Long story short, I’ve never been to fond of the Garmin devices and as I’m looking for an outdoor GPS for hiking, mountain biking, etc., I found the Magellan Triton series to be particularly interesting. Color touch screen, rugged, nice interface, support for Geo Caching and depending on the model flashlight, camera and many more features make this device really interesting. BUT it has one very large drawback! Magellan doesn’t seem to interested in Europe too much, meaning, there’s only country boundaries and large streets on the device’s integrated base map and no detailed maps available to buy and / or download (besides some special maps like waterways and topographic maps for Norway). Since I’m planning to use this thing mainly in Europe that would be an absolute no-buy reason.

Fortunately a little digging brought up that there’s plenty of 3rd party maps and tools available for the Magellan Triton. Seems that the device’s map format is publicly known. I don’t know whether it’s been made available by Magellan or just been figured out by someone but this fact allows to create proper maps for the device. Plenty of such maps for various countries all over the world are linked on http://www.maps4me.de/ and a few more links plus a lot of user support info can be found at http://www.magellanboard.de. There’s one map I’d especially like to point out: A topographic map of Germany for the Magellan Triton created using the OpenStreetMap data as a basis. I find it just awesome that this way you get a full topographic map for Germany which may not be perfectly complete but in some cases even more detailed than commercial maps for free. Beside that I just like the idea behind OpenStreetMap as I pointed out in an earlier post, I’m also quite fond of the fact that using OSM on your GPS device, you can kill two birds with one stone. First you get a free map for your device and then, wherever you find spots, tracks or streets missing in this map, you can just hit the “record button” on your receiver and using your PC, add the recorded data to OpenStreetMap on their site.

After all, the availability of an OSM map for the Magellan Triton might be the one decisive reason, to finally convince me, that this should be might next GPS device.

BUT luckily there is OpenRouteService, a free routing service that is based on (as you may guess) OpenStreetMap. Another great example of what to do with a free worldwide street database

The look and feel is basically the same as with Google Maps (without the satellite coverage of course) but the big difference is, that OpenStreetMap maps are completely free. Not like Google’s maps which are “free” as in “you can do this and that with our maps BUT YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO …………………. <LONG TEXT FOLLOWING> …………”.

Of course they don’t have all the features of the big players like Google or Microsoft; there’s no Street View, no Bird’s Eye View and sadly but understandably  no satellite coverage but the maps (and the data behind them) are completely free and you can use them for practically anything. You can even download the world database which the maps are based on onto your computer and use it for whatever you like. Besides, in some of the more crowded areas, OpenStreetMap maps are even more accurate then Google’s version, as you can see in the following picture.

So how are they making these maps? Simple answer: You make them. Take your GPS unit and record your track while you’re driving your car, riding your bike or just walking. Afterwards, get online, upload those tracks to the OSM website and name the streets. As mentioned above, it’s a community effort. So the success of this project depends on as many users willing to take part as possible. There’s still quite a few blank spots on the maps, especially regarding smaller villages, etc. So feel free to contribute! Speaking for myself, I’ll definitely give it a try and provide a few tracks in the near future since I’ve found a few spots that I can fill.

Last but not least, as it is with Google, OSM can be customized with overlays and different views. In particular, there’s a cycle map…

… and a skiing map.

I really like the idea of this project, especially the fact that we have a worldwide street and address database that is available for free to everyone. Besides, talking about normal street maps, it definitely is an alternative to Google Maps. So make sure, that at least every now and then, you use OSM for your address searches.

I gave it a try a few minutes ago and decided that this is definitely worth a quick (almost) real-time post. I activated 3D  buildings while having the map centered to Munich and all I could say was “Wow!”. Nothing more to say!

Have a look for your self:

Get it here.

Given the background of my experiences at AENA and my studies, the video below (Source) which I found through Pogue’s Posts wasn’t actually much of a surprise for me but I think it gives a really good overview for non-pros! Besides, for me, it’s at least been a short update on the American state of the art and future plans as my personal knowledge tends to be a bit focused on the European on-goings.

For those among you who want to know a bit more then “ADS-B = AIRPLANE + GPS + COLOUR DISPLAY = COOL” and may be wondering how GPS with it providing a downlink only is to provide every airplane with other planes’ positions, have a look at the Wikipedia article on the topic. There you’ll find the details!