OpenStreetMap for Garmin

Maps for download were last updated November 2-n, 2013. Maps are still available for download, but this service will be stopped soon as well.

Please use Osm2Garmin tool to generate maps yourself.

Because of 4 Gb limit overflow of the Central Europe region, starting from the 2013-04-05 1:00 maps snapshot, boundaries of all three European regions are slightly changed.

Western Europe region was changed again for 2013-07-21 9:00 snapshot.

Please check http://osm.blog.mantlik.cz/maps/ for current regions outlines.

Vuze plugin was updated to the version 0.5.

New features:

• Fixed problem with USA regions switch.
• Added Central Europe region.
• Updated libraries.

Users are recommended to install the new version.

Instructions for installation of the new version can be found here: http://osm.blog.mantlik.cz/vuze_plugin/

Do not unistall old version of the plugin, simply install the new version over the old version.

Significant growth of the OpenStreetMap database has been noticed after license change finished. This causes problems with size of compiled Garmin maps. To avoid overflow over the 4 Gb FAT32 limit, starting from the snapshot 2012-10-25 17:00 following changes take place:

• New region central_europe has been created and boundaries of the regions eastern_europe and western_europe have been shifted accordingly.
• Western boundary of the asia_north region has been shifted to the East as eastern_europe eastern boundary moved to the East as well.

Vuze plugin users have to check the new region at the plugin options page in order to include it into the download process.

Starting from OSM snapshot timestamp 2012-08-30 0:00, delta files are distributed with zeroed new data. That means, that after decoding old gmapsupp.img file with the corresponding delta file, only parts of old file contained in the new file are copied. The rest is filled in with zeroes.

This strategy has two significant advantages:

• Delta files become much smaller and can be downloaded quickly. E.g. the whole set of delta files for the whole planet timestamp 2012-08-30 0:00 takes 456 Mb only while the previous set took more than 8 Gb.
• When old maps are patched, full maps torrent is used to download the rest of data. That moves majority of torrent downloads to the main cloud instead of downloading updates from pure diff clouds.

Vuze plugin can handle new diff files without problems. When appropriate delta file is downloaded by the plugin and the old map is patched, the whole set is rechecked and rest of data is downloaded from the maps torrent.

On the other hand, when you patch your maps yourself, copy the patched file to the appropriate place in the maps structure and recheck it according the maps torrent with the use of your BitTorrent client. Finally, download missing data.

Technical details concerning procedures used for zeroed delta files creation can be found here: https://code.google.com/p/xdeltaencoder/issues/detail?id=4

Starting from July 2012, maps update frequency has been changed to approx. 6x per year. This allows torrent clouds to be developed reasonably regardless of slow upload from the main seeding server.

Starting from 2012-06-14, southern boundary of the Asia South region has been moved to the Equator in order to keep size of the resulting map suitable to fit FAT32 filesystem limit.

Version 0.4 of Vuze plugin is available for download at http://www.mantlik.cz/tracker/torrents/osm4garmin.jar.

Upgrade from previous version:

• uninstall old version of the plugin
• download and install the new version.

Version number of the plugin can be checked at plugin options page after installation.

Changes from version 0.3:

• Added new regions names after maps generation procedure has been changed to Osm2garmin.
• Maps download now starts automatically when update procedure is started.
• Several minor bug fixes.

Starting from map snapshot 2012-02-28, maps generating procedure has changed to Osm2garmin. The procedure change implies following changes:

• Better maps are generated because of newer version of mkgmap utility built in Osm2garmin application.
• Built in address search index – currently experimental, not working correctly in all areas.
• Completely rewritten contours generation procedure. Contours density is more sensitive to the terrain shape in given area. Smaller contours interval is set in flat areas.
• Changes in areas distribution – 12 areas are generated instead of former 10 areas. Introduced Central America area and Africa is newly split to North Africa and South Africa. Europe slitting moved further to the west.

Slow download? Try my new Osm2garmin application. The procedure of the maps download and processing has been wrapped to a single Java application. You can find more information and download current version here:

http://osm2garmin.googlecode.com

Application screenshot: