TAG :: Toronto Area Geocachers

The Ontario Trails Project has been updated to version 0.78 tonight. We’ve got a whack of new trails, including Algonquin’s Western Uplands trail and the Killarney loop. Also new in this update, we have added a new class of trail – canoe routes. If you have any canoe trips along the Province’s established canoe routes, please send in your tracklogs. Put-in and Take-out points should be noted. I am using the Put-in symbol to represent areas where you can put the canoe in the water or put out. The Canoe take-out symbol is reserved for locations where the canoe comes out of the water only – like above a dam.

This update’s changelog:

Ont-Trails 0.78
* New Trail Type added: Canoe Route
* Updated TYP file – new canoe route trail type, updated parking icon, new icons for canoe put in/take Out

Updated – Bruce Trail @ Crawford Lake CA – Milton – Conservation Halton
Updated – Crawford Lake Trail @ Crawford Lake CA – Milton – Conservation Halton
Updated – Burns Conservation Area Trails – Milton – Conservation Halton
Updated – Hilton’s Highway Trail – Hilton Falls CA – Milton – Conservation Halton
Updated – Red Oak Trail (Red) – Hilton Falls CA – Milton – Conservation Halton
Updated – Esquesing CA Trails – Conservation Halton
Updated – Highland Backpacking Trail – Algonquin PP – Dennis Sheen
Updated – Gould Lake – Swimmrguy
Updated – Cruickston/RARE trails – Cambridge – Zeke
Updated – Hanlon Creek Trails – Guelph – Entogeek
Updated – Glen Major Forest, Walker Woods – Entogeek
Updated – Little Tract – Guelph – Fizbot
Updated – Crawford Tract – Guelph – Fizbot
Updated – Palgrave Side Trail – Palgrave – Entogeek
Updated – Glen Haffy CA trails – Entogeek
Added – Grand River Canoe Route, Cambridge to Paris – northernpenguin
Added – Tour de Matchedash – Swift Rapids – northernpenguin
Added – Lingham Lake access trail – northernpenguin
Added – Nottawasaga River Canoe Route, Minesing Swamp Section – Minesing – northernpenguin
Added – Beaver River Canoe Route (Bruce) portions – Grey County – northernpenguin
Added – Baylawn Drive Ravine Trails – Pickering – Entogeek
Added – Snake Island – Lake Simcoe – GPSDerek
Added – Nonquon Wildlife Area – Entogeek
Added – Lawson Tract – Oxford County – Treknschmidt
Added – LaCloche/Silhouette Backpacking Trail – Killarney PP – polarhiker (Everytrail) (With Permission)
Added – Frank Tract – Milton – Fizbot
Added – Montreal River/Ishpatina Ridge Canoe Route, Trail – Barnie’s Band of Gold
Added – Durham Region Forest Trails (Partial) – Entogeek
Added – Bechtel Park Forest Trails – Waterloo – Cache4Pat
Added – Indian Point Trail – Petawawa – Entogeek
Added – Morris Island CA – Fitzroy Harbour – Entogeek
Added – David Lake to Silver Peak – Killarney PP – Sudbury – Jason Fowler
Added – Western Uplands Backpacking Trail (Second Loop) – Algonquin PP – Jason Fowler
Added – Bat Lake Trail – Algonquin PP – Jason Fowler
Added – Moon Island Trail – Massassaga PP – Jason Fowler
Added – Wreck Island Trail – Massassaga PP – Jason Fowler
Added portages – Massassaga PP – Jason Fowler:

Portage A 406
Portage B 730
Portage C 1225
Portage D 488
Portage E 239
Portage F 634
Portage I 782
Portage K 369
Portage L 542
Portage N 232
Portage M 348

Added – Campbellville Road Pond Trail – Milton – Entogeek
Added – Rattlesnake Point CA – Milton – Conservation Halton
Added – Mountsberg CA – Milton – Conservation Halton
Added – Iroquoian Village, Visitor’s Centre @ Crawford Lake CA – Milton – Conservation Halton

[ Ontario Trails Project ]

Related Posts:

• Ontario Trails Project 0.81 Available now
• Ontario Trails Project v0.80, Now Available!
• Ontario Trails Project v0.79 posted

Today Groundspeak is launching their new Maps Beta for Garmin program. The site is now offering free downloadable maps of the USA and Canada for Garmin handheld devices. The maps are available immediately at the Maps Beta download page.  The maps look and feel just like the new Maps Beta that Groundspeak introduced last december. Geocaches are featured prominently on the map screen for easy locating. They appear as coloured boxes when zoomed out, and full cache icons when zoomed in. Highlighting a cache on the map will give the name of the cache, and the difficulty/terrain rating.

The screenshots above are from a Garmin Colorado 400t. As you can see, the maps are quite detailed, and great for spontaneous caching.

The maps feature

• Preloaded geocache information, including over 750,000 geocaches.
• POI database with over 1.5 million points of interest including restaurants, pubs, and dollar stores
• Full routing, including Geocache Route Optimization(tm) for power caching.

This is possibly a response from the Lillypad to Garmin over the OpenCaching initiative. In the forums, Jeremy was quoted, saying that “if Garmin was going to target Groundspeak’s profit center, then it was only fair for Groundspeak to go after Garmin’s lucrative map business”.

The maps are compatible with all Garmin handheld devices, including the Garmin eTrex, Colorado, Oregon and 62 series.

 

Related Posts:

• Ontario Trails Project v0.79 posted
• Ontario Trails Project Updated to 0.78, now with Canoe Routes
• Ibycus Topo Canada updated to v4.0

Dale Atkin (Ibycus) has posted on the Groundspeak Forums, indicating that the newest release of his free (Garmin) topo map project for Canada is now ready.  The new release features improvements for road features, particularly in Quebec and a newer version of the underlying topo data.

Just a quick note here to say that I’ve *finally* finished work on version 4.0 of the maps.

This version includes new roads for much of the country (including Quebec, which hadn’t been updated since the maps came up), as well as more areas with road names.

Also there is a new version of the underlying dataset for the topo data.

Finally included are what I *hope* are all of the more minor roads that disappeared between version 2.1 and 3.0. These are included as a transparent overlay that can be added to the maps (or any map for that matter).

I hope to get the torrent of the PC version going tonight.

Just a reminder, we have a Pro Tip posted for installing version 3 on our site. Version 4 should follow the same instructions.

You can obtain the map data using BitTorrent, here’s the tracker file. If you’re security minded, the MD5 SUM is also available for the Torrent:

MD5 Sum - 3ddd5edfaf793f9cadc6f449ec6d55e4 *IbycusTopo40.iso

[ Ibycus Topo 4.0 (BitTorrent) ] [ Ibycus Topo Home ]

Related Posts:

• Pro Tip: Ibycus Topo
• Ontario Trails Project v0.79 posted
• Ontario Trails Project 0.81 Available now

You bought a Garmin GPS (probably handheld) and now you’re looking for maps for it. While Garmin’s Topo Canada is a great product, it’s also $150.00. Lucky for you, there is an alternative (if you are prepared to give up the 3D DEM topo shading):

A few years ago, Dale Atkin, the geocacher known as Ibycus did the Canadian geocaching community a great favour. He released a Topo map product for Garmin GPS units based on the Canadian Government’s free topo data. This is a free map, won’t cost you a thing outside the bandwidth to download it and a blank DVD. If you make use of the project, you might want to consider sending him a donation though.

He also released a Topo USA map product but I’ll be concentrating on the Canadian one here. Back when Dale started his project, the maps were hosted on his server and you would download them from there …. but due to the overwhelming popularity of this project he had to stop hosting it there. Now, it’s a bittorrent download – note this is 3.5 gigabytes, and will take some time to obtain.

To get started using these maps, you will need to obtain two pieces of software (one you may already have):

You will need to have a copy of MapSource. If you already own a Garmin map product, chances are you already have it. If not, here’s a little trick to getting a free copy of it:

• Install Garmin Training Center, then install the Garmin MapSource Update

Next you will need a Bittorrent client. I use the official one.

Once you have Mapsource, and Bittorrent, you can use Bittorrent to get the map data.
The torrent links can be a real pain to locate, so I have posted a few of them here. dfx updated the tracker links with improvements, so I’m linking to his version for the download:

• Bittorrent Link for Ibycus Topo 3.2, courtesy of dfx
• Bittorrent Link for Ibycus Topo 3.2 for Mac computers, courtesy of dfx*

*These instructions do not cover MacOS but I included the link for completeness

Once you open the .torrent file, you’ll be asked where to save them and it will begin downloading. Note, due to how bittorrent works, you’ll also be sharing it to other people. That’s how the process works. The download process will take anywhere from hours to days depending on your connection speed and how many people are sharing the file when you request it. It took me four hours to download my copy on a 10Mbps link.

After a long while, you will have a file: IbycusTopo32.iso. Using your favourite DVD burning software, burn this image to the DVD. You can usually just double click the IbycusTopo32.iso file to start this. You want to actually open the ISO file in your burning software – don’t just copy the file to the disc, that won’t work.

When you’re done, you should have a disc with a few files on it:

Find the file called “IbycusTopo.exe” and double click that one.

You’ll be asked if you want to install Ibycus Topo, select “Yes” to proceed with it

You’ll be presented next with a licence agreement. This is where you agree that the responsibility for using these maps are yours alone, Dale doesn’t offer a warranty and it’s up to you to watch where you’re going when using this map on your GPS. There are, in fact, known inaccuracies. Blame the Canadian Government for those.

Pick a place to install it (I recommend you leave this at the default setting) and then hit next.

This next step takes the longest, as it copies 3 gigabytes of data to your hard drive. This would be a good time to go fetch a coffee. Perhaps fetch it at that coffee shop around the corner with the LPC micro….

You’ll eventually be greeted with a dialog box that tells you the product is installed.

Take the DVD out of the drive and put it in a safe place.

Start up MapSource, then pick “Ibycus Topo 3.2″ from the pull down at the top left. You can now view the map in MapSource, or send it to your GPS using the usual methods. We’ll cover sending maps to your GPS in a future tip.

[ Ibycus Topo Website ] [ Ibycus Topo Forum Topic ]

Related Posts:

• Ibycus Topo Canada updated to v4.0
• Garmin Launches StreetPilot for iPhone, iPad
• GeoBeacon: Garmin Chirp – on an iPhone (or iPad)

Found this little gem on the Groundspeak Forums.

One of the complaints that many owners of the newer Colorado and Oregon GPS units have is the lack of a “night mode” that other Garmin GPS units have. Night mode on a Nuvi or 60 series GPS for example will, at sunset switch from a light background to a dark background. This reduces the glare and distration from that dashboard mounted GPS.

Many geocachers bought their Colorado/Oregon/Dakota units as you could load City Navigator NT on the unit and use it as both an outdoor GPS for hiking AND as a navigation device. The Colorado even ships with an “automotive” profile for this purpose.  For unknown reasons, Garmin left the day/night mode function out of the Colorado and it’s kin.

Fortunately, yogazoo has created a hack in the form of a map overlay that will deliver the same effect. He has produced a transparent map that, when activated will darken the screen for City Navigator maps in the USA and Southern 2/3 of Canada. You will have to switch the map manually. Still, this is a welcome relief for those of us who drive a lot after dusk yet don’t want the distraction of a bright, light coloured map display.

You can find it at GPS File Depot

Related Posts:

• Pro Tip: Downgrading your Garmin GPSr firmware
• Opencaching.com also updates their site – Now with cache verifications
• New Garmin Beta Firmware – Oregon, GPSMAP 62/78, Dakota