Buying Aftermarket Maps For Garmin. any experience?

[kerbside]

Hi guys, wanted to install maps for E. Europe and Australasia on a new XT. See some surprisingly cheap options, either downloaded or on an SD card, compared to getting the maps from Garmin. Any opinions on going this route ?
Cheers, Andy

 

[Ron]

Uncle Phil uses after market maps on his GPS. Don't know if his will work on a Garmin. His are Garmin knock-offs if I remember right. They also run Android system.

 

[Uncle Phil]

Uncle Phil uses after market maps on his GPS. Don't know if his will work on a Garmin. His are Garmin knock-offs if I remember right. They also run Android system.

I don't know if they will as the format is designed for IGO8 and IGO Primo software to run on Win CE 6.
The formats are files with the extensions of .fbl, .fpa, .fsp.
Anybody know what are the Garmin map extensions?

 

[Gug]

Back in 17' in a trip in Europe I bought a micro SD online for about $20. It covered all of western Europe. I am still using that same Garmin 61 LMT.

 

[ST1100Y]

I'd start looking into OSM maps, their FOC, always up to date and fully compatible with Garmin (using them since 2009 on my Quest-I)...

 

[kerbside]

Just bought a $15 Oz map download on ebay to copy onto an SD card. Fitted the card in the XT and the new map ran immediately with the existing N. America maps. Looks good so far, but the test will be when I'm using it in Australiasia.

 

[V4 Rider]

Anyone checked if these aftermarket maps will work with BaseCamp ?

 

[jfheath]

OSM maps work with Garmin Zumos 590, 595 and XT. Possibly with earlier ones as well, and they also load and display Ok in Basecamp. Routes created in Basecamp transfer and load into the XT exactly as plotted in Basecamp- providing they do not recalculate.
In the Uk, there are very few trails and tracks that are navigable on Garmin maps. OSM maps have many more of these available, depending on the mode of transport selected.

There is a very big issue if you have OSM maps and Garmin maps for the same or overlapping areas selected at the same time in myMaps. The Garmin displays some very weird behaviour.

I've have a case ongoing with technical support regarding the XT wanting to take me back to the route that it is building behind me if. i deviate from a plotted route. It repeatedly asks me to U turn. When it does this, the recorded track log is broken.

They asked me to remove my OSM maps completely (not just untick them), and remove the SD card. Last week, I spent a few hours testing all sorts of situations in a location where this behaviour has happened every time until now. During these tests, the XT never once tried to get me to go back - it found a new route to the next route point - the one that I was taking. I reinserted the memory card and repeated the tests. It still worked.

The suspicion therefore lies with OSM maps being present, even though they were not ticked. To be be sure that it isn't some other change, I have to go back and retest with OSM maps installed, but not selected. But they have closed the road for 6 weeks for bridge repairs.

OSM maps for UK have no road speed information, so there are no speed limit warnings or displays, and the ETA calculations and displays are not reliable as a result. They are wring by a very long way.

But the maps have a lot of additional detail which looks good on the XT screen.

 

[ST1100Y]

I've have a case ongoing with technical support regarding the XT wanting to take me back to the route that it is building behind me if. i deviate from a plotted route.

Known bug in the XT routines, the German satnav board is full of reports and complaints on this issue...
If you leave the planned route for any reason, you're supposed to access [route properties], delete already [passed points] (as if you know ad hoc which those are...) and restart the route... this and a number of other flaws render that XT IMO simply useless for motorcycle touring...
The XT seems to work fine if you only enter a destination and let it do it's own thing, but with (PC based) planned routes it acts up like by default...
Garmin has also dropped any further development/support for BaseCamp, they rather want everyone to rely on their proprietary Connect App which alone also leads to quite a number of issues while cruising down the road...

 

[jfheath]

Thanks for the info. Tech support are acting surprised by the behaviour when I have reported it.

I came across the need to delete passed route points situation - but in that example, the route continued to navigate me ahead - even though when I pressed 'Skip' or 'Edit Route' it reckoned that I was still heading for a route point 5 or 6 points back. Most odd. It navigated me to the end. When I stopped, I pressed SKip and I had to do it about 7 times before I reached the end. I've not tried to reproduce this fault since to find out what was going on.

Asking you to remove all of the points that have been passed ? They're joking I hope. It isn't possible to do that becasue the first thing that the XT does when a route is transferred is to rename the majority of the route points. I assume this is becasue it is trying to give a sensible name to a point that has been placed on the screen, or a point that has come from another program without any naming abilities.

Interestingly, it doesn't rename points if they are sent from MyRouteApp - because MRA sets the gpx extension value to a default - and I discovered that if you delete each of these after a named route point, then the XT retains the name.

I have noted a few times that after doing a test and then a few months later, repeating it - the behaviour is different. Its not down to things like myTrends - If I am trying to get to the bottom of something, I usually start with a completely reset XT. So something else changes in the meantime. I haven't updated software between the two tests, but I have updated Express, and maybe loaded other updates like Cyclopse. But no map updates. No system software updates. I do have a suspicion that maybe some small patches are perhaps being applied by other means ??

I've not come across the Connect App. I'll take a look.

Thanks again.