You must have a computer – Mac or PC (or even Linux). The actual active time for you to do this is like 3-5 minutes tops. I’m just overly thorough in my screenshotting excitement. In reality the entire process is super quick and easy. While this post probably looks long, it’s mostly my attempt at answering any questions ahead of time. With that, let’s get into all the supported units and requirements and a few minor caveats below. And thousands of you every month do the same following these previously published steps. Or, for the European units I have when I travel to the US/Canada, like two weeks ago. I myself often use the freely downloaded variant I describe below (because I live in Europe, but often buy my units in the US). I just include a lot of pictures/text to make it super-clear. Quick and simple, and while the instructions might look long, the entire working time is probably under 2-3 minutes for most people. Certainly no usable streets or geographic landmarks.įear not – I’ve got you covered! You can easily download free maps on your Edge for when you travel. It might show a single dot for the entire city of Paris, or perhaps one highway leading into it. That so-called base map has virtually no detail in it. That’s when you were back to the base junk. Detailed maps too – not the old and useless ‘base map’ junk.īut what happens when you traveled outside your region? Thus if you buy an Edge device in the US you’ll have North American maps, and if you buy it in Spain you’ll have European maps, and if you buy it in Sydney you’ll have Australian/New Zealand maps. Things have certainly changed in the Garmin Edge world in six years – most notably that all of Garmin’s mapping capable Edge devices now actually come with detailed maps for the region you bought it in. It’s almost identical to last week’s post and the one six years ago, except specific to the Garmin Edge series because frankly it’ll help people in Google trying to find Edge-specific instructions. But as promised, I’d be refreshing that old Edges-specific post too – which is what this new post is all about. I did some Basecamp demo videos as a reference to what I presented at my talk, and have put them up on YouTube not terribly exciting, but maybe you’ll find them useful.Last week I published a piece on how to install free maps on your Garmin wearable, which was a tweaked update of my six-year-old post on how to install maps on your Garmin Edge devices. Basecamp insists on exporting waypoints to GPX, Google Earth format with a timestamp even if you’ve created them in the program (and don’t want a timestamp). Be nice to be able to simplify tracks and still keep them as tracks now, you can only save a simplified route.“Added printing of USGS Quads and other public land survey areas.” There are features listed on the update/download page that don’t seem to exists, e.g.Only supports USB-interface models older serial models are out of luck (though you can still export data and use EasyGPS to upload it.Still some issues left, some kind of weird: Ability to import mapsets pre-installed on some GPS models.Better waypoint, track and route management.Conversion of tracks to simplified routes.Support for Garmin Custom Maps and Birdseye Imagery.Tiled (poster) printing of installed mapsets.Faster and less buggy than earlier versions.MapInstall isn’t as good for uploading and managing maps as MapSource, but it should be good enough for most people:īut there are lots of other useful new features: If you wanted to use free mapsets like those available at the GPS File Depot, you were out of luck now, you’re not. Prior to this, the only complete tool for doing this was Garmin’s MapSource program, only available if you purchased a Garmin mapset, or Garmin’s Trip and Waypoint Planner software, sold for $30. Probably the most important addition is an associated tool called MapInstall, that lets you upload Garmin-compatible maps to your GPS unit. As an added bonus, it’s available in both PC and Mac versions. It’s so improved that it wouldn’t be a bad basic choice for creating data for use with non-Garmin GPS models just export the data to GPX format, then use a program like EasyGPS to send it to your model. In short, it’s a major improvement over the first release it’s now better than Garmin’s classic MapSource program for uploading/downloading/managing data. I did say, “Hopefully future versions will be snappier, and add more features.” I just did a GPS presentation to a local hiking group, and in preparation for that took a full look at the latest version of Basecamp (3.05). It’s been a bit more than a year since I first looked at Garmin’s free Basecamp software, and wasn’t terribly impressed.
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