computerteddy#H.C3.B6henlinien_von_Europa
The last set is a bit older and has some gaps in them.

Shouldn’t be a problem to generate one, I only don’t have enough space on my webserver anymore.

Thorsten

I’m also interested in a contour lines set for my Europe map. I have tried to combine your srtm set with some tiles of mine and it def. looks better.
How much Gb is a Europe set? I use google docs (20 gb for $5 per year). How much time will it roughly take to generate them?

I thought you use the osm.nl webspace?

I am also interested in contour line for more European countries, with the holidays coming this summer. I can imagine more people are interested in generic contour lines for use with other maps.

I even considered to generate srtm-based garmin maps to combine with Lambertus’ maps. That data is quite static, so it should not be much work to maintain. But when other people already have scripts to do so, there is not much need to reinvent the wheel.

I’m using osm.nl too but I’d need to move the Europe set (too much bandwidth). Maybe Lambertus has some space left on his server to store a European srtm set? If someone would like to generate one I’d be happy to host it on my google docs account.

Depends on how much data it will be in the end. At first I have to download all the sources, most of them are still not in my cache. Then it depends on the number of nodes. If it are more than the tilesplitter can handle, it will become pretty complicated.

The script to collect all the data is already running. I think beginning of next week I can say more. Let’s see.

Thorsten

I’m looking forward to see the results! :sunglasses: