Manitoba Geocaching Association

[villiam]

When I purchased my first GPS (an eXplorist 500) I was disappointed at the quality of the basemap. I guess I was a little naive in thinking that as GPS units for vehicles had decent maps that a portable unit by the same company would offer the same. I then looked at the purchase map options and felt I did not want to go down this route as at that point I was not sure if I would enjoy the GPS (this was before I was told about Geocaching).

So I looked around on the net and found a document that explained how you could build your own map file all you needed where the SHP layers (including the dbf, shx, and prj files) of the area you want. The document pointed out one could use autocad to produce the needed files but this was not something I was wanting to start with. Anyways further hunting allowed me to find SHP layers for Manitoba and I made my first map. Like many maps the data was out of date but sufficed for a number of years for my needs.

Recently I purchased a Triton from Magellan and wanted to upgrade the map I had. The Triton’s can handle raster maps and there are sites out there that offer raster maps for free as well as instructions on how to make them yourself. At some point I will try this, instead I found out that can now get GIS data from the Government in the required data format to load up into Mobile Mapper Office which I had originally used. As such I have assembled this data into a map file that I can vouch that it works on an eXplorist 500 and a Triton 1500. It actually should work on any Triton and I suspect any colour Magellan along the lines of the 500 should work.
The map itself covers the area 50 37.736N, 100 34.053W to 48 59.978N, 95 59.819W. You can view this on the following google map (ManitobaSouth) image.

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Rather then placing the GPSr screenshots inline into this blog, you can view them (if interessted) by following the attachments at the bottom of this post.

Anyways this is just a renewed intrest in making maps again. I have a plan to make maps for my units that go all the way to the east cost (have all of Nova Scotia broken up into 4 map files now) for when I do a road trip. The Manitoba one ends on the east where it does as that is the border of the edge of the NTS 062 slice. I had a plan to include everything from the 062 slice in this map, but my version of Mobile Mapper Office is unable to make a map larger then 32MB, and then when I reduced it a bit it was struggling to do anything. As such I have exported this slice of the 062 area as I do not venture much out of this area normally. I hope as I get better at this I will be able to make larger slices to minimise the number of times one would have to swap out their map files.

If you would like to give this map a try feel free to download it. Of course comments are welcome as well as suggestions on how it could be made better.

Instructions:

Unzip the file somewhere on your computer.

If you have switched to vantage point (which is supposed to work with pre Triton units) you can use the map ability to transfer the map over. However perhaps the easiest method that I use (and from reading safe) is to place it on an SD card in a folder called "Detailed Maps" (without the quotes). This works for both the eXplorist and the Triton.

The reason this is safe, is that in the event that the map causes your GPS unit to lock up (I have been warned of this with custom maps) the solution will be to turn off your GPS (remove the batteries if need be) then eject the SD card and turn it on again. At this point as that detailed map has been removed the GPS will default to the base map. If you then turn off the device and place your SD card back in it will not automatically switch to the detailed map. This way if you have caches on the card you can still go hunting.

Now to access it from your device, for the Triton on the map screen select the menu button then view, maps and activate it by using the select button. Scroll to the bottom and select the green checkmark.

For an explorist type device do:
* menu
* preferences
* active setup
* curso down to detail maps and hit the select button
* choose select map
* browser to the detailed maps folder on your SD card and select the map

[villiam]

There is an updated map file available for the Triton and eXplorist units from Magellan. You can get it here Manitoba.zip.

Highways, Major Roads, and Streets are now classified differently. Although Major Roads is a manual process that I need to do, in order to indicate what a Major road is. For display this means it looks closer to the type of map you would get from Magellan. I will assemble some new screenshots shortly and update this post.

You can also use the 'Go to Place' feature to pick a highway, road, etc as a goto point.