Garmin Edge 705 - Ireland?

Supercell

I'm thinking of buying a Garmin Edge 705 and am a bit worried about the maps.

Does anyone know whether the European "base" map includes Irish roads?

coylemj

Probably not, 'base map' typically means that it has main roads which in the US means interstate highways only and in Ireland probably 'N' roads only. This is standard practice for this type of unit, I have had two eTrex Legend models and while they can store maps in internal memory, they come with just a very basic map of Europe showing major roads only so you have to buy the maps.

Look at the 'Maps' tab in that link you posted, they have listed City Navigator packages for Nth. America, Europe and some individual countries so I'd say the unit as shipped has very little detail of any country.

If you're going to buy extra maps, better not to buy the maps preinstalled on a MicroSD card, instead buy a blank memory card, get the Maps on DVD and that way you can install the maps on your PC and have them on the GPS as well. If you buy the maps preinstalled on a memory card you won't be able to view the maps on your PC which is very useful for planning trips, viewing and storing waypoints (favourits) etc. It looks like the maps are the same price whether they're on DVD or a MicroSD card so for the price of a blank memory card I'd say it's well worth the added convenience.

Supercell

Thanks coylemj, good advice there, I think thats probably the route I'll go so.

rdhma

I enquired about topographic maps for Ireland and got this response.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for contacting Garmin(Europe)Ltd.

Unfortunately this is not an option currently as the Irish Ordnance
Survey will not license out their data to be able to supply this type of
mapping.

Kind regards
Andy Phillips Garmin (Europe) Ltd

There is however another (free) option for those looking for topo maps:
http://www.smc.org.uk/ContourMaps.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mdipol/img2gps/
http://cgpsmapper.com/

Alun

rdhma wrote: »

I enquired about topographic maps for Ireland and got this response.

There is however another (free) option for those looking for topo maps:
http://www.smc.org.uk/ContourMaps.htm/

Note though that these only contain contours and (some) large areas of water. There are no roads, no tracks, no indication of terrain, no buildings etc. so they're hardly real topographic maps. Having said that I've installed them on my hand-held Vista HCx, together with City Navigator (you can combine the two together).

There are also people who have modified the basic SMC contour maps and added relief shading and all kinds of other stuff, see http://emeraldisland.free.fr

robinph

The Europe base map just has very little detail on it at all. It has all M roads, most N roads and a couple of R class ones but they are all very inaccurate as well. I just had a look at the highest zoom level for a laugh and there are a grand total of 15 roads marked within the area of the M50.

The SMC maps are very good and it doesn't matter a whole lot that they are lacking in road and water bodies as the maps are transparent so you can have the detailed official Garmin road maps overlayed and still have the contours visible at the same time on your unit. I actually preferred this to when I was using a unit in the US with the Garmin versions of both road and topo maps installed as you could only actually view one set at a time so ended up missing out on the best bits of the detail from each one.

Alun

robinph wrote: »

The SMC maps are very good and it doesn't matter a whole lot that they are lacking in road and water bodies as the maps are transparent so you can have the detailed official Garmin road maps overlayed and still have the contours visible at the same time on your unit.

That rather depends on what you're using it for really. A normal decent topo map would have much more detail than those two combined. However,as I said, it's better than nothing which is the only alternative.

rdhma

I've just received my new Edge 705.
First impressions:
Reception under trees v good, didn't lose signal at all. Using it for mountain biking.
User interface much different to my old eTrex Legend, will take getting used to.
Doesn't seem to have a measure distance with pointer function.
Co-ordinates displayed in Lat/Lon only, no National grid reference.
Can't get it to talk to OziExplorer or img2gps, though Garmin Mapsourse communicates OK.
Battery indicator only goes to half full. Garmin suggest a full discharge and recharge so I'll try this.


I'd like to add the topo maps from http://emeraldisland.free.fr but file 10000102.img,
which is described in the installation instructions is missing from the img directory.
10000101,103,104.img are there. I've contacted them about this.