I’m a noob to OSM and mapping in general so bare with me
I have a 2014 Grand Vitara and got prompted to update my maps with my stock head unit.
After following the instructions for updating my maps, I got the option to reinstall my current 2015 maps or pay $125 AUD for a 2021 map update. IMO this price is insane for a 3 year old map considering I could get a whole new head unit for a bit more than that.
So I am wondering if its possible to download OSM on my 32gb micro usb and use that
for my head unit maps instead. I couldn’t find an exact answer to my question anywhere.
I assume you can/should read and follow the wiki about Garmin, but faster way is just to open: https://garmin.bbbike.org/
and follow instructions.
If problems read the help page on the site.
(I download and installed a map over my neighbourhood to my Garmin Edge 530, without any problem)
When it comes to actually installing maps, this quite old external page is much better, with the caveat that it suggests https://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/, which is no longer operational, but that does link to https://garmin.bbbike.org/ (already suggested above). It then continues with " Part II: Installing the Maps" which I suspect is what you need.
One caveat I’d add - not all Garmin devices are the same so we can’t guarantee that OSM-based maps will work. If you post details of what is actually on the SD card, we might recognise it as “a regular Garmin device” or “something else”. I’d also make sure that you do not delete any files off the SD card. People sometimes do this to “make some space”, and then find that their satnav does not work at all.
It was recognised. It’s just that it has very out dated maps 2015 and 2021. All i’ve done is get the ID code from my vehicle head unit, open the garmin software and prompts me to reinstall 2015 map or pay $125 for a 2021 map.
I don’t have a seperate garmin device since its integrated in the vehicle so just wondering if OSM will be compatible and how to go about doing so via an SD card
Can you post what’s on the SD card? If it looks like regular Garmin setup people will recognise it.
When I last used a Garmin Nuvi (standalone, not built in) as a car satnav it complained I hadn’t bought updated maps recently, but worked happily with ones created from current OSM data.
Is it currently reading the garmin map from the SD card or from internal memory? I’d try to reinstall the 2015 map and install an additional OSM map. If you can, plug your SD card into a computer, read it with the file manager, enable hidden files… When you get that far, post back, I can compare it to my similar vintage Garmin Drivesmart. If your stock head unit’s user interface is similar to my Garmin devices (Drivesmart and Zumo XT), you have the option to pick which installed map to use.
From my experience I haven’t found an OSM map for Garmin that worked well for routing. I’ve made my own with mkgmap, and used the default build with mkgmap. I haven’t tried them all, and I haven’t tried them in Australia.
In my experience Garmin routing is marginal, garmin + an OSM map is worse. It’s probly blasphemy here, but I use the Garmin device as a map and sometimes routing, but always check with a proprietary app on my phone.
I suspect that it depends on how good your local OSM community is at updating roads… In the UK I used to use a Garmin Nuvi with a self-made map. It was significantly better at most things than the HERE maps built-in to the console of the car that replaced it. Things I changed were:
Decide what roads I wanted to route along, and remove the rest when building the map. I removed tracks, footpaths, bridleways, paths etc., which made route calculation quicker.
Removed fences, hedges and walls, again to make the final data size smaller and route calculation quicker.
Manually changed some “problematicly pronounced” road names so that the Garmin voice would pronounce them properly.
One other difference was that I was testing in Britain and Ireland, where the OSM data size now is around 2GB. You might easily want to use a bigger file that that just be combining a few US states, and large files will make it more difficult to route.
