Putting OSM Maps on Garmin: How It Works

When the weather is nice, off-road navigation for bicycles and legs becomes more interesting again. Garmin’s GPS handhelds are ideally suited for this. Especially when you consider that the free and for most countries very detailed OSM (Open Street Map) maps are also available. How do you put it on your Garmin?

One Garmin GPS Handheld is in most cases a robust device that you can take with you on your more or less adventurous trips in the field with confidence. At home or abroad. The receivers are optimized for the lowest possible energy consumption. For example, you can often turn off the backlighting completely and, thanks to the reflective screen, still see navigation data in the picture.

Do not expect full HD resolution on a huge screen, that would cost too much energy. Things like voice guidance and online features are also missing. You also get something in return: you can navigate for up to 18 hours on a set of AA batteries of decent quality.

At least that’s the case with our Garmin GPSMAP 64sx, other models can have even longer (or shorter) ‘play times’. The more recent models of this type of receiver can often handle not only GPS, but also GLONASS and Galileo. Combining satellite data creates a very accurate position determination.

Topographic OSM Maps

The more extensive Garmin’s have the option to show maps. That goes surprisingly well despite the relatively small screen, according to the experience. Most models can also handle routing, ie you get ‘turn by turn’ instructions. Not as speech, but as written text on the screen and a warning beep if you have to change direction. This even works on regular highways, provided you install the right maps.

And that brings us to the OSM project. These are maps that are kept by volunteers and locals, among others. They are usually extremely accurate and can be found on just about every forest trail. Also – depending on the type of map – you see contour lines and the like. They are actually topographical maps, on which you can find all kinds of other things, from power lines to whatever.

Garmin and Open Street Map / OpenTopoMap

Those features just mentioned may have caused a very popular resource for OSM Garmin cards to become overloaded. do you want on http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl currently a country (tiles can no longer even apply), then the waiting time at the time of writing is well over 500 days.

Many soldiers, aid workers and fighting civilians may be eagerly looking for accurate topographical maps for the Ukraine and neighboring countries. But don’t worry: we have found a great alternative for you here: https://garmin.opentopomap.org† And it all works very simply!

However, you can only download country-based maps here, no tiles within a country. Make sure you have an SD memory card in your Garmin, you don’t have to leave that for the money.

And yes: you COULD also store maps in the internal memory of your Garmin (if that is a bit generously sized), but the general advice is to do that – also for the sake of clarity – on an SD card.

FAT32 format that card (for example choose a 16 GB or 32 GB copy if your Garmin supports that size) and create the folder there GARMIN on on. Then stick the thing in your handheld GPS. It is therefore ready for use.

Download Garmin Maps by Country

On the OpenTopoMap Garmin Maps site, scroll down a bit and click on the left Europe† Click on the Garmin map of the country of your choice, then download it after a click on Download begins. It can take a while, because sometimes it concerns files of several Gigabytes (that’s why the SD card comes in handy).

Don’t download the Basemap version unless you specifically want to get started with that software on the PC first. In that case, you also have to arrange the transfer to the handheld from Basecamp, which is beyond the scope of this article. Once the country map has arrived, immediately grab the Garmin contours file. You can repeat this process for all desired countries.

Unzip all downloaded files. Each zip contains one file, so that’s nice and clear. Especially because the file name is clear. Connect your Garmin to your computer via the USB port, Chromebook or tablet. You will then see two USB storage media appear in the file manager of the device used. It’s the second you must have, either the card with just the map you just created GARMIN on top.

Copy or move the downloaded maps to that folder. Finished? Then eject both USB storage media neatly using the eject option provided by your operating system. Never pull the GPS off just like that, it can lead to file corruption.

Set up on handheld

Time to turn on the handheld (it probably turned off after unplugging). Press the as often as necessary PAGEbutton (or any other button on your Garmin that causes you to scroll through screens) until you get to the map screen. Press the button there MENU and choose the option in the menu that appeared Setup Map and press ENTER†

Now select the option Select Mapfollowed by a button press Enter† Go through all the cards you just copied and press Enter one by one to check the status Enabled is. Not? Then choose Enabled† Press on the button QUIT to return to the previous menu and select here Advanced Map Setup† Then set the option Shaded Relief on Auto or Enabled†

If you have just copied height profiles, you will see them on the map in a moment. Press QUIT until you see the map. Just navigate!

The OSM maps are updated very regularly. Of course, you don’t have to replace your cards with newer ones every week, but if you’re going on vacation and you haven’t kept up with things for months, it’s highly recommended.

Note that the map itself is always much more current (a few days to a week) than the elevation contour map. Logical, because mountains and valleys usually don’t really change much in their height and depth.

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