Open Source Maps for Garmin GPS
 

So I was preparing my trip to Hawaii in September/October.
I updated my Garmin City Navigator for North America 2024 into BaseCamp and downloaded a new mapset to include Hawaii into my GPSMap 78s. So eventhough the street details show up for all the cities, it didn't work for Hawaii. All I see for Hawaii is a grey hash. I ended up chatting with Garmin but nothing worked. I even exported a separate file specifically for Hawaii into a gmapsupp.img file and put it into my GPS. But that didn't work either.

I went into BBBike.org and created an export file. I did that last year when I went to Portugal and it went quite well. However, my latest map request seems to tell me that BBBike.org is not active. The website says 2023 but I've been waiting a few hours for the notification when the website said it would be about seven minutes.

Anybody know of any other websites I could download osm maps for garmin gps? All my previous sources are now inactive.

Whats wrong with openstreetmap.org?

I have used BBBike.org, I hope it gets back to normal.

I have no clue if this will work:
https://www.gmaptool.eu/en/content/u...-topo-routable

I have never used this either:
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/267/

I have gotten maps at both of the above sources before, but never Hawaii, all I can say is good luck. Let us know if they work.

??? That site doesn't produce map files for Garmins.

https://www.userbeam.de/

Or more specifically:

https://www.userbeam.de/osm/maps/nor...ca/us-pacific/

You'll get the following file (maybe, in a zip file). Copy it to \Garmin on your device.

us-pacific_gmapsupp.img


There's also https://www.velomap.org/ but you will need to pay something.

I'm not sure what's up with bbbike. I used it in April. I'm sure it will be back.

I'm not sure how to use that site. It seems like where you create new maps. I navigated around that site but couldn't figure out how to extract maps.

I ended up using www.openmapchest.org. Got the Hawaii map. Openmapchest seems limited. No Turkey, no Hong Kong. (I went to Turkey in May on a guided tour. So I didn't need my own map.)


Thanks everybody.

I'll save all those other suggestions for future reference. You never know when another site will stop working.

That post was not useful.

Openstreetmap or OSM (https://openstreetmap.org/ ) is the source for the map data used in the files you are downloading.

That site does not provide Garmin map files.

The sites that create maps get the data from OSM and use another program to convert the OSM data to the img format the Garmins use.

Oops, my bad. I totally misremembered the create map set & download wasn't through OSM, but it a tool that used OSM as the source.

I have since retraced my steps from my original memory of DC Rainmaker. And see that following DC's link listed in "Part One: Downloading the Maps" to the OSM BBB map creation tool yields a warning and an automatic redirect to here: https://garmin.bbbike.org/

Sorry about my faulty memory. My Edge 520 has not needed a manual map update in many years. Connect does the job annoyingly well.

I too am having trouble creating a bounding box on my mobile device. But I expect a regular computer with mouse would have better luck. I'm actually a little interested because until it's a thing I always took for granted as a thing that would continue to be straight forward & simple to do.

Here is the background to that.

The site that DC Rainmaker’s post about downloading Garmin maps was abandoned a few years ago.

It sort of looked like it was working and it had “Openstreetmap” as part of the URL (though, it wasn’t part of the Openstreetmap organization.

DC Rainmaker’s post made things worse since it directed many people to the broken website.

So, it ended up Openstreetmap kept getting complaints about a website they had nothing to do with. That is, the URL falsely made it look like the site was owned by the Openstreetmap organization (which is likely why you were confused, like lots of people).

People talked about taking over the original site to fix the problem but there wasn’t anybody who could give access to the original site.

Given that the owner of the original site was fairly active in the community, it wasn’t likely he just walked away from maintaining the site. He even fixed a bug I reported.

It would have been no work to put up a page saying the site was no longer in operation.

It was ugly.

I suspect the owner of the original site died.

==========================

People ended up getting enough access to change the URL to redirect to the bbbike website.

Bbbike is great. But the region selection on the other site was easier to use.

Hopefully there will still be something to see in Hawaii when you get there, other than ashes.
What Garmin unit are you using? I have Garmin Lifetime Map Updates, and Hawaii is shown.

My device is the GPSMap 78s.

I also have the lifetime updates for City Navigator North America NT. In the 78s, all the cities (Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle) do show street details except for Hawaii. In BaseCamp, Hawaii works fine.

I have used the 78s all over the world. In the US I've been to Portland and Salem, Or and will be downloading Houston for April 2024.

As a test, I created two map requests both called " Hawaii". One is Garmin Openfietsmap Lite and the other one Garmin OSM.

The list 2-7 minutes is growing bigger and bigger. My two requests have been there for quite a while. But just now I see it's moved to Ready extracts list. No email notification.

Thanks. And thanks for the link on Userbeam, I had not seen that before.

You can download it from the ready list.

I don't see your Hawaii entries at all.

=================================

It took a few minutes when I tried it earlier. And I can see the earlier test in the completed list.

I ran another test (for HI) and can see my request in the queue (which is also changing).
My small HI test is still sitting in the queue. Later requests were processed. Hmm.
My request completed but it took a long time. I can see it in the completed list.

=================================

Interesting. My tiny HI test took a long time to complete. Other requests (that were much larger) completed much more quickly.

Once my request was completed, I received the email very quickly.

So, I'd say it works but, once in a while, it takes a long time,

You can track the process by looking at the queue.

I don't get email notifications at all. I did a search in my gmail and the last notification was in July 2022 when I requested Portugal.

When I was waiting for my two test requests, I was also searching for yesterday's request. Couldn't find it.

You should see your test requests in one of the lists. I don't see anything that could reasonably be your requests. What name did you use?

I ran two tests today. Both completed and I got two emails. One of the requests took a unexpectedly long time to complete.

(I didn't get an email from last night's test. I don't know if that request went on the queue.)

Post #13 (@11:45 am) was when I saw both my test requests go from the queue to the Ready extracts list.

Yesterday's request was also called "Hawaii" but doesn't appear anywhere. If you couldn't see my test requests of today, I guess there's a very narrow window to see and download it.

No.

I see my run from 11:45 EST. My two runs today are the "test" ones. There are no "Hawaii" entries after that.

You can select a 72h window for the completed requests and download them.

The list should include the time. The files in the downloaded zip file have a UTC time.

I just created a new request. It's called Daniel4 (Hawaii). Can you see it in the queue? Here's the screenshot.

Here is the Daniel4 (Hawaii) request in the Ready Extract list. Total time 16min. No email notification.

What email service are you using?

gmail

I looked in All Mail and Spam but found nothing.

That’s what I use.

So, you could use the service but you’d have to check the queue.

The option you ended up using should be fine.

I’m partial to custom regions.

Here's something interesting.

In my smartphone, I couldn't see the Daniel4 (Hawaii) file that had requested yesterday.https://download1.bbbike.org/osm/ext...h;sort_by=name

But on my laptop, which is where I did the request, it's clearly listed.
https://download3.bbbike.org/osm/ext...h;sort_by=name

It turns out the status page has different urls depending what kind of device you are using.

So I did a search on my smartphone using the url from my laptop and the Daniel4(Hawaii) file is clearly listed.