I was screwing around this morning trying to figure out how to make a Garmin Map from the OSM Open Street Map data. It's fairly straight forward, so I thought I would share:
First, get the data you want from OSM. Second, convert it to Garmin format. Third, load it on your Garmin GPS. East as 1-2-3.
Go to http://www.openstreetmap.org and use the zoom tools to get just the view of the world you want for your map. In this example, I wanted a map of the Shan States, so i browsed, zoomed, and played with the window size to get just what i wanted.
Then, click on the EXPORT command at the top left. Then you can download the file (if its small). If your selection is too big, which it is usually will be, you can press on the "Overpass API" link to automatically start the download. Like this:
So, now you have a file called "map" on your computer (in your download folder) with all the data you need. You just need to convert to Garmin.
To do that, you can use a java program called "mkgmap"
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mkgmap#Downloadable_Maps
This program will convert the map file to Garmin. It's a command line program, so you need to know how to do that, but that's pretty easy. On a Mac, just open Terminal, on a PC, type cmd or whatever in the start menu (i forget).
Anyway, before you run the program, its easiest if you put the map file in the same folder with the mkgmap program and you also put another text file there called whatever you like, but i used "optionsfile.args". In this text file, i put the following:
family-name: OSM Shan States
series-name: OSM Shan States
description: OSM Shan States
route
add-pois-to-areas
index
name-tag-list=name:en
First, get the data you want from OSM. Second, convert it to Garmin format. Third, load it on your Garmin GPS. East as 1-2-3.
Go to http://www.openstreetmap.org and use the zoom tools to get just the view of the world you want for your map. In this example, I wanted a map of the Shan States, so i browsed, zoomed, and played with the window size to get just what i wanted.
Then, click on the EXPORT command at the top left. Then you can download the file (if its small). If your selection is too big, which it is usually will be, you can press on the "Overpass API" link to automatically start the download. Like this:
So, now you have a file called "map" on your computer (in your download folder) with all the data you need. You just need to convert to Garmin.
To do that, you can use a java program called "mkgmap"
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mkgmap#Downloadable_Maps
This program will convert the map file to Garmin. It's a command line program, so you need to know how to do that, but that's pretty easy. On a Mac, just open Terminal, on a PC, type cmd or whatever in the start menu (i forget).
Anyway, before you run the program, its easiest if you put the map file in the same folder with the mkgmap program and you also put another text file there called whatever you like, but i used "optionsfile.args". In this text file, i put the following:
family-name: OSM Shan States
series-name: OSM Shan States
description: OSM Shan States
route
add-pois-to-areas
index
name-tag-list=name:en
