Free Garmin Edge OS-style maps

I’m interested in giving these a try, but can’t get at the dropbox link. I have previously been using the maps from garmin.openstreetmap.nl .

I can probably help with the hosting. I run an ISP and we’re happy to donate bandwidth to good causes. Drop me an email and we can sort something out.

@pdw – thanks, might take you up on that.

Just taken a look on the 800 – looks really nice! Much easier to read.

Question (I don’t know much about the 800!) is the map ‘routable’? I treid for the first time to follow a route on Friday and it said it was unable to route. Apparently this is due to the base mapping? I was using openstreetmap off talkytoaster

THE DROP BOX THING DOSENT WORK. ANY CHANCE OF GETTING IT FIXED. PLEASEEE

I’m uploading my version of the Garmin British OSM maps to google drive currently, I’ll link to the download when done.

Should effectively be the same as Flaperon’s

Edit: Here you go

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_uy0wF5v0lbNjEtb0ZOM1BFR2c/edit?usp=sharing

Hope I’m not treading on the OP’s shoes 🙂

Have found new home:

http://maps.androidgamer.org/img/Great%20Britain/

If you download from here can you report back on the speed you achieve? The server is meant to be on a 100Mb connection but I can only get about 450kB/s across the pond.

Cheers,

Dave.

Flaperon – used them today on my Surrey Hills ride – perfect, so much easier to read than OS maps, linking paths together is much much easier. Also, the scroll and zoom is much faster.

All in all, fantastic. Great work, thank you.

Thanks for taking the time to produce and offer up the map Flaperon. I used it with my 810 on my commute this morning and looks great, although going through town it was a bit cluttered with bus stops etc. I can’t find a de-clutter option on the 810, any pointers anyone?

Cheers,
Jamie

Hi Jamie,

I’m still ripping useless information out of the map but am planning to upload a new version tonight or tomorrow (slightly larger, includes UK and Ireland).

Muchos gracias Flaperon!

Cheers,
Jamie

Uploading now (I’m finding a server in the EU, the SoftLayer dedicated machine is appallingly slow). Typical US-centric mindset of “Well, we can get a fast download from it in Houston”…

Anyway, it’ll be at the link above in about 20 minutes.

Changes:

* Significantly decluttered.
* Added newer tracks around Wendover
* It now shows disused canals (the only OSM for Garmin to do so)

Cheers,

Dave.

Hi David
Hope your not trying it out on Thursday!on second thoughts with your track record of map reading it might not be a bad idea.

Fortunately I have Ordnance Survey maps on there too as a last resort…

Tried them out tonight – they look fantastic!

I only have a Edge 705 so don’t get the full potential with the new mapping screen on the 800, but they look far better than most maps I have tried (and I have tried a fair few!!!)

Thanks again!

What difference did you have smurfly? I have a 605 so I’m interested. Any chance of a screenshot?

The server is meant to be on a 100Mb connection but I can only get about 450kB/s across the pond.

Yeah, I saw very similar speeds. I’m guessing that’s an “unmetered” 100Mbps connection, in which case it’s not surprising that you don’t see anything like 100Mbps.

I’ve temporarily stuck a copy here for now:

http://sphinx.mythic-beasts.com/~pdw/OS50/

which should be much faster, particularly in the UK. I’m still happy to help with some free bandwidth for the project if you’re interested.

I had a chance to play with the previous version on a couple of rides yesterday. Overall I think it’s a big a improvement over the previous OSM maps I was using. The wider roads, road colouring and large place labels in particular are a great improvement.

I’m less sure about the dotted lines for FPs and BWs because the Garmin does a particularly poor job of rendering them, and I was undecided about the diagonal shading for national parks. I was riding in the Lakes so you see quite a lot of it 🙂 The only other issue was if you zoom right out the view gets very cluttered by all the fells.

Keep up the good work 🙂

Hi pdw,

Thanks for mirroring the maps. I should have a server sorted in Amsterdam within a few days which will solve the problem (Softlayer have got to move the existing stuff from Dallas).

There’s plenty of opportunity for tweaking. I may remove the national park shading altogether, since it doesn’t accomplish any practical purpose on the GPS. I left it in because I find it handy to quickly find places in Basecamp, and it disappears at higher zoom levels on the Garmin.

How would you change the lines for FPs / BWs? I’ve made it slightly bolder than the original style but more or less left it unchanged. I was going to make it magenta but decided that it would conflict with Garmin’s own route track.

I could add diamonds to bridle paths (a la OS recreational routes) to make them clearer? Or, alternatively, change the colour of footpaths? Or add a black border to the bridle path so it looks more like a road?

I’ll make up a few examples at the weekend. You can only have two colours on a line which makes finding a compromise difficult.

Dave.

this is great, bookmarked for later.

Great work Flaperon and thanks for the mirror pdw- downloading as I type! I feel the footpath / BW styling is just about spot on (on the 810) FWIW.

Spurred on by your good work I managed to mkgmap of Belgium yesterday for the first time- any chance of uploading your TYP file to see how it works on foreign shores?

Cheers,
Jamie

Jamie – I’ve modified both the TYP file and the style itself so one probably won’t work without the other and inconsistencies throw mkgmap into a panic.

I can build a map of Belgium for you using this style when I get home this weekend if you want.

Flaperon – great work – by far the clearest map set. The only issue is that a number of cycle routes don’t appear on the map (or am I doing something wrong?) in particular the one missing seem to be the old disused railway track type. Any chance these could be added?

Once again thanks for doing this.

I think the issue with the FP/BWs is that the dots are relatively short and wide with big gaps between them making it hard to see how they join together to form a line, particularly at junctions of multiple paths. The other OSM maps that I have does alternating dark/light grey which maps it a bit clearer.

For example, the paths in the woods on the left screenshot are quite hard to decipher, whereas (ignoring the poor contrast between grey and green) the tracks are clearer on the right hand side.

How about alternating between orange and light grey? Or just going for a solid, but relatively narrow line?

I can build a map of Belgium for you using this style when I get home this weekend if you want.

That’d be great, thanks muchly! We’re riding to Bruges via the Channel Tunnel from next Wednesday so ideally I’d need north France too.

Cheers,
Jamie

How about alternating between orange and light grey? Or just going for a solid, but relatively narrow line?

But then it wouldn’t look like an OS 1:50,000 map, would it 😀

Here’s a screenshot from my 810, I think its clear enough.

Of course, zooming in a little more makes things much clearer.

Cheers,
Jamie

This looks really interesting. Quick question on memory cards – I’ve got 3 cards on the go, one with the OS Maps that came with the unit (I think there’s some sort of copy protection on this one) one with a city navigator copy and one with osm for Spain. If I get a big micro SD, is there any way to have all the maps on the one card and select from a menu on the garmin 800??

Petrieboy it’s my understanding that you can in the menu and maps list…. I only have the 705 and the map image had to be named GMAPSUPP.img so only one map can be used!

Pretty sure it was an upgrade on the 800…. Sure someone will correct me

on the 800 (and the etrex20, we have both) you can have multiple maps on a card and choose between them.

Much better imo many thanks to OP

But then it wouldn’t look like an OS 1:50,000 map, would it

Well I think a solid narrow purple line would look closer to an OS 1:50k bridleway than the Garmin’s attempt at a dotted line.

But it comes down to what the OP is trying to achieve. I like these maps because generally they look better and clearer than other OSM-based maps, not because they look exactly like OS maps, so personally I’d be in favour of a bit of divergence from OS style in the name of clarity.

Just loaded. Much clearer on a garmin 800. I’ll be trying out soon. Thanks OP

Update:

New home found on an EU server – I maxed out my 80Mbit connection so you should get decent download speeds now.

http://maps.androidgamer.org/download/

I’ll update the maps shortly, will try a clearer route for bridleways, probably magenta and grey or something similar. At some point I’ll add the whole of Europe once I’m happy with the colour scheme.

If you’re mirroring the files I’d be grateful if you just redirect to my own server now – grateful for the help but for version control would prefer just the one source.

FYI I have been using your maps for a week or so on my edge 705 and as lovely as they look I’ve had to go back to the plain osm boring maps.

Obviously the edge 705 doesn’t have the same mapping screen as the 800 so a lot of the roads appear in segments rather than one flowing road, but the major issue for me was the 705 places my route underneath the road, and with the thickness of the roads on your design blocks the route out and it can’t be seen.

If anything it’s urged me to save for an 800, but the 705 just isn’t up to it comfortably….. Unless I am using it wrong

Would love to try this map on my new 800 as I’m not that keen on the garmin os maps.

Can anyone post an ebay link or similar to a micro sd card that I can buy to download this map onto? Thanks.

Also presume the new map is good for off road and can use bikehike to plot maps etc?

Cheers!

Thanks again to the OP for his work.

I just loaded it to my 605 and thought I’d post pics of how it looks compared to the talkytoaster ones.

This is the OP’s new OS-style map:

This is the same place on the talkytoaster map (with contours, routable)

For me, I think I still prefer the talkytoaster one as it has contours which I like to see but otherwise, it is good though as someone previous pointed out, roads seem to cut over eachother at juntions rather than just being continuous lines – you can’t see it in the pic above, but at t-juntions, I found a lot of roads overlap in a way that makes it confusing – less of an issue out of town though where roads are less densely packed.

flaperon, I gave these a good test at the weekend whilst riding the Welsh Ride Thing. I think you may have some data issues with your OSM load and/or tagging as I found several missing roads which I think is unusual given the current coverage of OSM. I am wondering whether you are missing a tag type?

Sadly, I was so utterly wasted most of the time I did not manage to note which ones.

Likewise I used them on the WRT and they were fine as I was using my route to navagate with rather than the map and I was with two others who also had mapping GPS (Official OS), however as David says there were some roads and tracks missing that were on my companions devices.

Still a great piece of work though so thanks very much for pulling it all together.

Interesting. So you can take OSM data and produce maps in a custom style… Are these routable on an Edge 800/Touring? Is there any information kicking about on how one might do this? I’d be keen to make some really stripped-back maps for road riding if they work (and, less likely, if I have time…)

Thanks to the OP and the updated image on the 80Mbps host. Downloaded on to my Edge 800 last night and took it out for a trail session in the pentlands around Edinburgh this evening worked a treat and what a difference to the stock maps. Brilliant and saved me a wee fortune for the garmin equivalent.

Firstly thank you Flaperon for producing this map, it’s very clear and works much better all round on my Edge Touring Plus, including improved rendering and battery life too.

I just wanted to ask a few questions:

– is the link at the top of the first page of this thread kept up to date, or should I download (for UK) from one of the other links later on in this thread?

– how to use this map in Basecamp so I can plot a route (it’s not clear on this thread if that’s possible or not)

– is there an application that’s better than Basecamp for plotting routes, where it allows you to create a route by simple clicks on the path/road, and it plots a sensible route for you?

Thanks,

Phil.

is there an application that’s better than Basecamp for plotting routes, where it allows you to create a route by simple clicks on the path/road, and it plots a sensible route for you?

I use bikehike (which you can manually create waypoints joined by straight lines) or bikeroutetoaster websites (which can “auto-route” between waypoints using openstreetmap data).

For off-road stuff, auto-routing doesn’t work very well though, better just to use bikehike to create waypoints (overlayed on OS maps on the website) linked by straight lines.

Also, thanks for posting the Q as i missed this thread the first time round. Cheers for the maps Flaperon!