An Introduction to GPS Moving Map Navigation with Oziexplorer

By Chris Bibby

 

Over the last few years GPS technology has become increasingly affordable and accessible to the general consumer market. Its applications are vast, ranging from simply displaying your co-ordinates so you can plot them on a map, to fully featured automatic route calculating, voice prompting moving map navigation.

 

Moving Map navigation is great for the outback explorer as it shows you exactly where you are on the map as well as offering other features such as route planning, track log recording and waypoint entry. Never again will you be wandering around aimlessly trying to find that out of the way bush campsite ‘that should be around here…somewhere’!

 

This is the first in a series of articles on using GPS and moving map software for offroad touring. We’ll look at the various options available and look at setting up and using some of the more popular set ups.

 

There’s two main types of moving maps available, vector based, and raster based. A Vector based map contains a database of the road networks and the information needed to automatically calculate a route through that network. Raster based maps on the other hand are a scanned image of the map which is calibrated into latitude and longitude for display in mapping software.

 

 

 

Fig 1.0 – An Example of a Vector Map

 

Fig 1.1 – An Example of a Raster Map

 

Vector maps are great for route calculation and street navigation, but they lack the detail of Raster maps. Raster maps are better suited for off road navigation, as they are more detailed and often display topographic information.

 

There’s heaps of different kinds of Raster Maps available, ranging from the National Scale 1:250K (Shown Above) to 1:50 and 1:25 Topographic Maps. And if you can’t get what you want you can always scan your paper maps and calibrate them.

 

Oziexplorer is a Raster based navigation software package that features moving map technology. Oziexplorer is popular amongst outback tourers and four wheel drivers due to the fact it is not only easy to use, but also extremely powerful and reasonably priced.

 

There’s a couple of different ways you can set up Oziexplorer  and in the next part of this article we’ll discuss the various options and what you will need to get up and running.

 

The first thing you’ll need regardless of which way you go, is a copy of the Oziexplorer full PC software, which is available from www.oziexplorer.com for $130. This is the full featured version of Oziexplorer and runs on a desktop or laptop PC. Regardless of whether you choose to run Oziexplorer CE on a PDA you will still need the full PC software for trip planning and converting maps.

 

The second thing you’ll need of course is a GPS that can be interfaced to a PC. Your GPS will need to support the sending of NMEA data. NMEA is an industry standard format for sending GPS information to other devices. Most GPS’ on the market that are able to be interfaced to a PC use NMEA.

 

The GPS can be a simple ‘mouse type’ GPS which is simply a receiver that transmits NMEA information via USB or serial port to the computer. Or you can use a handheld GPS with a PC cable to achieve the same result. The major benefit of using a handheld GPS is that if the computer dies for what ever reason, you still have some redundancy in the Hand Held GPS. On the other hand the ‘mouse type’ GPS’ are significantly cheaper.

 

 

 

 

 

There are many other kinds of GPS available including Blue Tooth, Compact Flash and PCMCIA, these provide the same functionality as a Mouse Type GPS but differ in the way they are connected to the PC. There’s also all in one units that have built in mapping functionality too, but here we’re talking about using Oziexplorer with a GPS.

 

Once you have decided on the GPS, it is then time to decide how you are going to use the moving map software in your vehicle. With Oziexplorer there are a couple of options here.

 

Laptop/Car PC

 

Using a laptop or a purpose built Car PC, you can run the fully featured full PC version of Oziexplorer on the move.

 

This is generally the best way to go as not only do you have all the features available of the full version of Oziexplorer, you also have a bigger screen for moving map display.

 

However this option is the most expensive, Laptops are generally quite large and take up a lot of room, and building an installing a Car – PC can be quite involved.

 

Laptops and Car-PC’s also have hard drives which contain moving parts and can be damaged in servere conditions, especially long periods of vibrations. However there’s a few ways to minimize vibrations and also not use a hard drive altogether, that’s getting a bit technical for now so we’ll have a look at it in a later article.

 

If you want the bigger screen and all the features of the full PC version of Oziexplorer then a Laptop or Car PC is the way to go.

 

 

PDA

 

Oziexplorer also has a version that will run on a Portable Digital Assistant, or PDA for short. This version is known as Oziexplorer CE and is a scaled down version of the full PC software for use on PDA devices.

 

The design philosophy for Oziexplorer CE is that you use the full PC version to create the routes and waypoints and then transfer this data to your PDA for use in Oziexplorer CE.

 

The benefits of using a PDA include their relatively low cost, around $350 - $500 for a basic model, and their durability. A PDA doesn’t have any moving parts and is therefore better suited to the offroad environment.

 

As PDA’s come with limited storage capacity, you will need some kind of expansion pack to let you add a Compact Flash or SD Memory card to hold the maps.

 

The major drawback of using a PDA running Oziexplorer CE apart from the lack of features of the full PC version (mind you the features are more than adequate for offroad navigation) is the size of the screen.

 

Once you have decided which way to go in regards to your basic setup the next thing you’ll need are some maps.

 

Maps

 

The most common raster maps people use with Oziexplorer are the NATMAP 250K Raster packs available from Geoscience Australia. These are topographic maps in 1:250 scale that cover the entire country.

 

There’s two different packages available, standard and premium. The standard package consists of a single mosaic and 514 individual mapsheets on cd-rom, whereas the premium package consists of a single mosaic and 8 UTM zone maps on  DVD-ROM.

 

What’s the difference between the two? A mosaic is a single map image file which consists of all of the individual maps being ‘stitched’ together to make one big map. The drawback here is the map file is quite large, fine if you have plenty of space on your laptop or Car – PC, but not so good for use on a PDA which has a much lower storage capacity.

 

I’d suggest if you are going to be using the maps on a PDA you’d be better off going for the standard version which includes the individual mapsheets. To give you an idea the NATMAP 250K Mosaic is around 3GB large, so you would need one bloody big storage card!

 

These maps are available from Geoscience Australia (www.ga.gov.au) and other retail outlets.

 

There’s a variety of specialist maps available from companies like Hema Maps, titles of which include Great Desert Tracks, Kimberley Map, Simspon Desert Map. (see www.hemamaps.com.au)

 

You can even buy the Perth Street Directory from DOLA at www.landonline.com.au

 

Where to get all the gear

 

There’s a variety of retail shops around that sell everything you need to get started, alternatively you can check out the Camping WA online store as well as www.ja-gps.com.au for good prices on GPS units and cables, www.gpsoz.com.au is another online store that also has good prices, and if you know exactly what you are looking for you could try ebay.

 

In the next article we will look at how to set up Oziexplorer with the GPS for moving map, as well as how to create and navigate using waypoints.