Hyderabad Bicycling Club: For the directionally blind: mapping your GPS

This is mainly for the ‘directionally blind’ people like me, who solely rely on the friendly GPS device to help them cross the road. No kidding!

With a Garmin, it is easy to upload any map onto it and then use it later while riding. Due to popular demand, I’ll try to put down the steps (yes, a little bit that needs to be done before it starts rolling) that I use to do that.

1. Get a Garmin device :) It looks like this -->

Preferably a Forerunner 205, 305, 405, Edge etc.

2. In your internet browser, create a new favourite link. For IE users, do: Open a blank page –> Favourites –> Add To Favourites. Now go and change the properties of that favourite: Favourites –> Right click the blank-page-favourite you just created –> Properties –> In the URL field, add this:

javascript: (function(){var%20script=document.createElement('script');script.src='http://mysite.verizon.net/kyleyost/googlemap_cuesheet.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script);})()

Just copy-paste the above and save it. IE might throw a warning, but ignore that (it has a habit of doing it).
3. Construct your map route: http://maps.google.com
Use the ‘Draw lines along with the roads’ feature when you create your new map. NOTE: Make sure that the entire map is chalked out with a single line, i.e., don’t add multiple lines along the road, the technique has a bug wherein it reads only one line in the G-map. Too bad, but yeah. This is what I get for tomorrow’s 13 Morning Square ride.

4. Now, while still on the map page above, click on the Favourites->New Favourite Created in Step-2. This is the magic script that parses the map created on G-maps and takes you to a page where it can be converted to a Garmin map file.
On this page, you can add a name for the map, give a speed to the Virtual Partner and when all done, click ‘Garmin Course’ for it to generate the map file. Copy the generated text and save it in a text file and have its extension .crs. For this ride, it can be 13MorningSquare.crs

5. One caveat here: CRS seems to be an old format and not all sites/devices understand it. So, we need to convert it to the latest TCX format.

So, goto http://www.gpsies.com/convert.do and in select ‘Garmin Course TCX and hit convert.

Done!

6. Now just need to upload this to the Garmin device. Open the Training Center –> File –> Import Courses –> load the TCX file

7. Now just send it over to the Garmin!

8. Now to the ride: switch on the Garmin. Goto: Training –> Courses and you will find it there. Select it and off you go!

While doing the course, you see lot of different screens that the Garmin does not shows in normal mode:

The map screen is the most useful, showing the planned course in a thick line, and the actual travelled track in a thin dotted line, and the current location is shown using a small triangle.

One thing, the Garmin displays a "Off Course" message too often, even when you are on course or off by a tiny bit. But that’s fine, for it finds the course on its own and you are back on track.

That’s easy! Well, if you know a ‘better way’ then please do ping me.

A note of caution: Once the map is loaded on the Garmin and you have used it, then delete the course from the Garmin. This is because, Garmin’s Training Center has problems with ‘non-standard’ maps and it stops to work with the device. So, delete the map from the Garmin to make it work again with the Training Center. Little annoying, but, again, gotta do it!

Finally: A wonderful site to check whether the tcx file generated is good or not: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/