OSI maps on Garmin. Eire Discoverer announced

IrlJidel

http://garmin.blogs.com/uk/2009/09/complete-coverage-of-the-republic-of-ireland-available-with-garmin-eire-discoverer.html

"Global leader in personal satellite navigation Garmin is proud to announce the launch of a new series of the award-winning Garmin topographic maps. Garmin Eire Discoverer is the latest in the mapping range, offering full coverage of the Republic of Ireland.

These revolutionary new maps bring outdoor enthusiasts the opportunity to view a wider variety of highly detailed mapping from the Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSi) map series, whilst navigating with turn-by-turn accuracy on the road network. "

Glenalla

IrlJidel wrote: »

http://garmin.blogs.com/uk/2009/09/complete-coverage-of-the-republic-of-ireland-available-with-garmin-eire-discoverer.html

"Global leader in personal satellite navigation Garmin is proud to announce the launch of a new series of the award-winning Garmin topographic maps. Garmin Eire Discoverer is the latest in the mapping range, offering full coverage of the Republic of Ireland.

These revolutionary new maps bring outdoor enthusiasts the opportunity to view a wider variety of highly detailed mapping from the Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSi) map series, whilst navigating with turn-by-turn accuracy on the road network. "

Four maps at €160.00 each and still not covering N Ireland !!
I'll stick with emerald-island.eu for now

bogman

http://emerald-island.eu/wikka/wikka.php?wakka=GpsMap

This is recent and free, setup last night

Map of Ireland
For owners of Garmin GPS with cartographic functions, here is a topographic chart of Ireland “homemade”. The map is carried out starting from free data found on Internet and in particular starting from information of the following sites :

* Mountain Views for summits upper than 400m regularly updated by Simon Stewart.
* The Scottish Mountaineering Club for the geographical toponyms.
* OpenStreetMap for lakes, rivers, roads, urban areas.
* Megalithomania for megaliths and irish antiquities.

Glenalla

Free map from emerald-island.eu can by uploaded to a gps by using the free software "sendmap" downloadable online

BarryD

Be interesting to see how this works. At present, Garmin use their own proprietary code to generate the vector maps on Garmin units. Vector maps are fully scalable and if you zoom in or out, there are various 'layers', which suppress or show data to keep the amount of info. on the screen from being too cluttered.

What seems to be proposed here is that OSI are supplying the 1:50K Discovery mapping (which is really quite poor in many places away from the tarmac road!) in raster or bitmap format. Bit like their Geolives thing. Don't know how this works though as bitmaps (like photoimages) are very large files and lose resolution as you zoom in.

Point is, that this is a very different approach to the original Garmin method of storing maps which is very efficient in terms of data space.

Alun

BarryD wrote: »

Be interesting to see how this works. At present, Garmin use their own proprietary code to generate the vector maps on Garmin units. Vector maps are fully scalable and if you zoom in or out, there are various 'layers', which suppress or show data to keep the amount of info. on the screen from being too cluttered.

What seems to be proposed here is that OSI are supplying the 1:50K Discovery mapping (which is really quite poor in many places away from the tarmac road!) in raster or bitmap format. Bit like their Geolives thing. Don't know how this works though as bitmaps (like photoimages) are very large files and lose resolution as you zoom in.

Point is, that this is a very different approach to the original Garmin method of storing maps which is very efficient in terms of data space.

All true, but if you look at Garmin's vector based outdoor mapping for the UK, Topo GB, you'll see that the actual level of detail is very poor, much worse than any OS map. The quality of their corresponding raster based UK product, GB Discoverer, after a good few tweaks of the firmware, isn't that bad actually. See here for some examples (scroll down to post #93).

I don't know how the Garmin format manages raster mapping, but some existing formats for mapping s/w (OziExplorer's .ozf2/3, Memory-Map's .qct) use files that actually contain a number of versions of the image, each at a different zoom level, created offline from the original, much higher quality, originals and using much better rescaling algorithms. This limits the amount of scaling the much less powerful CPU in the GPS unit itself has to do and improves quality.

BarryD

Yeah, thanks for the link and you're probably quite right Alun. And raster format may be the direction that these GPS maps go in (if only for the simple reason that they are a lot simpler to generate & also easier for the general user to relate to!). I don't think you can have the route plotting & navigation functions though (like the car satnav - turn left/ right etc.) as these surely require vector data.

Presumably the way this works is that you get the raster map on screen and have a wee triangle showing your current position etc. I have some experience of using my own GPS maps on the hills and one would tend to have the GPS unit at 80m, 120m zoom levels for general navigation. I note in the link you give, that the raster maps fail at closer zoom levels. So maybe that's how it's done - the max. resolution required for say a 120m zoom level. And with lower resolution images for wider zoom levels.

Presumably also, that's why these only run on the newer Garmin units - must require a lot of data storage and different firmware.

Alun

Yes, navigation / route planning requires vector maps, but you can quite happily combine both vector and raster mapping on Garmin units, and control the visibility of each layer, so you can have the best of both worlds ... vector mapping for satnav-like functionality and raster mapping for outdoor activities such as hiking.

In addition, Garmin have announced new beta firmware for the Colorado/Oregon/Dakota series that allows you to add your own raster maps in Google's .kmz format. See my post here.

BarryD

Very interesting A rapidly changing area with some intriguing possibilities.

Probably not many here have had the opportunity to use a detailed GPS map on the hills but it really is a 'killer app'. I read quite a bit of skepticism i.e. recent WWI articles. But a good GPS map is fascinating as you watch your progress over the ground - a moving dot across the landscape. It will become the de facto method of hill navigation in time to come and I say that as someone well rooted in traditional map & compass skills!

testicle

Glenalla wrote: »

Four maps at €160.00 each and still not covering N Ireland !!

Why would it? It's a different country.

Would you expect Belgian maps produced by the French IGN?

Glenalla

I am a walker not a politician !!!!!!!!!!

DF1

I have some digital OSI maps, is it possible to convert to co-ordinates given by OS ie 2 lots of six digit numbers, to a form I can enter in my garmin sat nav ?

sesswhat

DF1 wrote: »

I have some digital OSI maps, is it possible to convert to co-ordinates given by OS ie 2 lots of six digit numbers, to a form I can enter in my garmin sat nav ?

There are plenty of online converters including a good one at Fielden Maps.

The input (from your digital maps) will either be Irish Transverse Mercator (ITM) or Irish Grid. Make sure you use the WGS84 output for the Sat Nav. It is probably simpler to change the format to Decimal Degrees in both the converter and the Sat Nav.

I don't know which program you are using to view the digital maps but it may well have an option to display latitude and longitude as well as Irish Grid or ITM co-ordinates.

worsel

I read with interest the recent posts. It will be interesting to see which co-Ordinate system Garmin use in the production of these O.S. Maps (1:5000) Discovery Series. I have the Discovery Series Maps on my computer and use MapInfo ProViewer 9.0 (2) to view the maps. I must say that when you zoom into any reasonable small Scale (like for hill walking) the resolution is not great.
.BTY I use a Garmin Legend..with Mapsource 6.13.7 + Metro Guide Europe v9..I also have downloaded Emerald Island + Ireland Waterways. which is great for navigating the Shannon..MT Europe V9 is great it even gives you the TownLand Names!.
Back to Coordinates. I understand that O.S. are going to Update the Discovery Seris to ITM Co.Ords, and produce ALL NEW Maps. which will include for (i think) 69 maps covering the Whole County. Instead of the as now 89 maps...the new maps will be printed on Both Sides..
O.S. Maps are extremely EXPENSIVE for any Map. I regularly purchase Maps (Scale 1:2500) which cost approx €60.00 inc. Postage for 6 copies of the SAME Map.I use these for Planning Permission Applications...It would be GREAT if the level of Detail on these Maps (1:2500) would be available on Handheld GPS units,,but i would imagine that because of the no. of Vectors required, these files would require a lot of memory for even a small area. I will follow this Post with Interest...???

Alun

worsel wrote: »

Back to Coordinates. I understand that O.S. are going to Update the Discovery Seris to ITM Co.Ords, and produce ALL NEW Maps. ...

I'm reliably informed that those plans have been officially scrapped. Someone I know was at some kind of do at the OSi offices the other day and asked someone there about it. There's nothing on their website about it though.

101sean

I used to use a lot of 1:1250 and 1:2500 plans in the UK, both in GIS and CAD formats (had the whole of London, did a lot of work on the Underground ). Unlikely ever to be available cheaply to the public and file sizes are big.

I have OSI 50k maps on my Toughbook and use Oziexplorer, have no real issue with resolution. I have the whole of the UK in Memory Map at 50k and a lot of 25k which is nice and useable.

DF1

sesswhat wrote: »

There are plenty of online converters including a good one at Fielden Maps.

The input (from your digital maps) will either be Irish Transverse Mercator (ITM) or Irish Grid. Make sure you use the WGS84 output for the Sat Nav. It is probably simpler to change the format to Decimal Degrees in both the converter and the Sat Nav.

I don't know which program you are using to view the digital maps but it may well have an option to display latitude and longitude as well as Irish Grid or ITM co-ordinates.

Thanks for that link, will have a route round at it tomorrow.

worsel

hi Alun..
about the NEW ITM Discovery Maps..from here...
http://www.walkersassociation.ie/OSIDiscovery/consultation/MVonNewMap
Dont know weather or not I am allowed to Post Links...
I hope its OK..

Alun

worsel wrote: »

hi Alun..
about the NEW ITM Discovery Maps..from here...
http://www.walkersassociation.ie/OSIDiscovery/consultation/MVonNewMap
Dont know weather or not I am allowed to Post Links...
I hope its OK..

Yes, I'm well aware of that, and the whole consultation process thing .. i gave them my thoughts on it too, and they weren't overwhelmingly positive either . Anyway, I don't know whether the decision not to go ahead with it was based on the outcome of those consultations, on cost grounds, or whatever, but as I said the word is it's not going ahead, at least for the time being.

IrlJidel

Looks like these maps are available online:

* Provides topographic coverage
* Provides highly detailed 50K topographic maps from Ordnance Survey Ireland.
* Includes terrain contours, elevations, summits, trails, geographic points and more.
* Includes detailed road data and thousands of points of interest from NAVTEQ.
* Provides turn-by-turn directions by car or bike.
* Allows you to search for destinations by address or by category: points of interest include lodging, food and drink, car parks, banks, petrol stations, attractions, campsites and more.



Garmin EIRE Discoverer 1:50K - North-West

Garmin EIRE Discoverer 1:50K – South-West

Garmin EIRE Discoverer 1:50K - South-East

Garmin EIRE Discoverer 1:50K - North-East

Alun

Looks like they've got their coverage map for the NW wrong Also, it looks from the rather small coverage maps, that the whole of Dublin, including a significant part of the Dublin Mountains is covered by the NE map rather than the SE map which is a pain. Still, seeing as I don't have a compatible GPS, or the inclination to spend €640 on maps, that's a bit of a moot point

IrlJidel

Looks like they have their Eire Discoverer product page up now:

http://www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/site/uk/uk/onthetrail/garmin-eire-discoverer

Anan1

Has anybody actually used this yet? I'd be very interested to hear peoples opinions.

IrlJidel

Bit of a thread bump but I've noticed there is a version now with full ROI coverage.

'Only' E200 which makes it a bit more bearable considering each of the 4 regions are selling at E160 each.

So the whole of ROI is E200 rather than E640.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=255&pID=74148

Alun

That's certainly more affordable, but why on earth have they then kept the price for each region still at €160? And still not that much of a bargain seeing as you can get the whole of GB for only €235!

IrlJidel

Alun wrote: »

That's certainly more affordable, but why on earth have they then kept the price for each region still at €160? And still not that much of a bargain seeing as you can get the whole of GB for only €235!

Maybe they'll start dropping the per-region pricings.

If you're starting out Satmap might offer better value for walkers that a Garmin:
For GB160 you get
1:50k ROI and NI
and 1:25k for a number of NI regions.

http://www.satmap.com/ukstore/product_info.php?cPath=123_165_181&products_id=3822

The fact that Eire Discoverer also has road vector data does not justify the price premium. You can get City Navigator for UK and ROI for just E40.

Anan1

Has anyone here actually used EireDiscoverer yet? I'm considering getting the full ROI maps for €199.99, but i've yet to see a single review of the product.

IrlJidel

Anan1 wrote: »

Has anyone here actually used EireDiscoverer yet? I'm considering getting the full ROI maps for €199.99, but i've yet to see a single review of the product.

Did a google and this site is going to review.

http://www.spoke.ie/?p=3032

One thing I noticed from that post is that they have redrawn the regions so that North-East contains both the Dublin and Wicklow mountains.

Now if they coudl only half the price of each region I might be tempted....

Anan1

Well I bit the bullet and ordered it. Got 10% off for registering my Oregon (which I have for well over a year) at the same time.

Alun

Anan1 wrote: »

Well I bit the bullet and ordered it. Got 10% off for registering my Oregon (which I have for well over a year) at the same time.

Great ... let us know how it works out.

Anan1

Will do.