GPS map resource for Garmin?

I don't know anything about the Oregon but I'm still using my old Colorado 300, they were a few hundred new so I think it's a decent price. Just make sure you get the latest firmware off the Garmin site. Can't say which of the two is better though (it probably depends on what you're doing).

For free maps, off the top of my head there are these links but google probably knows more.
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/
http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/

You can also make custom maps from an image file by lining it up as a layer on Google Earth and exporting a KML file. I did that with some screenshots of Google Earth so I can have satellite views of some places I go.

>>929388
Awesome, thanks for the help. I'll contact the seller and arrange pickup.

Another quick question. This says it can transfer and receive waypoints and routes from other devices(using the ant+ system, I assume). If I buy the ant+ usb dongle, will the software let me update it wirelessly from the PC, or will I need to plug into it?

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Garmin's maps haven't lost any compatibility - some receivers support features that others don't, but the map will still generally work.

I have a 76Cx, ancient by today's standard, but I can still use the latest/greatest citynavigator and topo maps. There's additional data (DEM, mostly) that my receiver can't handle, but the map itself works to the level the receiver's capable of handling.

Mapset you go with depends first on the information you want.
I use CityNav on truck/moto, snowmobile I switch to topo.
Other thing to consider is consistency and quality. The free maps ... can be good, or might be real shitty. Worth trying, since they're free and all.
With all the travelling I do all over the country (i'm snowmobiling 1000+ miles from home right now, 3 states away) I put a lot of value on having consistent and high-quality maps over a very large (everything west of the mississippi river, more or less) area.

CityNav covers all of north america, so again, having consistent maps anywhere I go is worth the money.

Satellite/birdseye (or raster map upload in general) is cool. Bought a 78 a few years ago, but it turned out to be a real piece of shit so I bought another 76. That's the one feature I really wanted in that receiver.
Scan a trail map or MVUM, shove it in the receiver, and have that as a reference right there on my dash/handlebars.

GPSFileDepot is a good resource for free maps.

>still need to pull tracks off my GPS from today
>then pretrip/load waypoints for tomorrow's ride

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>>929506
>Error: You cannot delete a post this old.
>[Return]
more appropriate photo

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>>929397
That I don't know, I just plug mine in.

>>929529
Are we posting our handlebar mounts now?

>>929682
OK, another quick question. A lot of the reviews I see on it say the biggest faults with it are the awkward UI(from the wheel), the bad battery life, the horrible colour scheme(low contrast) it uses that almost requires you to keep the backlight on, and how entering multiple way points is painful since after each waypoint is made, it sends you back to your current location(so drawing a route has you traveling through the map using the slow moving 4-way buttons a bunch, even if the waypoints at the end are all close)

Was any of this fixed with firmware? I figure the controls will always suck, but the battery life could have been improved, and the high contrast colours should have been an obvious simple fix(and would also improve the battery life since you can dial back the backlight.)

Is it also possible to turn the screen off while still keeping the gps on to extend life? I know that was another complaint on release.

The etrex 30x or one of the gpsmap 64 models sound better suited for me, but they're all $200+, and I doubt want to pay 2.5x more, if the Colorado does 95% what I want, and 80% as easily.(but man, that ~12hour battery life is shitty)

>>929697
I got mine cheap on closeout so I'm willing to forgive a lot of the flaws. At full price I probably would have gone for one of the gpsmap series too.

I actually like the control wheel, it's easy to use one handed on my bike without taking my eyes off the road too much. It is hard to scroll the map, but I think any gps without a touchscreen is going to have that problem to some degree (doesn't the Oregon have a touchscreen though?). Entering waypoints is still annoying, but you can make routes on your computer and upload them.

I never had a problem with the colour scheme as such. The display problem is that because they used a high resolution LCD, you need brighter light to see it without the backlight. It works fine in sunlight, but in low light it gets dark and hard to see and you have to turn the backlight on.

The screen is always on, but the backlight can be set to turn off automagically so it isn't draining the battery. The firmware updates have improved battery life somewhat (I read somewhere that part of the problem was that it was reading batteries as dead when they weren't, even in NiMH mode) but it's still not great. It's annoying but not a major problem the way I use it, plus it takes AAs and I have a whole bunch of rechargeables.

>>929735
Cool. Thanks for the help. I chatted with the seller and he said he'd take $40 and include his topo map package(from 2011... Better than nothing) so I'll definitely be picking it up tonight. He only has the carabinier mount(so not the original standard one? Or does the carabinier one slide over the standard?) So it's going to be bulkier than ideal, but for $40 I can cope.

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>>929820
Mine came with the carabiner. It clips to the mounting bracket on the back, or you can take it off and clip the GPS to a handlebar or car mount or whatever. Doesn't add much bulk, but you can leave it off if you don't want it.

>>929506
You're probably one of the best users of this board.

>>929925
Yup, I see how it works now(have it in hand. Guy gave me an awesome deal. All the accessories, 4gb SD card, new batteries, yadda yadda yadda)

Legibility is less than I'd like in low light, but whatever. Only issues I've noticed with the unit he sold me is the wheels really stiff(can I pop it off to clean without breaking it? And any kinda rubber-safe lube?) And there's a few deep scratches, and a dozen or so light ones on the screen. I can prob buff the light ones out. Deep are prob here to stay.

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>>929962
Shoulda googled first. Wheel does pop off(uses a magnetic switch, so the physical wheel is just there to spin a magnet. The actual switch's and sensors are behind a sealed plastic drum) and silicone lube works best. Don't have that on hand. Will pick it up along with some plastic polishing compound, and then I'll clean and tune it up to be as good as possible.

Pic related - my /out/ gps set up now.(total cost was ~$100usd)
Foretrex 401
Colorado 300
Ant+ heart rate monitor (doubt I'll use it. Came with the foretrex)

>>929925
do you blow into it?

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Can I give you an honest opinion from someone who has been doing a ton of GIS work? Modern day smart phones all have fairly reliable GPS receivers and the apps that are available blow any hard coded piece of shit out of the water.

Get a decent case if you're really going to be out in the rough/wet. Get a USB battery pack (like Jackery, Anker, etc.) that's at least 10,000 mAh, a pack with this capacity will give your phone 3-4 full charges.

I can't speak for iOS but Android has some really nice apps:
>SatStat
is a great app that provides satellite/accuracy/coordinates/other sensor information.
>OSMTracker
is a great tool if you want to just record raw waypoints in GPX format
>Google "Maps" and "My Maps"
two separate apps, offers offline capabilities, has standard, terrain and satellite views. In both apps you can overlay your own maps that are made up of points, paths or polygons. You can create these map overlays pretty easily in Google Earth Pro (which is free now) on a desktop machine. Depending on what you're doing you can do a lot of interesting shit with Earth.

If you're going to be in an area that has absolutely no cell service you have a lot of options. Unfortunately that never applies to the work I'm doing so I haven't been motivated to find the best options but there are a lot of apps available. The two I still have are GPX Viewer and OsmAnd.

>>929986
do u hav 4cha PASS???????????

>>930027
Yah, they're a bit of a gimmick now a days, but I hate the touch screen controls on phones. The Oregon and Montana Garmins really have no purpose, since a pre paid Android cell phone works nearly the same with the same UI... Except it costs $50.

>>930027
I see your point, and my phone has replaced my car GPS for driving, but the average Android phone without data or cell service can take ages to get a location. So even with offline maps I don't find it a complete replacement for my handheld.

>>930051
I agree, this is something I should have mentioned in my post. If you want the tactile feel of buttons then the smartphone option doesn't really work out. For me, outside of the cold weather we have here and the difficulty of using touchscreens with gloves, it's not a big issue.

>>930101
What kind of phone do you have? I sincerely doubt your issue is related to the GPS receiver not getting a lock on and is really probably a data issue? Unless you're in some really nasty terrain or something it takes my phone (Nexus 5X) around 5-10 seconds to pin point me after I turn it on.

Anyone have a new basemap that'll work on the colorado? Seems i may have corrupted my file messing around(trying to clear of the original owners waypoints and tracks) and reflashing the newest firmware does not re-install it.

Tried googling but i'm not finding anything. I'll almost always use the topo maps, but i should still have a global basemap on the thing...

>>930669
I'm going to bed now, but I'll see if I can grab the files off mine tomorrow & upload them to Mega or something.

>>930672
Thanks, I'd really appreciate it. Pretty sure it's only 60-90megs, which is good since mega limits my download to 60kbs.

>>930663
Yeah, my first Android phone (lg Etna. Same-ish specs as the first droid and HTC Nexus) actually had pretty great gps. I used my next phone(lg Optimus one) as a hiking gps after replacing it.

The UIs were awful, but the chips worked better than some of the expensive dedicated receivers I owned, like the Magellan sportrac color(which is fucking awful)

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>>930101
>Android phone without data or cell service can take ages to get a location

There's 3 parts of a GPS fix:
>Time
Which is downloaded fast, since every GPS packet has that in it
>Almanac
is the data for the specific satellite's orbit, and
>Ephemeris,
which is the "overall" GPS constellation.
A receiver has to have all 3 parts to calculate its position in space.

The ephemeris data is fragmented into little pieces, transmitted in the GPS signal.
Generally a single satellite has to be visible for the entire 12.5 minutes it takes for all the pieces of the ephemeris to be transmitted, the receiver can't stick bits and pieces of that entire message together from different satellites.

Booting a receiver without a current date/time, almanac, and ephemeris is called a "cold boot", and yes, that can take 12-15mins for a fix while its downloading all the data it needs.
"Warm fix" is where the receiver only needs time and almanac (ephemeris data still valid).
"Hot fix" is just a time (almanac and ephemeris valid).

Fire the phone up and turn on location services while you're in range of a network (cellular or wifi), the phone will go out to the internet to grab that ephemeris package from high-speed internet instead of the slow GPS signals. It can also aggregate location from other sources (wifi or cellular AGPS) speeding up the process.

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>>930663
>For me, outside of the cold weather we have here and the difficulty of using touchscreens with gloves
this
Pressure-sensitive touchscreens (like that found on most GPS's) do okay with gloves on, but suffer in the cold.
Capacitive touchscreens can't sense through gloves, though there are gloves with special fabric on the fingers to help the digitizer figure out where touches are happening. When snow or water gets on the screen, the digitizer will often detect that as a touch, which can be a huge pain in the ass to deal with.

On the motorcycle, i'm wearing gloves. Snowmobile I'm also wearing gloves, and it's a cold/wet environment.
So I stick with hard buttons.

>>930663
>5-10 seconds to pin point me
Some newer receivers do some tricks since compute power is so cheap (power budget, cpu/ram). A true, GPS-only, cold-start, unassisted fix takes at least 12.5 minutes.

>>930669
Believe that architecture's like the 78 I had. That system broke out the basemap from the firmware - if you nuked the file on the SD card (or internal flash), you're pretty well fucked. I'd call Garmin on that one and see what they can do.

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>>929682
>Are we posting our handlebar mounts now?
don't see why not
RAM-mount master race

>tfw 80mph on a dirt bike with knobbies

>>930692
Yeah, the gps can still boot if I slide an SD card in with topo maps(or even the SD card from my car's nuvi, though obviously that's a bad setup since so much of the data is inaccessible to the Colorado [sound files, poi, etc.. would be cool to strip that out and still have the 2016 street maps tho, in a manageable size])

The problem is there's no way it seems, to transfer the basemap from the baseCamp program, even though its a map that Garmin freely gives away on the PC application.

>>929363
Staples, suprisingly

>>930692
>Capacitive touchscreens can't sense through gloves
Most of my thin winter glove liners have these but they're meh at best. They're good at detecting sweeping motions so using the swipe typing style keyboard (stock the latest versions of Android) works very well. But sometimes just trying to tap a single button can be extremely difficult.

>A true, GPS-only, cold-start, unassisted fix takes at least 12.5 minutes.
I'm aware of this however I figured in most modern smartphones you can assume that assisted GPS is enabled. I'll will admit that I do not know any details on this process though, some good questions I have would be:
>How far out does the assisted GPS store satellite positions
A day or two? A week?
>What services on the phone have to be enabled to make sure it is actively getting the latest when connected to a data service
If I turn off location tracking (Android) does this disabled assisted GPS or will it still try to download that information? You mentioned it here >>930689 but is that really the case?

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>>930829
>I figured in most modern smartphones you can assume that assisted GPS is enabled.
I'm in Canada. We only have cell coverage in the populated areas (and even in rural areas it's not always great). So AGPS doesn't work in a lot of the places you'd actually be camping.

>>930683
Mega wants me to register before I can share it, anyone know of any other file sharing sites I don't need to register for?

>>930877
I think https://filesend.co/ should work.
If its got a size limit, you can just use a mailinator email address to sign up for mega. I dont think you even need to confirm your email address to upload.

>>930891
>>930683
OK I think this is it:
https://filesend.co/f/KRl7CK-colorado-basemap.zip
wasn't sure if the .sum file was important or just the .img so I put both in a zip.

>>931089
Awesome! Thanks so much man. Iv been checking this thread every hour or so.

Downloading now, and i'll let you know if it works asap.

>>931089

>>931102 here again. Looks like its worked perfectly. Thank you so much for all the advice and sending me the files.