Free routable maps for Garmin

I agree, they don't seem to work on the Nuvi 350/60.

Here is what I did to get these maps to work on the 360:

- renamed the gmapprom.img file on the Nuvi to gmapprom.img.orginal so the Nuvi would not try to use the preinstalled City Navigator maps.

- installed the gmapprom.img South America file in to the Garmin folder on the Nuvi.

- rebooted the Nuvi and checked that OSM maps were being read by insuring the Basemap entry was ticked under Setting - Map - Map Info.

- put the 360 in simulation mode by not raising the antenna

- went to Where To and tried to enter an address, then a city and in both cases my Nuvi simply shutdown or hung on the city name input screen.

- I put the gmapsupp.img file in the Garmin directory on an SD card, deleting it from the Nuvi and insured that the Nuvi was using these maps by checking the Settings - Maps - Map Info page.

- ran the same tests and got exactly the same results.

By the way, when the Nuvi is seeing and using these maps, with City Navigator maps not selected, you should see OpenStreetMaps.org Contributors at the bottom of the Garmin screen as the Nuvi boots up.

It has to be the 350/60 that has an issue with the South America maps. I have placed the SD card, with these maps on it, into my 3790 and it works sort of OK with it. I can search for cities, POIs, browse map, etc. but searching for an address brings back the message:

No Map Data Available.

Thanks for all of your collective deductions in establishing that the 350 won't display this map.

I'll try to explore one of the other sites & other maps to see if that won't work. Otherwise, sounds like I need to try it on another gps.

Appreciate it.

Fred

Very cool thread. I like it.

I have a Nuvi 350 as well and I'm going to try building maps for the USA using this site:
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

I'm assuming you're going to try the same for South America? Maybe start small (1-2) tiles and see if it works at all?

Good info...

I managed to build a small map of the Northeast USA using the following site: http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

The site built a gmapsupp.img file ready to load to the 350. I loaded this on a spare SD card and found that the unit had no problems recognizing it.

After trying a few familiar routes I found that the unit does take a longer route in some cases. It's possible that it did that because I was unable to use the streetname search feature to find the location. I had to enter the location by coordinates found via google maps. Has anyone else played with these maps and find the streetname search lacking?

Your observations are correct. There is no address search. The reason it may be slower is that data access from SD is generally slower than data access from internal memory, especially on older nuvis. You would probably find the same slowdown if you accessed City Navigator from SD.

I believe that site uses mkgmap to make gmapsupp.img. On the mkgmap site I found the following news/blog post that indicates that the address index works:

http://www.mkgmap.org.uk/page/21

Maybe it's time for me to try out mkgmap and build my own maps.

Hi all, clicked on above link and chose 3 tiles for Tenerife
But what do I do now? It shows a page of 8 files
parent directory, tiles etc

Am I correct in thinking I can get this free map onto my gps or basemap or both?

Either download the EXE and install the maps in MapSource (if you have it) on your computer and then use MapSource to install them to the GPS unit.

Or download the IMG file and copy that to the same folder on the GPS unit as the other IMG files.

Wow! Never knew that, thank you. Scroll wheel works!

Tried to open in garmin basecamp but the file types were not recognised?

Might need a step by step!

Or do I open the gsm_generic_windows icon?

It was the 3 squares round tenerife I wanted on my garmon gpsmap 60CSx

Didn`t recognise in map aource either.

maybe i downloaded the wrong things.
selected the tiles on the map and they are apparently arriving in email in a few hours so will play tomorrow.

Is the generic thing mention in previous post, safe?

You don't "open them in BaseCamp or MapSource".

Did you download the EXE file? Did you RUN it on your computer?

Ahhhh Ha! got it, fairly detailed map or tenerife working on comp and GPS.

It`s great but why would they do free ones and sell some for silly prices???

The people creating the free maps are hobbyists. Similar to the people here at POI Factory who create Custom POI files for free.

The companies that create the commercial maps are doing it as a business.

Which also means that if you find an error on these maps, instead of submitting it to Garmin and waiting a quarter or more to see if it was fixed, you can correct the source map yourself at http://osm.org. Of course, there is a non-trivial delay until the Garmin maps are regenerated from there.

good stuff guys.

I just spent a couple of weeks visiting Baltic Sea hotspots. My little eTrex was loaded up with over 300 Mbytes of OSM maps, from St. Petersburg, Russia, and a port or two of Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Denmark.

The formatting and level of detail varied from place to place, but at city-scale and lower it was quite useful generally.

It was not graceful in zooming from, say, the 100-mile scale down through the 5-mile scale. Transliteration problems made address searching nearly useless in some places, and POIs were highly variable, and sometimes a clutter problem.

Still it was great to have the extra support.

My primary use in carrying a small GPSr in such places is to allow me confidence in walking off into old city type locations, sure that I can get back where I started, and getting a little help in where to go. For that purpose the OSM maps were very good, indeed.

Since I'm not traveling anywhere exotic anytime soon I downloaded the 500 MB file that covers Western PA to play with and test. I renamed it to Local.img and copied it to the SD card on my 1450LMT as is the 2013.20 map, unselected the 2013.20 map and selected the OSM map. It works fine so far and does have the new updated local roads completed 9 months ago that are missing from the Garmin 2013.20 map update.

As noted in a previous post you can not use the find by ADDRESS or INTERSECTION, nor does it have LA or JCV though it does still show the upcoming turn direction in the LA assist box. It also speaks the street names when a TTS voice is used. Anyone needing a temporary map of the area will do fine with this map. You will just have to get all your needed POIs from another source as you will also not have the Garmin installed POIs of the area.

Hi and thanx for the links. Worked fine with firefox.

If I might add, there is a website called gpsfiledepot which has free topo maps that work with garmins and other brands.

http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/state/all

They have worked fine so far for me.

I must be doing something wrong but I can not get North America or United States or Canada in whole to be selected. I can only select a specific state to generate a map using the country selection method vs the manual method. I've tried and tried. It's not obvious to me why I can't do it. Help.

Thanks. Good job.

Hi ! I have Garmin Nuvi 465 and just preformed free update for US and Canada and everything went well but when I try to input address or set up my home address it says "No Data Available" and I go to settings and maps and try to click on map info but there is no option to do so!
what is going on here?? Please, help...

P.S. I have inserted formated Micro SD Card (4GB) since I have downloaded map for US and Canada.

Are you saying you replaced the City Navigator map on your 465 with the free Open Street Map? Or did you do a map update from Garmin's site?

I downloaded 4 maps for countries we plan to visit in Europe. They all have the same names. I put one on my sd card in the folder "Garmin" and my unit, Nuvi 2450, showed both my map and the add on map without having to uncheck either one.

My question is, can I change the names of the other three maps so I can put all four maps on my sd card? If I can, do I have to name them something special or anything I want?
Thanks.

I think you can name them what you want as long as .IMG is the extension. Try adding 1, 2, 3 ... to the filenames. Some of my maps on my different GPSs are located in the MAP folder, others are in the GARMIN folder. I am guessing either folder will work fine.

Will try this.

Nice tip... I have used a wheel mouse for years never knew it would do that THANKS

This info is very helpful.

I just tried the wheel on the mouse. Wow, well after trying to hold down the mouse button and the whell, I just held down the wheel and the page opened in another tab. This is great. We need a page on hints like this for us oldies.
Thanks.

And now back to the post "Free routable maps from Garmin"
Like this

I have used open maps before on my phone, but not for my garmin. Seems interesting, maybe something to flash on a device sometime.

I think there is a utility out there which can combine multiple img files into one.

Great stuff here. Thanks for posting!

I will look for this. That would be better.

@Mgarledge,
I just began to explore and follow this new area. I found I can request a single img file with as many "tiles" as you like from below link. They will combine these tiles (otherwise will be lots of img file) into one single file and email back to you.
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

I will go here. Thanks

sounds good...

I didn't like the one I downloaded so I think (id I can talk my husband into it) I will buy the SD card. That way I will be able to use it if I ever get another unit.
Thanks for everyone's help and advice...

thanks looks like it is helpful

Clicking the scroll wheel itself - what a great tip! I have used the context menu for years, which takes two clicks. Saving a click on something I do all the time doesn't sound like much, but it adds up! Thanks for posting.

So here's a tip "for tat" - when you need to read the fine print or just if the content on a web site you are looking at is too small or to large, hover the mouse over the page, hold the "Ctrl" button down, and rotate the scroll wheel. The page display changes instantly.

That is so great. I go to the 100% and change the %. The ctrl, wheel is sooooo much better. Thanks for the tip

Both very cool tips -- thanks!

BTW, if you are going to use these with an external card, make sure you use a Class 6 card or you will get slow response.

How do these maps compare to Garmin's pre-installed maps in terms of street accuracy?

Nice! Now something new and free!

This might have possibilities

Sweet! Thanks!

This could really come in handy when I take my trip down to the Caribbean!

The following sites provide excellent and detailed routable Garmin maps. The Tracksouce site is in Portuguese and the Mapear site in Spanish. Google translate does a decent job translating the sites into English.

Brazil:
http://www.tracksource.org.br/

Agentina,Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay:

http://www.proyectomapear.com.ar/
http://www.travelbygps.com/z_links/proyectomapear_dot_com_ar...