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Talky Toaster Maps vs OS


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So would I be right in saying that if I were to buy a Garmin Dakota 10 for about £150 I could use the Talky Toaster maps instead of having to pay about the same again for the OS maps.

 

How do the two compare? Would I find that the OS maps are better but the Talky Toaster ones are free? Or is it just that i'm so used to looking at OS maps that the Talky Toaster ones just look wrong but are actually just as good as the OS ones? A quick comparison between my local area OS map (153 Bedford and Huntingdon FWIW) and the openstreetmaps site suggests that they are pretty similar quality.

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The OS maps are much better for details such as paths, footpaths etc in the countryside than the free ones. Just compare OS Landranger 1:50K maps (which are the ones Garmin use for their Discoverer maps) to the Open Steet map ones. Here is a location in South Wales on the Open Street Maps and the OS Maps you'll see the difference. But the OS ones on the Garmin have one downside, they don't let you zoom very close in. So for towns etc you can't easily see the roads and other features. The free ones do let you zoom right in close (different technology in how they draw on the screen). Also beware of offers with the GPS on Garmin maps. They sometimes offer the national park maps (1:25k larger scale) but these don't cover the whole UK. The OS GB Discoverer maps do.

 

Which is best? I use both and find the OS ones better for the countryside and the free ones better for towns. Both let you do routing by foot or by car (turn by turn directions - no voice guidance though) and both have a database of 'points of interest' so you can search for locations. If your budget allows it get the OS ones and run both. If you budget doesn't you'll find the free ones are very good and do an excellent job.

 

Something to bear in mind though with the Dakota 10. It doesn't support an SD card but has internal memory. This is more than enough for the free maps but not for the OS maps. You'd be better getting the 20 (yes, bit more expensive) but you could then run the OS maps on SD card and the free maps in internal memory. On my resource site I've got a comparison table of the features the various GPS's support.

 

The Garmin GPS's come with a 'basemap'. It's pretty useless! Only shows major roads and not that accurately There is another option which allows you to 'capture' sections of OS maps and load them into the GPS as images. Works very well but it's a bit fiddly to do and you can't get very large areas stored.

 

Finally, I'm in Ireland at the moment and been using the free maps on my Oregon. They're ideal and we've found all the caches we went looking for. Some of the very minor Irish back roads (tracks really) are not shown that accurately and some are missing but it's not been a problem!

 

Chris

Graculus

Volunteer UK Reviewer for geocaching.com

UK Geocaching Information & Resources website www.follow-the-arrow.co.uk

Geocaching.com Knowledge Books

Edited by Graculus
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I have an Oregon and on the device I have 3 maps sets: the origonal topo one, the TT one (based on OpenStreetMaps) and the OS 1:50k maps. As you have seen the TT maps and the OS ones are similar however my experience is that within built up areas there is not much difference (actually the TT ones are slightly better here) however out in the countryside the TT ones have significantly less detail than on the OS ones. I therefore tend to use the OS ones for everything so if you have the budget for the OS maps, and regularly head off into the coutryside, then Ifind them to be a worthwhile investment.

 

 

 

.

Edited by Big Wolf
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So would I be right in saying that if I were to buy a Garmin Dakota 10 for about £150 I could use the Talky Toaster maps instead of having to pay about the same again for the OS maps.

 

How do the two compare? Would I find that the OS maps are better but the Talky Toaster ones are free? Or is it just that i'm so used to looking at OS maps that the Talky Toaster ones just look wrong but are actually just as good as the OS ones? A quick comparison between my local area OS map (153 Bedford and Huntingdon FWIW) and the openstreetmaps site suggests that they are pretty similar quality.

 

I have a Garmin Dakota 10. I use the Talky Toaster maps and Garmin TOPO maps. Most of the time the TOPO's are disabled though as I prefer OSM maps. A friend has the OS maps and when we're out caching they find that they just pixelate as you zoom in, so you can't get all that detailed with them as they're just 1:50k maps. I'd quite like to have them as a back up, but for the money they cost I find OSM are fine for my needs! :)

 

In the time I've been using them I've not really had an issue with the number of footpaths displayed on OSM maps. It would appear that quite a lot of cachers use them, and upload their tracks to the OSM site after they have done a caching trail. I certainly do. So the OSM maps seem to include more paths for areas that have caches on vs those that don't have caches on. Good news for cachers! :)

 

If you really want OS maps on your GPSr and don't mind getting a bit techie then if you have an OS 25k map of an area and save it as a .JPG file then you can use OKMap to create a Garmin Custom Map and dump this on your GPS in the Custom Maps folder. This won't cover the entire country, but it will give you an OS 25K map of the area you are caching in which gives much better detail than the 1:50k maps you can buy.

 

Perhaps the best thing would to be get the GPS, try out the Talky Toaster maps to find a few caches, and then decide if you need to buy OS maps?

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I must admit I played with maps on my Oregon, but in the end reverted to OS maps with the MemoryMap Windows Mobile app on my old XDA. It has never let me down and I have the whole GB 1:25000 mapping on 2 8Mb microSD cards. Can't be beat, IMHO.

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You can of course add your tracklogs of footpaths to OSM and these will appear like magic on Talkytoaster's next release of the maps. I seem to recall that I put pretty much the whole of Helston onto OSM when I was heading that way on holiday a couple of years ago.

 

Since the OS relaxed their data restrictions last year it's much easier to add stuff to OSM. Previously you had to rely on tracklogs, but it's possible to trace routes, making it not only faster to do but much more accurate. And of course you can now add an area before you go, rather than having to wait till you get back, which might have defeated the purpose somewhat for many people.

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I must admit I played with maps on my Oregon, but in the end reverted to OS maps with the MemoryMap Windows Mobile app on my old XDA. It has never let me down and I have the whole GB 1:25000 mapping on 2 8Mb microSD cards. Can't be beat, IMHO.

 

Can't be beat.... unless you want to come by the maps legitimately... a full set of 1:25,000 is what ? about £5,000 to buy.

 

(this is not a 'dig' at anyone, I have the full set of OS memory maps myself !)

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I must admit I played with maps on my Oregon, but in the end reverted to OS maps with the MemoryMap Windows Mobile app on my old XDA. It has never let me down and I have the whole GB 1:25000 mapping on 2 8Mb microSD cards. Can't be beat, IMHO.

 

Can't be beat.... unless you want to come by the maps legitimately... a full set of 1:25,000 is what ? about £5,000 to buy.

 

(this is not a 'dig' at anyone, I have the full set of OS memory maps myself !)

 

Area of the UK : 243000 square km approx

75000 square km of 1:25000 from Memorymap : currently £50.00

 

Go figure..!

 

Less than the cost of a decent GPS - with lousy mapping..!!

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The current price (with an extra 750km2 making 2250km2 total) of the Explorer OS map at 1-25000 digital download is £50.00

.

UK area 243000km2 divided by 2250km2 = 108 x £50.00 = £5400.00 for complete UK coverage. They are still the best though.

 

OSM for quality does compare favourably with the OS 1-50000 LandRanger and gets better all the time. Compare it with the Garmin 1-50000 GB Topo map and I think the OSM comes out on top IMHO. I'm currently using OSM and uploading more paths to the map as I go along.

 

Regards

Bernard

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Compare it with the Garmin 1-50000 GB Topo map and I think the OSM comes out on top IMHO.

Regards

Bernard

 

Just out of curiosity.... How do you arrive at 1-50000 for Garmin's Topo maps?

I have that on my 60CSx and you can zoom in (or out) to pretty much any scale you like.

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If you have an Oregon/Dakota/Colorado/Map62s that has the facility to use custom maps have a look at Mobile Atlas creator, I use this and have now created a library of OS 1:25000 maps that I load depending on where I aam caching/walking. Easy to create and even easier to load/unload from the GPS. If you have the facility why not use it. I eagerly await the day that Garmin give us the facility to choose between a multiple custom maps.

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Compare it with the Garmin 1-50000 GB Topo map and I think the OSM comes out on top IMHO.

Regards

Bernard

 

Just out of curiosity.... How do you arrive at 1-50000 for Garmin's Topo maps?

I have that on my 60CSx and you can zoom in (or out) to pretty much any scale you like.

 

Hello, Only a rough comparison of the information contained and particularly the lack of field boundarys. By that I'd say the Garmin GB Topo and the Landranger are very similar.

 

Zooming in is another matter, 1-50000 maps can be zoomed in as close as 1-1000 in Memory Map (even closer in Mapsource, but you don't get any more information.

 

Regards

Bernard

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We use OS mapping on our Oregon 300 at1:50,000, which we find adequate for geocaching use , you would need three to cover the whole of the UK at about £90 each. Ours are about 3 years old and we do occasionally find details have changed. The advantage of TT which we also use for the parts of the UK which we haven't bought is that they are regularly updated whereas you would need to pay for OS updates. We also used TT for a trip to Ireland which was better than any mapping we could find over there.

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