Mapping GSPs, no perfect experience

[Ent]

Oh stuff it I stuffed up. Sorry Shughes my humble apologies. Will now attempt to correct that misread.

Cheers

[Ent]

Ok last night was playing with the Garmin re multiple maps. Renamed the Shonky Map file on the SD card and the 62s found it. Good start. Then decided to install all of the Garmin Topo maps on the SD card. Forgetful me forgot how to do it but the Internet search mentioned Mapinstall and away I went.

Numerous expletives later when all looked good when Garmin then automatically without asking stopped the process and installed a new version of Mapinstall! The new version no longer identified the SD card but instead treated the device as one. Joy to the world as yet again the arrogance of Garmin rode again

Not to be defeated I ripped out the SD card and installed onto that. Some time later I had done the job. Struck a strange issue that had me going around in circles. The 62s got confused when I disabled the Tassie maps and swapped to the complete set. It would not display the Tassie maps but would the other areas. Um? Ok can work around this by enabling both sets.

The upshot is you can install multiple maps on the Garmin with a bit of file renaming. Actually the new version of Mapinstaller will combine maps for a single install or so i think but have not gone that path Anyway you me have at least two ways to load multiple maps on your 62s.

The way is now clear to have Garmin maps for road navigation and Shonky plus Contour Australia plus OSM and change on the fly without having to go to a homebase PC.

Cheers

[Ent]

Actually after the dramas of Memory-Map having fun with the Garmin 62S once I understood the multiple map bit. Downloaded OSM maps and had a brief play. Someone has done a lot of work getting the basics loaded. Signed up and named my first three streets in my home town and will work to do more. The fact that the maps are supposedly rout-able means if they can be overlaid over Contours Australia 5M this will form a brilliant mapping tool. Early days for me but such projects as OSM gladden my heart after the hogwash endured with the commercial mapping products. Might add a few tracks as skills develop but at this stage simply naming a few streets gives a sense of accomplishment to strike a blow against the evil empires. Ok. maybe they are not so evil but they have a few issues, poor instructions and arrogance being the main ones.

Found on Mount Victoria Garmin has no idea where the peak is, Memory-Map picked the wrong peak but dear old Shonky had it right. Pick the free product Also Google maps means if within phone coverage the need for commercial products is reduced. Does anyone on have any idea how much of their maps can be cached? Be good to download a route in cache and not be reliant on mobile coverage. Though as much as I love to hate Telstra their network in Tassie is very good.

Cheers

[Son of a Beach]

The Google license means that the maps cannot be cached for offline viewing. There is obviously some caveat there that allows at least a little bit of caching for speed purposes, but not enough to make offline viewing possible. Of course not all apps stick to the license.

OSM (and the various other OSM-compatible map sources) has no such limitations and are very good for offline viewing (I've added Google and several OSM variants into the Bit Map replacement).

[Ent]

Hi Nik

Look forward to your new application. As you may have gathered I am rather unimpressed by Tasmaps end gaming your development thus forcing walkers to either pay a fortune with a lot of mucking around or buy from a third party that has a sweet heart deal.

As demonstrated by the Mount Victoria GPS shootout, software as much as hardware plays a role in accurate plotting of tracks. With MemoryMap shown to be rather poor while Bitmap rather good. As expected a quality GPS in the Garmin 62s wins but a well placed Edge 305 is impressive. Not sure if the consistent plotting error of the Holux is due to the unit or MemoryMap playing with it.

Also I think that the days of raster maps is nearing an end. As I must appear to bang in about endlessly it would be great if Tasmap adopted vector mapping and sold their product direct and let users decided on the preferred app to use the data. At the moment we have an effective market restrictions that allows for total arrogance and high handedness by at least one major player.

Cheers

[tastrax]

..... it would be great if Tasmap adopted vector mapping and sold their product direct and let users decided on the preferred app to use the data.

You can get vector data from Tasmap....but the pricing is worse than the rasters! plus its not in a form that you could easily get onto a GPS. You would need to use some of that free software I linked to previously to turn it into a product for personal use.

I suspect the vector data in Shonky maps (which is from GeoScience Australia) was initially supplied (to GeoScience) by Tasmap (DPIPWE). What we really need is for the Australian Government to release the nations data for free, exactly as New Zealand has done.

http://www.linz.govt.nz/about-linz/linz ... hat-is-lds

The Spatial information Project that is underway looks like it may allow downloading of data but there is not much detail on costs - http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/We ... SJ5YF?open - that might be worth investigating.

[Ent]

Hi Tastrax

Thanks for that info. It I appears that I do not know what I am doing it is because I do not! But with help from the forum I am learning. Maybe on the wrong horse but if I can overlay OSM over Contours 5m I would have a good base. But be better if the lakes and streams could be included. Looking at OSM some lakes are well defined while others are rather basic. As you say this data exists.

Yes the best approach would be for Tasmaps to wake out of it slumber and look at being a service focused organization. I would love to know what the deal is with MemoryMap and co as this might give a hint to why mapping data direct from Tasmaps is so high. Um? I wonder who would be prepared to ask that question in Parliment? Might make this my hobby as they say everyone needs a hobby or in my case a hobbyhorse.

Will play some more. Actually OSM is addictive adding street names as you feel that you are slowly cracking the grip of the likes if Garmin and Memory Map. The trick will be tracks and features. Noticed a few tracks and features named but looks based on the area done by a tech savvy tourist rather than a resident Tassie

Cheers

[sthughes]

Open Cycle Map has much the same (identical?) data with 10m contours already.

Still not in the same game as Tasmap, as no vegetation etc. is shown.

[tastrax]

It I appears that I do not know what I am doing it is because I do not!

You are doing alright - there is a lot of lousy stuff out there that you have to sift through to get the best product for you. The most important thing is that you learn something along the way and have fun!

[Son of a Beach]

It appears as though the recent rumours may be true in regards to Apple breaking away from Google with mapping in iOS 6 (due out in our spring some time). Note the lack of the formerly ubiquitous 'Google' logo in the screenshots:

http://www.apple.com/ios/ios6/maps/

(EDIT: Confirmed. iOS uses Apple's own mapping data, including both Vector-based and Satellite imagery. They admit up front that their inventory of Satellite imagery will improve over time.)

More significant though, is that their new iOS 6 mapping architecture will be vector-based rather than bitmap/raster based. I expect that other smart-phone vendors will likely follow suit soon afterwards, as smart-phone users realise how good vector-based mapping is.

I wonder how this might affect my new mapping app. I'll have to download the latest developer tools and take a more thorough look at it. As long as I can still put raster overlays on top of the vector backgrounds, I'll be OK. (EDIT: Phew, the existing APIs will continue to work fine).

PS. Actually, this could be very good for my new app indeed. I was worried that my new app may not get accepted by the App Store, because depending on the interpretation, it treads very close to the Google Maps license conditions in a couple of areas. I reckon this will completely remove any such problems (so long as I make it an iOS-6-only app).

[Ent]

Hi

Well Memory-Map crashed and burned for me with relationship about as low as it can go. Pity all it would have taken was an installer that worked (or some rather simple instructions, which ironically did come but too late) along with the supply of the claimed 8gb SD card with the latest maps. The Holux has gone home along with Memory-Maps to be removed once I figure out the removal instructions that includes registry edit hacks The software is rather poor in meeting modern standards of installation and removal.

Using Memory-Map with the PC, Holux and iPhone highlighted a few things.

1. Memory-Map is best seen as a way of displaying raster maps rather than a GPS replacement. As frustrating as the Garmin 62s can be it is a top class piece of hardware.

2. The iPhone screen is the bare minimum for getting an idea from the maps of location. The Holux screen is really too small. iPad is brilliant but just too big and fragile to take bush-walking.

3. Memory-Map PC, PDA and iPhone are so different in operation to being best considered as completely separate interfaces that happen to share the same name.

4. Memory-Map resolution of track plots is limited to the resolution of the lowest level map you have. Stand to be corrected but on 1:25,000 maps this means around 25 metres of "resolution" where a GPS can get 5 metres. In heavy scrub finding a weak point in a cliff line a GPS wins hands over fist.

5. Memory-Map when compared in a limited test does not appear to take advantage of the iPhone' GPS functionality fully with widely varying plots. Also to preserve battery life if not tracking it can struggle to get a position lock. A GPS that is left tracking is a lot more responsive.

6. The raster maps are not rotated in the direction of travel. Instead, the trick is to align the point on the screen to the map track and then take the heading from where the phone is pointing. Tricky but once understood can be done but the auto rotate screen feature of the iPhone can mean top is bottom

7. The Holux is to me very much like a Garmin Edge, a cycle training unit. But the standard FT130 lacks the ability to link in heart rate monitor and cadence sensor. The pro version does have this ability. Had Memory-Map thought about MTB use then it would be a handy unit but then a Garmin might be better, if you can get the appropriate maps. The much older Garmin 305 Edge kicks the younger Holux bottom for tracking performance.

Memory-Map iPhone is handy application, especially in the original free form with $99 maps downloaded from iTunes that is no longer available. Matched with an iPad it would be a good system as a backup to maps and/or GPS. The Lifeproof case is a winner but be careful when taking leads to charge the iPhone as the case is designed for genuine iPhone connector and I have found four aftermarket ones too big. I consider my iPhone with the Lifeproof case to be a good backup to the GPS, Maps, camera and PLB but not a replacement. The lack of battery life, indifferent quality of some maps, small viewing area, poor difficult terrain positioning, and lack of design thought means it can not be considered IMHO as a replacement. The Holux should have had the old IPAQ 4700HX screen resolution of 640x480 but for reasons of cheapness, preserving batter life, and/or size this did not happen. I can forgive the use of the older style press screen rather than the capacitance screen used on the iPhone as using an iPhone with gloves just does not work.

Vector mapping is a superior design idea to raster maps (basically all they are maps scanned as a JPG). The issue with vector maps is lack of good quality maps at reasonable prices. Combining OSM with Contours Australia 5M will ultimately be the life saver of Garmin and the best offline mapping solution IMHO. Online it will be a Google versus Apple shoot-out probably with all the makings of Sony Beta versus VHS rematch. The need for street directories is rapidly diminishing with Google maps. Now if the respective State Governments decided to release maps in an open vector format at a sensible price then we would have the advantage of using Garmins, etc and iPhones. Sadly in this country that perfect world is being killed by bureaucratic ineptitude and possible "commercial in confidence" arrangements forcing users to one company with all the monopoly issues that come from that.

Cheers

[Son of a Beach]

The iPhone screen is the bare minimum for getting an idea from the maps of location.

This is another thing that depends on the app and on the model of iPhone. The iPhone 4 (and later) have double the resolution of the iPhone 3GS (and earlier). This means potentially 4 times the viewing area on a map. But of course it is up to the app whether it takes advantage of this or not.

PS. The iPhone vector maps in iOS 6 look nice. Not as much detail as the Google Maps (at least in the area around my home) but very close to it. The only thing missing is actual property boundaries. Some labelling is incorrect, so I hope they sort that out before release. The main thing to note, for me, is that the satellite image for my home actually includes my house. Google satellite images still do not (despite the house being 6 years old). Also, when zooming right out, the maps are shown on a globe of the earth, rather than a completely flat map. Much like Google Earth style mapping.

[tastrax]

I think you need to buy a set of these Ent... and let us know how you go getting the mapping onto them

http://www.zealoptics.com/transcend-4752.html

[Ent]

Hi Tastrax

While likely posted in jest this had been discussed a fair bit within the electronic mapping section of the Strollers. Actually for mountain climbing or skiing they make good sense as your hands are otherwise occupied and whiteouts not unexpected.

On the weekend on the Olympus range visibility was limited and the scree very large so hard to maintain a sense of direction and accessing a GPS with poles in your hand was challenging. In such conditions first time in the area rather easy to get turned around. Same when scrub bashing on a rainy day.

Actually, interesting using different gear and people's approach to navigation. I am pretty hopeless at relating a screen to the environment while another member is excellent. Accountant versus engineer. Some are brilliant track followers while other have a great memory of key points and happy to wander without tracks.

The weekend highlighted that a five meter cliff can stop you as much as a five hundred meter cliff. Also with out visibility you can potentially trap yourself. In Tassie weather is a real wild card that can make something easy rather dangerous. But more and more of us are committing to walks weeks ahead and relying on gear to get us through despite the weather.

Navigation and route planning is something I am working hard to get better as my red/green colour deficiency means red markers/paint is near invisible to me in dapple light. It must be hard for a person without a form of colour blindness to understand what is very prominent to them is all bar invisible to me. Also past forty reading screens is not as easy as it once was.

O'well next step setting the Garmin up. Impressed with OSM approach as people are gradually adding to the data base. Must see how routable it is. Have contours 5m set up on PC. Still bit suspicious as yet to see contour lines merging indicating a cliff. They are rather uniformly space to suggest a lot of data extrapolation rather than true measurement.

Also Tasmaps has the head waters of a creek that disappears further down so likely a map drafting error or the stream detail lost in the low pixel raster scan. The old technics of reading the terrain on the ground still hold true despite advances in GPSs.

Cheers

[photohiker]

Also be worth looking at openmtbmap: http://openmtbmap.org/

They offer hiking markup as well as various mountain bike markups on top of the OSM data. Tried it on the Sea to Summit paired with Contours 5m, worked well on the HCx.

[Ent]

Hi Photohiker

Will give it a look but me and my mountain bike parted company and we are no longer friends.

Finding it fascinating the use of technology in mapping. OSM uses Bing photographs to map streets and lakes. What is still needed is people to name the features but this is not hard. Even OSM at this early stage has more walking tracks than Garmin's mapping product which I think might have changed. Shonky has a better idea of mountains as well with Gamin appearing to have either mucked up 66 with 94 datum references or it was a too long night for them when marking them.

Mapping around Olympus was interesting with the highest point on Tasmaps not being Olympus. I suppose historical reasons are behind this. As mentioned the disappearing creek.

Vegetation layer is another critical aspect to be covered but I believe work is being done in some countries on that. A lot of gifted volunteers are making light work of the task.

Cheers

[tastrax]

Edited - misread post

[Ent]

Well contour 5m installed on Garmin 62S along with Shonky and OSM. Still fumbling around in the dark but the Garmin 62s appears to have enough horse power to haul the load. Next trick is to find out how to install OSM maps onto Basecamp. And if it is possible to overlay OSM over Contour 5M in Basecamp on the PC as done on the unit. Played with free iPhone App that downloads OSM. Note too sure how up-to-date the data is but performance impressive. Looking at a few GPS conversion apps for the iPhone but appears rather a new market area.

Still a long way to go but as mentioned already noticing the number of tracks that OSM has on it. Lot of naming of features to do but it looks like a worthwhile tool to planning and tracking a walk. Oh and yes managed to get Mapinstall to fall over. Think the reason is the 4GB map limit.

Actually having good fun as I understand a bit more. Now how to get the Garmin 62S out of night mode! O'well as said a long way to go.

Cheers

[photohiker]

And if it is possible to overlay OSM over Contour 5M in Basecamp on the PC as done on the unit.

Not possible. save your energy for something else, Basecamp only shows one map at a time. I showed a screenshot like that earlier in the thread, but it was photoshopped.

Now how to get the Garmin 62S out of night mode!

turn it on during the day?

I think you can turn off the auto day/night feature in the settings.

[Ent]

Hi Photohiker

Um? Night is the only time I have to play with the Garmin 62S but no doubt buried somewhere is the instructions. As for Basecamp, it is rather easy to use and currently stores all my tracks but if there is something better what be its name?

Cheers

[photohiker]

I haven't seen anything that will overlay garmin format transparent contours on a map other than a Garmin GPS.

Let me know if you find one.

I'll grab a screenshot of openmtbmap in hike rendering later and post it here.

[tastrax]

To turn off night mode

Menu, menu, setup, display, colours (mode and setup), Mode - Switch it to DAY rather than AUTO

[Ent]

Hi Tastrax

Thanks for the instructions, well give it a go tonight.

Hi Photohiker

Yeap gradually working out what tools to use. First step is to get OSM into Basecamp as I directly loaded it as an img onto the SD card for the 62s. Nothing can beat a full size monitor for getting a perspective of an area. Also trying to stick with what I know.

Well with OSM named a few streets, corrected a few street layouts and added a lake. Also put speed limits in on a few streets.

Noticed a lot of the mapping appears to have been done by tourists as say Stanley is well mapped but Devonport rather average at this stage. But that will change.

Bit curious what "protection" there is from vandals as I am sure a low life or zealot or two will want to play games. Be a real pity if every street with a police station is renamed to some offensive term with highway speed limit.

Cheers

[photohiker]

Bit curious what "protection" there is from vandals as I am sure a low life or zealot or two will want to play games. Be a real pity if every street with a police station is renamed to some offensive term with highway speed limit.

Yes. It happens. There is pretty good version control at openstreetmap, and changes can be backed out. Like wikipedia (but more direct), users get a dressing down and repeat offenders get the boot. If someone has added to the area since the vandalism occurred then there might be some redo work required.

[Ent]

To turn off night mode

Menu, menu, setup, display, colours (mode and setup), Mode - Switch it to DAY rather than AUTO

Hi tastrax

Thanks for that. Eliminated one of my pet hates of the Garmin 62S.

Cheers

[Ent]

Hi Photohiker

Looked at the http://openmtbmap.org website and boy do they know how to annoy people. Donate, Donate, Donate, Donate, yeap to what? Try to create a login and wind up speaking German. All I want to do is download the maps of Australia so I can look at them with Basecamp but the site designers are so obsessed with extracting money that they actually forgot people might just like to see if things actually work.

Hang-on, I think I might of got something to work. Stay tuned.

Cheers

[Ent]

Um? Rather indifferent quality and by the looks of the map appears to be last updated 1/6/2012. Why ask if you want contours and then not provide them? No think I will skip that mob and keep on looking.

The Australian OSM site that creates the img file is great for the actual device with 24 hour update but Basecamp installers are rather harder to find. O'well Google is my friend.

Cheers

[Ent]

Hi

Well the great GPS shoot out continues. Sthughes brought forth a ASUS Nexus 7" screen tablet running OziExplorer to match the MemoryMap iPhone and my Garmin 62s. Garmin 62s is still king but the ASUS is not shabby. Excellent battery life, fantastic screen but suffers from the usual issue of cases devices of condensation buildup even in a waterproof case. Now the battery life means it can go for a couple of days and the GPS trace stood up well. Now in open areas an iPhone running MemoryMap can work but once in a valley you might as well plan to swim across the river and back again if you want to follow its track. The Nexus Asus is a different beast and held up well in the steeper valleys. A rather unusual choice some would say but the Asus Nexus is proving that non tradditonal GPS devices are chewing away at dedicated GPSs. Now as pointed out by SOB the accuracy of the plot can have lot to do with the software and it appears that either the Asus has a better GPS or OziExlporer kills MemoryMap in GPS mode. As we found Bitmap is far superior in GPS mode than MemoryMap.

Cheers