Long story short..

My roadie neighbour has given me an old garmin edge 520 as the battery life is not enough for his all day rides, he said that it has about 3 hours capacity which currently is more than enough for me.

Anyway I’ve been though a few threads about putting better maps on it, most point to openstreetmaps. So I tried to download last night, the email came back saying that I’m in cue and to expect the download in 800plus days. Anyone else had this recently?

Are there any other places where I can get descent maps from?

Thanks

Talkytoaster – Here to help with your Garmin OSM mapping needs…

TalkyToaster + 1, there’s even a free version that might suit your needs.

Free Maps Home

Thanks both, I’ll try it out this weekend. 👍

Hmm! Not gone well, the file is too large. The map image already installed is 49mb and the new file is 1000mb plus.

Have I downloaded the wrong version?

It’s a while since I’ve done it, but can you unzip it and just select areas you need?

EDIT : hang on, if it is an older Garmin, it may not have much capacity. Can you put a micro SD card in it?

The map image already installed is 49mb and the new file is 1000mb plus.

That doesn’t sound right. The IMG files are normally around 2 GB. They certainly are on my Edge 530

Seems that I’ve found the reason

**If you want to use my maps on a Garmin Edge 520, it is possible, but you must use the PC/Mac version (for the TT HD Topo style for PC/Mac these are ONLY available as part of a subscription), not the GPS version as it is too big, see here for more details: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/garmin-520-mapping**

As an alternative to Talky… I’m using the openfistemap (garmin routable maps using OpenStreetMap)

DC Rainmaker has some great instructions here if you want custom map areas:
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/08/how-to-install-free-maps-on-your-garmin-edge.html

I’m using one of the downloads here:
https://www.openfietsmap.nl/downloads/europe

This is what I love about this place. Just about to buy a 53O for my holiday next week and that tutorial is excellent.

Are the European maps provided ok for off road or am I better off downloading something more detailed. I downloaded talky toasters uk map about 5 years. I think it’s in the SD card on my etrex I’ll see if I can it on to the edge.

+1 for talkytoaster.
Excellent product, with superb support – resist the urge of the free version and pay for the version that works for you.
You’ll be supporting a top quality independent supplier

The Garmin 520 has a stupidly small amount of memory so you can only download fairly small areas. I don’t have a 520 now, but from memory it was sub 50Mb which is REALLY dumb.

Anyway, if you follow the dcrainmaker link above and use that method, you can choose different map segments and it tells you the filesize as you select the tiles.
It’s a bit of faffing around but it is possible to get the maps on the unit. I noticed that sometimes the maps would take a long time to generate but other times it was quicker. I guess it just depends on how busy the server is when you start the process. Maybe try very late at night when there is likely less people trying to build maps??

Also, it’s possible to swap out maps as well, so if you travel to different areas, you might need/want to load a different map set on it. I used to do that quite often.

Thank god I lost my 520 and had to buy a 530 to replace it with much more storage for maps of a much larger area!