{"id":4117,"date":"2013-06-03T17:49:42","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T21:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/?p=4117"},"modified":"2013-06-03T19:56:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T23:56:46","slug":"upgrading-to-a-garmin-oregon-gpsyes-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/2013\/06\/03\/upgrading-to-a-garmin-oregon-gpsyes-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Upgrading to a Garmin Oregon GPS–Yes, Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"91c3zV4wtZS._SL1500_\"<\/a>So, I finally broke down and got a Garmin Oregon 450.\u00a0 This is not a review.\u00a0 There are lots of reviews out there, anyway, and you can find all the details about the unit on the Garmin site<\/a>.\u00a0 Instead, my point here is just to mention its usefulness in the Bolivian context (or that of any other out of the way, difficult to map, place), which, in my view, is where the Oregon shines, and perhaps to help people get the most of the unit if they buy it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx for some years now, and I swear by it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a great unit.\u00a0 It\u2019s shown me the way, or at least tracked my paths, across much of Kyrgyzstan and wide swaths of the USA, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and even Bolivia.\u00a0 Maps are always the problem in these places (well, except for the good old US of A), but Open Street Map and various extensions from OSM have filled the gap handily, if not by any means completely.<\/p>\n

The Oregon 450 has a much larger and nicer touch screen, is much easier to use, has all kinds of gimmicks and facilities (like 3-D view and customizable profiles), but the real reason for moving to the Oregon 450 (or one of its brother units) is the ability to install custom maps on it.<\/p>\n

The custom maps feature means that you can put any map you can get a scan of onto your GPS (with some limitations, more on that below).\u00a0 In Bolivia, where the Instituto Geographico Militar has put its whole collection online<\/a>, that is a real bonanza.\u00a0 And the facility works well, with the following caveats:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 The size limits are pretty restrictive.\u00a0 Only jpg files are accepted (no progressive scan), they must be smaller than 3 mb, and images over 1 megapixel (1024×1024 pixels, 512×2048 pixels, etc.) render at a degraded resolution.\u00a0 The maximum resolution is 155 dpi.\u00a0 In practical terms, that seem to mean that I can get about 1\/32 of a Bolivian 50k topo map on a single jpg tile.\u00a0 That is something under 5×5 km.\u00a0 Not very useful for driving on the roads, but not so bad for hiking or treking.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 The workaround, is that up to 100 custom maps can reside on your Oregon (500 on some premium units), so, with a fair amount of work (more on that below) you could cover, what, 500x500k?\u00a0 That\u2019s respectable!\u00a0 An unlimited number of files can reside in one \u201ckmz file envelope (up to the limit of 100, I suppose).\u201d<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 The learning curve for getting this done is not undemanding.\u00a0 The process for going from a 5x5km cuadrangle of an IGM .pdf 50k topo map is as follows (with software recommendations, where necessary):<\/p>\n

a.\u00a0 Download your map from the IGM site.<\/p>\n

b.\u00a0 Convert the file to a .jpg.\u00a0 There are dozens of converters available online.\u00a0 The one I use, PDF Converter v1.26, is very simple, but I\u2019m afraid it may not be available any longer.\u00a0 It\u2019s publisher is now offering the ImagePrinter Free<\/a>, which seems like it might do the job, as well.\u00a0 If you are going to do this with a lot of maps, it might be worth getting something with batch capabilities.<\/p>\n

c.\u00a0 Cut the file down to the right size and convert to the right dpi (155).\u00a0 I use Adobe Lightroom 4<\/a> for this, since I have Lightroom on my computer for my photography anyway.\u00a0 It does the job very well.\u00a0 That said, there are probably better applications for this purpose.\u00a0 You want to take some care here.\u00a0 The next step will be geo-referencing the image in Google Earth.\u00a0 Though that always involves some adjustment, regardless of how you start, it will be significantly easier if you start from an easy to recognize set of geo-coordinates.\u00a0 For that reason, I try to crop the maps on well defined latitude and longitude coordinates.\u00a0 The UTM coordinates are marked better on the Bolivian maps, but they are complicated to convert and only partially supported in Google Earth, so using them is much more difficult.<\/p>\n

d.\u00a0 The rest of the job is done in Google Earth.\u00a0 Find the approximate location where your map goes, and click add\/image overlay.\u00a0 In the dialogue box that opens, put a name for the map, and then link to your map jpg.\u00a0 Use the \u201clocation\u201d tab to input the lat\/lon of the edges of your jpg.\u00a0 Fiddle with the transparency slider to see how the map lines up with the satellite imagery below.\u00a0 This is a major disappointment.\u00a0 I have no idea why (somebody tell me!) but the maps are NEVER actually lined up.\u00a0 In fact, all geographic locations are always too the north, on the map, of where they show up in Google Earth.\u00a0 As far as I can tell using the GPS, Google Earth is right, and not the map, so move the overlaid map around until the lakes and roads match.\u00a0 Once you have the overlaid jpg file where it belongs, go to the altitude tab.\u00a0 Change the Draw Order, which defaults to 0.\u00a0 To get it to draw on top of the base map on the unit, the draw order should be more than 50.\u00a0 Finally, hit Ok to save your work.<\/p>\n

e.\u00a0 You\u2019re almost there.\u00a0 The map has been saved in the \u201cPlaces\u201d list on the left.\u00a0 You can put multiple maps into a folder in that list, and then right-click on anything to \u201csave place as.\u201d\u00a0 Browse to your connected GPS and save the resultant kmz file to the Custom Maps directory (under the Garmin directory).\u00a0 When you turn your GPS on again, if you did everything right, your new custom maps will be available.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"An<\/a>

An area near Zongo that I am planning to explore, with the maps loaded into Google and ready to upload to the GPS.<\/p><\/div>\n

Another Hint<\/p>\n

Custom maps are great, but they are a lot of work.\u00a0 You can improve your Garmin GPS experience in places without top flight (and expensive) Garmin maps by going to mapas.alternativaslibres.es<\/a>.\u00a0 Here you can get excellent, routable maps, based on Open Street Map, AND altitude contour lines courtesy of NASA\/JPL-Caltech.\u00a0 And we all know that altitude is crucial in Bolivia.<\/p>\n

Have fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, I finally broke down and got a Garmin Oregon 450.\u00a0 This is not a review.\u00a0 There are lots of reviews out there, anyway, and you can find all the details about the unit on the Garmin site.\u00a0 Instead, my point here is just to mention its usefulness in the Bolivian context (or that of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,60,58,57,91],"tags":[171,169,168],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4117"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4133,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117\/revisions\/4133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}