Garmin BirdsEye Satellite Imagery Subscription

I have Garmin Birdseye satellite images for my local area on my Garmin Oregon 550. The images are several years old because I don't keep the subscription active. I downloaded the images when I was actively geocaching, and they were quite helpful. You could see for example that a geocache was at the base of a large tree or maybe next to an old foundation or some other visible marker. The satellite images were somewhat dated however, so sometimes you had to use nearby objects as a reference point.

I still use my Oregon on my ebike when riding bike trails. Some bike trails are not shown on GPS maps but are usually visible on the satellite images. So again this can be helpful when biking off road.

Although I normally do not post links to another forum, I think it may be OK in this case. Take a look at this post by member Boyd over in the GPS Review forum: http://forums.gpsreview.net/discussion/comment/209152/#Comme...

This is not BirdsEye, but shows you how road navigation would look with satellite maps on a Garmin device. Boyd makes his own map images and installs them on his Garmin DriveTrack device which is very similar to a DriveSmart.

I used BirdsEye imagery with Basecamp and my Oregon & Montana handhelds a few years ago. I can't be certain of this but the imagery appears to be the same as Google Earth. Why pay for something you can get for free? I think that's the reason Garmin lowered the subscription price.

You can overlay routes, tracks, waypoints even topo data directly on BirdsEye images in Basecamp. With a few extra steps however, you can do the same thing with Google Earth and /or the Extra POI Editor program.

The one interesting feature not easily duplicated is BirdsEye's ability to track your location on your GPS screen as you move across an actual satellite image.

Imagery downloaded to GPS units requires a lot of memory and is really only useful for small sections of geography. Hunters, fishermen, hikers, geocachers etc. might find it useful when traversing an area of just a few square miles.

As much as I get how one of the advantages of Garmin GPS navigators is you don't need cellular data, part of me is thinking that having this subscription, that refreshes via cellular, might be a good option.

I am not aware of a Garmin Birdseye Subscription that refreshes via cellular. The one I used several years ago was download through BaseCamp, then transferred to the GPS.

If you are talking about the images posted by Boyd over on forums.gpsreview.net, these are custom maps that Boyd creates and installs on handhelds and the Garmin DriveTrack. I don't believe they are "refreshed" via cellular but maybe I am wrong. Sorry if I misunderstood your post.

I was just suggesting that it would be nice if it could do it. In fact, although I never had one, I always thought the Garmin Nuvi 1690/1695 would be handy with their live connected services.

Even today, I think since many of us connect our Garmins, via Bluetooth, to our smartphones for data, that some additional features could be rolled out. I still remember when Google Local Search was on Garmin Mobile XT!

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/70853

AFAIK, live streaming of BirdsEye imagery via cellular data has never been an option. It would indeed be a nice feature though.

You can however do something similar with your Apple or Android smartphone without any subscription costs. Just install the Google Earth app on your phone and follow these directions:

https://support.google.com/earth/answer/6358061?co=GENIE.Pla...

You can then see your location in real time using Google Earth imagery anywhere on the globe.

It is too bad Google doesn't enable satellite view on their navigation app used for Android Auto and Apple Carplay. I suppose though it would use a too much data and possibly performance problems as the images are far more complex and wouldn't compress as well.

Interesting