Cartographer: convert maps to PDA format

Which Maps?

Choose the maps corresponding to your travel needs: from street levels to topographical, aeronautical, marine maps of any worldwide area.

1. On the Internet, world-wide digital maps can be found at

   	WorldWide	U.S and/or Canada	Europe
   Street level maps	MapQuest MapPoint.net	MapOnUs.com RandMcNally Maps.com	Mappy.com Webraska Michelin
   Aeronautical maps	AeroPlanner	AeroPlanner
   Topographical maps	National Geographic	Topozone charttiff.com TerraServe TopoGrafix Toporama (CA)
   Nautical maps	MarinePlanner	MarinePlanner NDI Nautical Data International

   
   The information and companies referenced here are for our customers guidance only. Some maps may have copyright restrictions. Please honor their terms of use.
   On most of the online sites, you can choose the map you're looking for. Right Click on it. Select Save Picture As... Save as a BMP, JPG or GIF file. Note the longitude and latitude (if there).
    
2. Use CDRom atlases for U.S and international digital maps through DeLorme Street Atlas, AAA Map'n'Go, Microsoft Expedia Streets 98, Microsoft Autoroute 2001, etc...
    
3. Scan your own paper maps
    
   Reminder: a map must be oriented in a North-Top direction to be converted through cartographer
    

Maps conversion

Cartographer helps you to build maps database for your PDA. You can mix black and white, gray scale, and up to 256 color maps into the same .pdb maps database.

Cartographer support .bmp Windows bitmaps, gif, and JPG maps. It converts automatically 1, 16, 256 colors images into black & white, 4 levels and 16 levels gray scale or color Palm bitmap format.

To add a map into the current maps database, hit the Add button and select from the file management box, the desired map file <map_name.jpg> for instance. Once a map is added, Cartographer will ask for calibration (see below).
To delete a map from the database, select its entry in the list then hit the Remove button.
 

Map calibration

Calibrating a map enables to geo-code it for GPS assistance purpose as well as determine its scale factor.

Cartographer allows to calibrate Mercator projection maps via 2 points calibration process.
The 2 geographic calibration points required are the latitude and longitude of the top left and bottom right corner of the map. These coordinates can be entered in degree, minutes, seconds ( N/S/W/E dd°mm'ss'' ) or in Degrees and decimals (+/- dd.dddd) format.

Calibration can be done in 3 ways:

1. Calibration points in a text file.
   When you add a map file <map_name.jpg> for instance, Cartographer automatically checks for a calibration text file <map_name.txt> located on the same directory as the map file. If any, Cartographer automatically use this file to calibrate the map.
    
   What is the syntax for the map_name.txt file?
   

   Lat, long in degrees of the top left corner <RC> Lat, long in degrees of the bottom right corner

   An example of file for Hannover (GERMANY) is 52.4988,9.5026 52.2585,9.9711

   
    
2. If there is no calibration file associated, Cartographer will open a calibration box and ask you to enter the top left and bottom right coordinates of the map.
    
3. Or you can directly on your PDA. multipoint calibrate, re-calibrate, and even fine-tune your maps via the Map-Calibrate and Map-Nudge options menu. More details...
    

Family of Maps

Cartographer eliminates size restriction in importing maps. If the map is too large for the internal memory management of the Palm Cartographer will automatically split it into several smaller units but calibration within Cartographer will be done once for all.

The split maps are grouped together as a family of map, they are "stitched" together. On your PDA, they will be listed separately, but they do act as the whole map as you defined it. These family of maps are displayed all together, if you delete a map you delete the whole the family. However, in this current version, calibration process on PDA has to be done for every single maps unit.
 

Memory limitation?

There is no limitation on the number of imported maps, except for the limitation of your your Palm memory capacity. Remember that a black and white map is twice smaller than an equivalent sized gray scale map, which is smaller than a color one.

How much memory does a map take?
The size of a map (in pixels) + its color are determinant to know its memory space.
• Width * Height / 8 for Black and White maps
• Width * Height / 4 for grayscale (4 levels of greyscale)
• Width * Height / 2 for grayscale (16 levels of greyscale)
• Width * Height for 8 bits color maps
   

Maps hotSync

To get maps database (.pdb) loaded in your Palm, save the maps database by applying the menu File-Save or the icon Save, and install the Maps.pdb file in your Palm using the Palm Install tool and HotSync.
 

Hit the road!

Now it is time to start GPS Pilot Atlas, Tracker or Fly applications to visualize your maps and plan your trip. Then go for a ride, plug your GPS receiver and let you guide by GPS Pilot!