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.
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 GarminThe 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.
Submission to Garmin to provide a tool to create BirdsEye/JNX files
Cheers Gav