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Reading Maps

Started by Robbohol, April 10, 2014, 04:09:29 AM

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Robbohol

Hi there,

I've an etrex 20 that I use for riding and hiking.  I've made custom maps but can't find them on the device.  I can view them in basecamp, which is reading them from the sd card inside the etrex, but when I go to maps on the device, they don't appear.

Can anyone help?

cheers,

Boyd

You will need to tell us much mor before anyone can help. When you say "custom maps", what do you mean? Are they .kmz files or .img files? The term is often used for both, but they are very different.

What software did you use to create the maps?

How did you send them to your eTrex?

What directory are they in?

What are the names of the files?

How large are they?

Have you tried installing other maps of the same type, such as the ones on this site?

Red90

On the map setup page on the GPS, are all other maps turned off and this map turned on?

Robbohol

Hi,

I made a map using google earth and transferred it to the microsd by drag and drop.  I put it into the garmin directory on the microsd card, where my waypoints get stored.  Its a .kmz file named Japan.kmz.  It is about 17mb.  I can view it on basecamp, but it does not appear on my map list when I turn the device on.  I tried to put it onto the device memory itself and it said it was too large, but when it's on the microsd, it simply doesn't seem to know it is there.

I also have a Japan map in .img version that basecamp reads from the microsd but the device doesn't pick it up.

Red90 - the custom maps don't appear on the map setup page, so I can't check this.

cheers,

Boyd

You can't just "put it on the micro SD card", it must be in a specific place. For regular maps, place the .img file inside the Garmin folder. If the card doesn't already have a Garmin folder, create one. For custom maps, you must create a folder named CustomMaps *inside* the Garmin folder and place the .kmz file there. This works the same on a .kmz card as well as internal memory.

But there are a number of reasons why a .kmz file may work in Basecamp but not on the device, Basecamp is not as picky. Make sure that the name of the .kmz file only contains letters and numbers. Do not use black spaces or special characters (like @&#*%+) in the file name. Make sure the .kmz file only contains .jpg images and make sure they are NOT progressive .jpg. The .kmz can contain multiple .jpg files, but each .jpg can be no larger than 1024x1024 pixels.

Also, make sure that the SD card is formatted as FAT32 or it won't be recognized.

Hopefully this should help.  :)

wagonrd

Too hard! how about just downloading a .gpx topo map and telling these .img maps to get lost.

Robbohol

Hi Boyd,

Thanks for the advice.  I had a space in the name, which was preventing the etrex from reading it!  Now I have a correct file name, it reads but the map I have made is way too big, its 17mb.  Is there a quick or easy way to shrink it?  The original jpeg map I used is 17mb, so I'm not sure how to proceed.  I've tried cropping it in preview, but for some reason it won't allow me to save any changes.

cheers,

Rob

Boyd

Great, you're making progress. :) Since you mention Preview, does that mean you're on a Mac? There are a couple very good programs for making this kind of map, but they are Windows-only


http://www.the-thorns.org.uk/mapping/
http://moagu.com/?page_id=155

They will split the image into multiple files as needed. Your eTrex allows you to have a maximum of 100 individual images encapsulated in the .kmz file.

17 MB should not be a problem in and of itself, it soulds like your issue is that the image is larger than 1024 x 1024 pixels. You could use Photoshop to scale the image down if you don't have access to a Windows machine. There are other alternatives, like GIMP which is free: http://www.gimp.org

But really, if you want to make useful maps then it's necessary to break the image into multiple 1024x1024 tiles. And that will be very tedious unless you have a program like the Windows ones above to help.

Robbohol

Thanks, Boyd.  I finally managed to track down a windows machine I could use and have used mapc2mapc to get the images down to 1024x1024.  The etrex 20 reads it perfectly!

Thanks for all the advice!

Boyd

Great - glad I could help!