[GRASS-user] Making and Uploading Maps for Garmin Etrex Legend GPS

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 10:12:08AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> flavor, containing:
> I see some room for confusion here. I think on Garmins the basemaps 
> "built-in maps" are not vector format but raster format .img files.
> So the short answer is you can't dump them on the way you're trying to, 
> you need to convert them.

Try looking at cgpsmapper and GPSMapEdit.  Neither is open source, but 
both work under WINE on linux.  There's a Linux build of cgpsmapper, too.
These tools will let you create maps for your Garmin GPS from various vector 
data (with a lot of work).  See:

http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm

for a walk through the process and links to the tools.

Since you've already imported your GPX files from gpsbabel into GRASS, you
can just export them as shapefiles for reading into GPSMapEdit.

GPSMapEdit will read shapefiles, but it's a bit of a chore to get it Just Right.There is talk about making an OGR output format that can handle the "Polish"
format used by cgpsmapper, but it ain't there yet.  I'm not aware of any
other tool than GPSMapEdit that can write Polish format from shapefiles.

HTH,
T.

> John C. Tull wrote:
> > I've used gpsbabel for moving points, tracks, and routes to/from a 
> > Garmin GPSV.
> > 
> > http://www.gpsbabel.org
> > 
> > John
> > 
> > On Aug 7, 2008, at 5:17 AM, John Stevenson wrote:
> > 
> >> I have digitised some points, roads and a lake in GRASS and would like 
> >> to be able to upload them onto my Garmin Etrex Legend.
> >>
> >> I have been able to use v.out.ogr format=kml to output the points, and 
> >> can upload them to the GPS with gpsbabel.
> >> However, I would like the roads and the lake to be loaded into the 
> >> built-in maps.  I read a post on the GRASS mailing list archive that 
> >> mentioned cGPSmapper, but it seems like this only works with ESRI 
> >> shape files (v.out.ogr again) if you have one of the paid-for versions.
> >>
> >> Is there any open source software that can do this?  Can GRASS export 
> >> in a format that can be more easily converted to be compatible with 
> >> the GPS?

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours."  -- R. Bach