Submission to Garmin to produce a tool to make BirdsEye/JNX

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rediguana
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Submission to Garmin to produce a tool to make BirdsEye/JNX

Post by rediguana » 16 May 12 8:16 pm

I can't remember if I'd posted this effort in the GCA forums, so please excuse me if I have already mentioned it.

In short, I'm organising an effort to collect a list of Garmin GPS owners that are keen to support a collective effort to contact Garmin, and ask them to release a software tool, and ideally specifications, for the JNX format so that we are free to add other forms of imagery to our Garmin GPS that are beyond the scale that Custom Maps (kmz) support.
The New Zealand Recreational GPS Society Inc. is wanting to gather interest from Garmin GPS users. You do not have to live in New Zealand, or be a member of the Society - you just have to own, or have an interest in owning a Garmin GPS receiver and using your own raster imagery. Currently it is possibly to purchase and download large amounts of raster map information (Garmin's BirdsEye product) and install this on compatible Garmin GPS receivers. For small raster images, most Garmin GPS receivers also support Custom Maps. Some countries, such as New Zealand, have a large amount of open source government imagery available as GeoTiffs, but the imagery is so large it is not practical to convert and install these as Custom Maps (because so few 'tiles' can be loaded), and no tool currently exists to convert publicly accessible rasters to JNX files for installation on our Garmin GPS.

The purpose of this exercise is to determine the interest by Garmin GPS owners, in having a software tool that a GPS owner can load multiple raster images, and produce a JNX file so that the publicly available imagery can be used on our Garmin GPS units, and shared with other Garmin GPS users.
I'm intending to collate the response, and collectively submit a request to Garmin that they provide a software tool (e.g. provide the tool with one or more Geotiffs or JPGs with World Files) and document the format. The more people that contribute, the stronger the signal we can send to Garmin ;)

Submission to Garmin to provide a tool to create BirdsEye/JNX files

Cheers Gav

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Big Matt and Shell
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Re: Submission to Garmin to produce a tool to make BirdsEye/JNX

Post by Big Matt and Shell » 18 May 12 1:09 am

Hi Gav,

Great idea, I was only thinking today, wouldn't it be nice if you could load up parks boundaries to assist in placing caches.

I've filled out the form and will post it in a few other forums.

Cheers,

Matt

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Re: Submission to Garmin to produce a tool to make BirdsEye/JNX

Post by The Explorer » 20 May 12 2:50 am

Big Matt and Shell wrote:snip- wouldn't it be nice if you could load up parks boundaries to assist in placing caches.
Hi, you can do that without using Birdseye format raster images. Points, lines and polygons (e.g. parks boundaries) are fine in vector format - forget Birdseye. Convert/create the boundary into gpx format and just load it as a track.

Have a feeling the petition will be a waste of time. Birdseye is all about making a living for Garmin employees and shareholders. There is nothing special about the format except it was specifically designed to ensure they have the stranglehold on map sales for their units. If they wanted their gps units to be more universal in application they could simply modify their software to use any common format - best (IMHO) being ECW. If you want to use airphotos/ raster maps give Garmin the flick and get a proper GPS like TwoNav Aventura :) Thats what I have done..wouldnt bother begging Garmin for favours that are unlikely to eventuate. Buy a GPS that suits your requirements and get on with it.

Cheers
Greg

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gmj3191
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Re: Submission to Garmin to produce a tool to make BirdsEye/JNX

Post by gmj3191 » 20 May 12 9:13 pm

Big Matt and Shell wrote:Hi Gav,

Great idea, I was only thinking today, wouldn't it be nice if you could load up parks boundaries to assist in placing caches.

I've filled out the form and will post it in a few other forums.

Cheers,

Matt
OSM would be a much better approach I reckon.
No dependence on Garmin, and we could have a local project to map the boundaries ourselves and update OSM where it hadn't been updated already.
A much more universal approach across GPS brands and types too.

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Re: Submission to Garmin to produce a tool to make BirdsEye/JNX

Post by The Explorer » 02 June 12 1:48 pm

...by the way there is already a "tool" for creating jnx format files

http://www.the-thorns.org.uk/mapping/

Cheers
Greg

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