Ent_World - OSM maps for Garmins

[sthughes]

And if you feel competitive this is a great little site to see how you are fairing against other mappers: http://www.hdyc.neis-one.org/
You can see your stats and those of others as well as how you rank in various categories.

Also there is a "heat map" of where they've been contributing. http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/:wink:

The data can take a few days to update, especially the heat map. Here is my pathetic heat map versus Ent's!

sthughes

Ent

[photohiker]

Once you have done things a few times it gets easier. Then I can introduce you the more powerful editor that I use, JOSM. Some people love it and other people love to hate it. I have reached ambivalence with it. The standard web-based editor Polatch 2 has far more users and very powerful so no need to change from that for some considerable time as you learn the ropes.

Just an update on OSM Editors. Potlatch and Potlach2 have been the standard in-browser editors for some time, but there is a new kid on the block, and I rather like it: It's called iD

http://www.mapbox.com/blog/new-map-edit ... streetmap/

Today iD, a modern in-browser map editor, launches on OpenStreetMap.org. This editor is a critical update to OpenStreetMap's tool set and it is designed to radically improve the first-time editing experience while providing a fast and intuitive interface for anybody mapping on OpenStreetMap.

iD ships with an interactive tutorial, inline help and a much more intuitive UI helping users to map hundreds of distinct features like roads, trails, buildings, parks, cafés, schools and hospitals.

This release is the culmination of a concentrated seven month sprint kicked off together with Richard Fairhurst, creator of both previous web-based OpenStreetMap editors, and supported by a substantial grant from the Knight Foundation. Over the course of this sprint dozens of contributors have chimed in with patches large and small, and the amazing international OpenStreetMap community has translated iD into two dozen languages.

We have written iD from the ground up in Javascript using state of the art libraries like D3 and having reuse in mind. The code is open source, allowing for unrestricted reuse in any other software project. Our intention is not only to radically improve editing on OpenStreetMap.org, but also to lay the groundwork for a new generation of fast in-browser tools in OpenStreetMap.

The easier it is to contribute, the better!

[GPSGuided]

I might agree with you and not GPSguided on this point. OSM is heavily a programmer driven project so most sites and information can be geek and ancient geek. As GPSguided has pointed out the http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ is a good base for img files but even then it has cryptic things like typ and mapnik...

My earlier point was limited to AndrewP's problem of not seeing tracks. As for OSM being geeky, that's a separate consideration not referenced in the earlier post.

[andrewp]

Thanks all.

Like most I am time poor, so it may take a while to investigate.

When I said I couldn't see tracks, I have only been looking via Basecamp. I haven't tried them on a GPS. I assumed that it would be the same. I have tried several different download sites - OSM Australia and I'm sure I tried the nl site as well.

Cheers
Andrew

[Ent]

I was addressing the first point. Yes any track in OSM should show up on a Garmin providing the type of path has not been excluded by the style file. What drove me to develop img myself was the main tracks I was interested got lost on Garmin once I zoomed out past 300 metre level and on other Garmins 120 metre level. Made finding them very hard unless you were on them.

So I have footways appearing up to the 12 km zoom level but actually when you do that they do "disappear". They go white on an off white background. Hence, the use of a typ sheet to "bring them back". Sort of cross wires on what your understanding of disappear is

Actually Andrew that is probably happening with the standard img on Basecamp, as you zoom out there is no matching type so the lines "disappear". Hopefully mine does not have that issue.

Cheers

[Ent]

Actually interested in running from a USB thumb drive. The maps come up if run from my Garmin but I get a map error when I try to run them from a thumb drive. Do you merely create the Garmin directory on the thumb drive and copy Ent_World.img to it or this there some other thing I am missing?

Cheers

[tastrax]

Mmmm - I also have a way to go before I catch Ent!

OSM_heatmap.JPG (15.25 KiB) Viewed 44490 times

[sthughes]

Nice work on the latest edition Ent, looks great.

It's cruel, but I'll ask anyway; How about shaded relief? :-p

[Ent]

Nice work on the latest edition Ent, looks great.

It's cruel, but I'll ask anyway; How about shaded relief? :-p

Not sure if mkgmap can do shaded relief as I believe Garmin's trick is to use the raster imagine with transparency to do this but as said that I have no idea. Anyway I have asked the question of those that know more than me.

Cheers

[Ent]

Oh yes sthughes. Did you have a chance to check out the rendering of your scree field?

Cheers

[sthughes]

Oh yes sthughes. Did you have a chance to check out the rendering of your scree field?

Cheers

Yeah, looks good.

388.jpg (22.7 KiB) Viewed 44473 times

[Ent]

Hi sthughes

Well given that this tested my ability to understand the style file and the typ file plus my very limited artistic ability I think brilliant This was a bug bear of mine with OSM that you have a lot of tags to use but more than a few are not rendered so why use them? Scree was one. So chalk that one off as done.

Now who wants a life time job of identifying all the scree in Tasmania? I am sure in Europe they have problem done the gravel drives up to the official residents

Cheers


PS
Think on the weekend I will re-run the map with the latest OSM data and bring another change or two into the typ file.

Any other feedback peoples?

[andrewp]

Hi Ent,

Actually interested in running from a USB thumb drive. The maps come up if run from my Garmin but I get a map error when I try to run them from a thumb drive. Do you merely create the Garmin directory on the thumb drive and copy Ent_World.img to it or this there some other thing I am missing?

I have Garmin Topo on and SD card. I copied the complete SD card to a USB and was able to use Garmin Topo in Basecamp without the GPS connected. There is a file Id.txt in the root that contains 32 hex digits (some kind of GUID?). Then there is the Garmin directory containing the img. I copied your Ent_World.img to the Garmin directory on the SD and then copied it back to the USB from the GPS. I did get map errors at one stage and ended up deleting everything from the USB and copying it all back from the SD via the GPS. Yesterday I copied your new version directly to the USB, overwriting the original, without any problems.

By the way it works well in Basecamp. I think I've got a bit of a learning curve for typ files and styles.

Cheers

[Ent]

Hi andrewp

Thanks for the information. Copied directly from the Garmin and it worked. Interesting it now believes that my thumb drive is the Garmin Rino so maybe that little file tells Basecamp all is well as the SD card is in the Garmin. Anyway working well and hopefully this will short cut my testing process as loading on to Garmin, starting it up and then finding things on the small screen is rather time consuming compared to quickly looking on the full screen in Basecamp.

So the knowledge base grows Thanks for that.

[Ent]

Hi All

Ent_World has been updated using the most recent OSM data from 26.07.2013 and a few enhancements. They being. Bridges now appear on footways as parallel lines. The footway line has been slightly changed to improve its readability. Scree is now labelled so screen will appear if enough space, and/or will come up with scree if the cursor is positioned over it.

The Readme file has been updated with the following. Numbered headings and table of contents added with formatting cleaned up. New sections addeded for “Summary of changes in Ent_World”, “Website links”, “How can you help”, “Glossary and abbreviations”, and “Document version changes”.

So for the members of the NW Walking club you should be able to see if a track crossing a river has a bridge That is assuming and OSM mapper has put one in.

On the OSM data side. The file I use is a PBF format and the Tasmanian extract thanks to all mappers efforts has broken the 8MB barrier. Top job as without the source data the maps would look rather blank.

Cheer

[samh]

Thanks ent for your hard work. The maps also work on Android using the OruxMaps app, although a turn by turn navigation is not possible on that app.

[Ent]

Hi All

In case those of you without Garmins are wondering what all the fuss is about I have uploaded into Ent World a Windows based program that used the OSM data and the SRTM contour data. The beauty of this freeware program is it can generate hill shading on the PC Ok it is not the Garmin but it is a start. Only thing is the program is rather slooooow on my laptop.

To use it I did the following.

1. Downloaded the https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g7nxh1xwjrlx ... latest.zip and unzip it and put in a directory that you can find.

2. Download the OSM source data https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g7nxh1xwjrlx ... ia.osm.pbf and save it to same directory

3. Download the STRM contour information https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g7nxh1xwjrlx ... ntours_20M and save it to the same directory.

4. In the directory run the exe file Maperitive.

5. Open up the tasmania.osm.pbf and the tasmania_lon*.osm files (by selecting them all)

And start to playing. I have only had a quick play so managed to display contours and hill shading by using things I found in the tools menu.

This might be a project for sthughes as he loves graphical interfaces and contour lines

Anyway have fun and let me know how you go.

Cheers

[Ent]

Oh boy I miss the edit button.

Anyway here is the website you will find Maperitive at and where the zip file came from. http://maperitive.net/ to give the credit to the developer.

Cheers

[Ent]

And for those that like pictures here is one taken from my short play with Maperitive. Not bad for something that cost nothing

Cheers

[greyim]

Haha a wet avo finally got this far ... looks good

[greyim]

Have I got wrong contour file??

[Ent]

Hi

You have loaded in the OSM data file ok by the looks of it. The best way is to load in all the contour files and I did it by opening up the directory and selecting the first file and then holding the Ctrl key down and moving the slider bar to the bottom and selecting the last file and this should highlight all the files. Or better still just Ctrl + A and all the file will be selected as per the picture and then press the open button. Because of the size of the contour files it for Ent_World to split them into smaller files.

See how all the files are selected.

Cheers

[greyim]

BLBL2.jpg (26.69 KiB) Viewed 44334 times

Thanks will do Ent Meantime, I have loaded the Oregon 400 got the other problem (only contours) but fixed it...
"One thing I have experienced on my Garmin 62S was for some strange reason only the
contours would show no matter what I did. Thought it was my failed attempts but a version of
the img files that had worked then had the same problem. Err? Um? Take batteries out and
throw 62S at the wall and walk away in a bad mood. No that did not fix it. Enable and disable
every map and switch unit off and rename the gmapsupp.ing file back to it proper name and
install Ent_World as Ent_World.img "
What I did was move all the img files to a spare folder (on the oregon) the renamed Ent_World.img to gmapsupp.img and hey presto looking great

[Ent]

Hi

What is the date of the img file? Is it one of the new ones that loaded up yesterday? If it is the new one then I had hoped that had fixed the problem. The interesting thing on the Garmin 62S if you copy the old gmapsupp.img back and load Ent_World.img as that then it will work still work. I had hoped that the new Ent_World.img would not have that problem.

Anyway great that you have both Garmins up and running. I am now testing the Ent_World.img file in Basecamp using a thumb drive. Hopefully I have improved a few things so the next version will look better.

Meantime I hope that OSM mappers are in high gear on this wet weekend adding stuff. I have been back adding more mountains and lakes. Notice sthughes has added a few swamps/wetlands and they are making the map look more complete. It is amazing what light work can be made of mapping with many hands. A lot of work is required on rivers and creeks as they help "position" you on the map.

Cheers

[corvus]

And for those that like pictures here is one taken from my short play with Maperitive. Not bad for something that cost nothing

Cheers

Ent there aint no free lunch! or do you have a free provider of downloads ??
corvus

[Ent]

Hi

I am madly mapping at the moment and trying to get English terms converted to Aussie use.

So is Fell good enough to describe sedge?

And heath is that low alpine scrub? Tasmap use this term.

And what would you pitch your tent on?

I am aerial mapping and looking for potential campsites so would like to describe them by ground cover rather than covering the countryside in camping symbols for what is not really a "campsite".

Cheers

[greyim]

Big thing here is button grass

[Ent]

And congratulation that is now sthughes in the top five thousand worldwide node creator and just in the top ten thousand way originator. Roll on 2075 and we should have Tassie covered

Cheers

[Ent]

And after much translation of geek I can now download contour lines in any increments from the NASA website thanks to people that I will likely never know personally. So working on improving the data. My planned update fell flat as my new site only updates once a week and they are a day behind us Yeap should have read the fine print. My other source server has gone anti-social and put on leather boots and is goose stepping shouting forbidden.

Also the battle is about to start with our Federal Government. In Europe and the USA a private citizen has access to the 1 second contours (read 30 metre contour) data free of charge. But in Australia depending on what web page you read it is either a military secret or commercial in-confidence data But then you see another page that says it is free So what is going on? I tried to extract the data from the Government website but got lost in the geek and just its crummy layout plus my boy bovine byproduct limit had been reached getting the basic SRTM data to work.

Honestly our various governments play way to much silly blighters with mapping data. Since when could anyone say that 30 metre contour data is a military secret? Do not be caught with a Tasmap with 10M contours or you could wind up on a treason charge?

Let the battle commence tomorrow, oh that is here already Time to sleep.

Cheers

[Ent]

After a long battle with the dark forces of the Geekdom Empire the next release of Ent_World has been completed. As reparations the Bass Strait Islands have been wrestled from the Kennetts (actually they sold them for a song, "Money to tight to mention"). The Ent tool chest has been further added to with now the ability as mentioned to extract contours in various gradients from the SRTM for any area that they are available. I can now take the huge Australian.pbf file and secede Ent_World from it. To avoid Telstra from becoming even richer, thanks to the dedicated OSM community, I only need to download the changes every day for Australia so less than a MB. The result though is a larger Ent_World img at around 37MB.

I have updated the documentation and following is a list of changes.

The names of lakes is now show providing that sufficient screen space exists without having to move the cursor over them. This is handy on the bigger computer screen viewing maps in Basecamp. The speckled effect caused by small islands in lakes has been removed. Tracks now have names appearing against them. The sea is now generated from a pre-compile sea file so should be bit more reliable but sadly is not. O’well it gets added to the to-do list. And as mentioned the Bass Strait islands have been restored to Ent_World. OSM data 2013-08-04.

So always your input into OSM is appreciated and constructive feedback. Just one thing. The Western Arthur track appears to have a duplicate track to Port Davey. Could someone familiar with that area have a look and select the best defined plot.

Cheers