OpenStreetMap Maps

In January of 2007 I got a Garmin GPS, and soon after that I discovered the OpenStreetMap project. Ever since then I've been adding roads, parks, bike paths, and any other mappable feature I could find to the area around Chicago. Eventually there were enough map features that the OSM map was better than the default Garmin map, so I started generating Garmin-format maps of Illinois on a semi-regular basis. Since then I've expanded to several other locales as seen on the list below.

Download

Illinois - The state of Illinois. Last updated 2007-12-20.
Iowa - The state of Iowa. Last updated 2007-12-20.
Nebraska - The state of Nebraska. Last updated 2007-12-20.

Usage

USB Mass Storage

1. Download an image from the above list.
2. Rename it to gmapsupp.img.
3. Mount your Garmin device on your computer as a USB device.
4. Copy gmapsupp.img to the Garmin/ directory on your device. You may need to create this directory.
5. Unmount, disconnect, turn on your device, and start navigating!

Garmin's Software

Unfortunately, Garmin hasn't written any software for any operating systems I use. Maybe someday they'll at least have Mac support and I can fill in how to upload using that, but for the moment I only know how to use my Mac and Linux machines to do the USB mass storage method.

Notes

The first step to creating these maps is downloading the weekly planet.osm snapshot from the OSM people. This is run through Osmosis using an outline of the region in question gained from PSU's Maproom. Once the pieces I care about are extracted, the results are sent through mkgmap.jar, a spiffy little bit of Java code that produces Garmin-format maps. I then upload the results here for your enjoyment!

Being derived from OpenStreetMap data, these maps are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. They're yours to do what you wish with as long as you play according to the rules.