I own a Garmin Edge 800, it is very old but still super reliable. And the best part is that you can update the maps regularly via the OpenStreetMap initiative. It allows you to use turn-by-turn navigation and have an accurate view on the routes you are following.
This is the procedure:
- Connect the device to your computer with the USB cable
This should mount two storage devices on your computer: the built-in storage and the micro-SD card. - Download the most recent map from https://www.openfietsmap.nl/. Go to the Downloads section and download the region you need.
- Open the zip file you just downloaded, and copy the file gmapsub.img to the Garmin folder on the SD card. Be patient, this took about 1 hour on my device.
- On the GPS device, make sure to verify that the new map is the one that is active, especially if you have other maps on the card. There should only be one map activated. Check the readme.html file in the zip for more tips and tricks.
Your four steps listed above make the process seem incredibly easy, but upon attempting to actually perform this action, it seems there are many more steps which involve downloading multiple other software packages and perorming still more complicated steps. From the readme.txt in the downloaded map zip file:
“Instructions for Mac OSX users:
Make sure Garmin Basecamp is installed and closed; Also MapInstall and MapManager for the Mac must be installed.
Unpack the zip file.
Double-click on the OFM(EU2022-04-05).gmap folder to run Garmins Mapmanager or
start Garmin Mapmanager and find the OFM(EU2022-04-05).gmap folder
to install it”
Hello Kevin,
thank you for your feedback. I’ve done this process already multiple times, and I can confirm that the steps are enough to get the maps on your Garmin device. The instructions you are referring to are probably necessary if you want to use them in Garmin Basecamp or use Garmin Mapmanager to install the map files, but I already abandoned that piece of software years ago because I believe it is not working very well on recent versions of Mac OSX.
Thank uou so much for the Map of Vietnam I have downloaded.
Worked for me as wel just by loading the img file to the sd card