Following my last post regarding mapping options, I’ve discovered another source for free Open Streetmap maps, thanks to a suggestion from someone on the bikeradar forum.
It’s called talkytoaster.
The bikeradar contributor had suggested that there were easier ways to start using OSM mapping than the methods I’d blogged about, and I’d have to agree. Such a shame I hadn’t found talkytoaster.info when I first set out on this journey.
So in the spirit of trying to help others avoid the same unnecessarily convoluted methods, I thought I would post a quick tutorial to demonstrate how simple it can be to install a free Open Streetmap map to your Garmin edge 800.
Hope somebody finds it useful.
Wow, thank you so much for this, just picked up a Garmin 800 for £220, with no card no nothing, gonna pop out to get a MicroSD card and when I come back the maps should have finished downloading! Bingo.
Excellent! That’s a good price, where from?
Got it on ebay, obviously not the protection you’d get with a big retailer but a massive saving, see http://screencast.com/t/duayAUtV that is the auction, I think he puts them up fairly often. It was a US version I got, with the american plug adapter, but most of us have a USB/UK plug adapter anyway and if not you can get one for a few quid or just charge from the pc.
The MAPS worked perfectly BTW, still fiddling with creating routes etc, not very straightforward is it!
Think that bikehike.co.uk is gonna be my choice.
I’ve got the unit mainly for following routes that I either download/create or save when riding with others and following them, so still trying to establish what the best settings/formats will be for me.
It’s even easier than shown in the tutorial video: the Edge 800 will accept ANY map file as long as it is a .img format, it doesn’t have to be called “gmapsupp”. I think this restriction only applies to older Garmin devices.
thanks, you have all been a great help, video was great
How about France? Any hint? ;-)
A quick Google search suggested this –
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download
– might be worth a shot?
Just got round to loading this onto my edge 705 – works like a charm. Thanks god i did a quick google before spending over £50 on the Garmin maps. Thanks a million.
Great, please feel free to share the link via facebook or twitter, so others will benefit too.
Thanks
Hi
I was wondering if it was possible to have more than one map on the SD card and if so, would they all need to be called named as gmapsupp? Wouldn’t they get overwritten if you saved other maps to the card with this name?
Any tips?
many thanks for all your help with this article
Kevin
I’ve heard that it mattered on older versions of garmin gps, but the edge 800 can cope with different file names, so it’s possible to have more than one map set on an SD card
Very help. Thanks, Alan.
Regards,
Richard
Worked for me – Thanks Alan :-)
You’re welcome, thanks for commenting :)
Hi Alan, not sure if you can help. I followed the instructions and have copied the GMAPSUPP file onto the SD card in the Garmin, but when I go to the “Map Information Select Map” option the only map showing as an option to enable is the standard base map and not the new talkytoaster one.
The garmin knows I have an SD card as it lets me select it from the data recording options and it has added folders under the garmin directory.
Any ideas what I can try?
Thanks
same here
I got it sorted.
Take sd card out of Garmin connect it to computer (with an adapter) reformat to fat32, select card in ‘my computer’ and create a folder called Garmin, put your map in this folder. Then put it into your edge and switch on, wait a minute or two and there you are. Worked for me :)
It would seem the edge likes a nice clean card to write its own files onto.
Hi there,
I wonder if anyone is reading this thread still? i’m having exactly the same problem only i went to reformat the SD card to “fat32” and found that it was already formatted in that option. On my computer I can see that the maps file is stored in the Garmin folder on the SD card; however it does not show on the actual device.
I’m currently feeling pretty disheartened about my purchase so far, seems like you have to jump through hoops to get this thing to do anything, thinking maybe i should have bought a sat nav for a car and connected it to my bike or just carried on using google maps on my phone.
Hi James, hang in there, stick with it. It’s worth it once you’ve worked through any initial teething problems. What format is the file you’ve copied into your Garmin folder? Did you download a zip file and copy that over? If so, you need to extract the img file first and copy that to the Garmin folder.
Hmmmm, actually this could be the problem
The file is a .img file; however there was no option to ever “Extract” it
I simply opened the zip file and copied it to another folder on my desktop, and then into a file named “Garmin” on my SD card
I wonder if that could be it? I notice when you open the zip file, you had a very different screen to mine, with buttons at the top, mine looks like a normal folder
That’s only because I use a different program for handling zip files (Winrar) and probably is not the reason. If you copied the img file to a folder called “Garmin” on the sd card, that should work. It’s probably worth testing if it can see your card ok. If you hit the settings spanner-System-Data Recording – record to (internal storage or memory card). Select the card, then try recording a quick session. Press start, run round the garden (not necessary but good for you) press stop, then hold the reset button to save the data. Connect to the computer via USB and you should see a fit file has been written in a folder called Activities. The file name will be a product of the date and time the recording was started.
This will help to work out if your sd card is actually behaving itself.
Thanks so much for the help Alan, I will try that later on
hallelujah! turns out it didn’t extract the file from the zip properly, its now showing as a list of maps to be enabled
but i still can’t really search for anything apart from points of interest, where i managed to find Big Ben
I’ve tried post codes and road names and I just get “No Results Found, Try Adjusting Search Parameters”
Are you aware of any tutorials online which explain how to enter locations? its extremely annoying that they have saved the Garmin offices under Locations as if i start to search for something beginning with G it automatically goes from the search page and assumes i am going to select one the Garmin locations!?
Once again, thanks for your help – very much appreciated
Use the little bullseye icon at the bottom to tell it to search near your present location then use the All POI option. If you then click the abc you can then find what you’re looking for, with a bit of luck!