[mkgmap-dev] Which Nuvi?

Tue Sep 1 22:04:34 BST 2009

Hi Mark,

for collecting OSM tracks with your Nüvi you will want one where you  
can switch off the "show on road" behaviour. If you can't switch that  
off your tracks will always be exactly on top of the roads that are  
already in the map. Very much useless for OSM mapping.

With my Nüvi 255W I don't see a way to switch off that behaviour (but  
perhaps there is some hack that I don't know of). Also all the nice  
options to control the tracklogging are missing, e.g. setting the  
point density. From the tracks that my Nüvi captures it seems that the  
distance between the points is about 30 meters, that is very far apart  
for OSM mapping.

So I think at least the Nüvi 2xx series is useless for mapping. But  
using the mkgmap-generated OSM maps on them works fine. They do  
support the day and night modes (the Oregons for example doesn't),  
true color display (this is missing from the eTrex series, they only  
have 256 colors) and have an easily accessible SD-card slot (2 GB  
cards work, maybe more). I don't know about marine POIs, those are  
probably not supported well (but I don't know). Other than the Oregon  
for example it doesn't have a dedicated marine mode.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Thilo