How to have my Garmin show directions of signs

Question

I am using OSM on my Garmin Nuvi device, but I do find it annoying that when I get to a crossing or exit that has road signs with directions the device does not show the direction that is on the road sign.

E.g. I drive from home to work on the road that is called A9 near Amstelveen, The Netherlands. My driving direction is from East to West. When I get to the exit to Amstelveen the road sign states Amstelveen. However my device tells me to use the exit to Keizer Karelweg (S108). None of that information is on the road sign.

Can somebody please explain step by step how I should feed OSM so that my Garmin device will tell me to take the exit to e.g. Amstelveen?

Answer 1

0

Hi Menno, The missing roadsign must be a mistake of the RWS (maintenance). A' dam has been using the S108 numbers for city regions several decades. Its even visible (28.4 li) coming out of the west on the parrallel track, a bit late. From the east its there at (hm 28.2 re) Theres a group working in OSM to get pics of road signs into the system, its not complete and ready yet. Greetz Hendrik

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answered 05 Apr '13, 11:56

Hendrikklaas
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Hello Hendrik, The Amstelveen exit is just one example of many junctions where the direction on the signs is not visible on my Garmin. E.g. when I go home to Lelystad the exit of the A6 is named the exit to Larserdreef. I want it to say Lelystad as the sign does. Another example is when I turn from the A6 onto the A1 it does tell me to go right onto the A1, but I want it to tell me to go right in the direction of Amsterdam. When I use the Garmin Navteq map it does tell me which direction is on the signs. Is there no way to have my Garmin pick up this info from OSM? Regards, Menno

(05 Apr '13, 12:07) Studio Menno

Hi Menno, I’m using a Nuvi as well, with live long Garmin updates (4x/year). The last sentence of my earlier message, 'There’s a group working in OSM to get pics of road signs into the system, it’s not complete and ready yet' is or was the message. If you want to contribute please send an email besides this platform personally. Greetz Hendrik

(05 Apr '13, 12:43) Hendrikklaas

Is the problem a routing problem or the fact your Garmins "photo real junction view" facility does not work with an OSM Map. see http://www.garmin.com/uk/photo-real-junction-view

(05 Apr '13, 19:02) andy mackey

Answer 2

Actually, I think that in the case of your junction all the data's already in OSM. You just need to create a map that uses it.

I'm guessing that so far you've downloaded a map for your Nuvi, perhaps from somewhere like http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ (although there are lots of others). Most of the maps at these download sites will have been created using mkgmap. That's highly customisable - you can choose which things from OSM are used in the map on your Nuvi and what they are named, but in order to do this you'll need to create the map yourself. The way that customised maps are created is by using a particular mkgmap "style" - a folder of files describing how particular items should be processed.

You mention that your Nuvi knows the road as "Keizer Karelweg (S108)" - a combination of the road "name" and "ref" of [this road][4]. The lines in the default "lines" style file that control how name and ref are handled are these:

# Set highway names to include the reference if there is one
highway=motorway {name '${ref|highway-symbol:hbox} ${name}' | '${ref|highway-symbol:hbox}' | '${name}' }
highway=trunk {name '${ref|highway-symbol:hbox} ${name}' | '${ref|highway-symbol:hbox}' | '${name}'; add display_name = '${name} (${ref})' }

It looks a bit complicated, but you can use the documentation on this page to help understand what's going on.

What I suspect that you'll want to do is to create a rule for "motorway_link" that incorporates "destination" as well as "ref" (as in your case "destination=Amstelveen" is set on the motorway_link). I suggest that you experiment with the style rules using a small area first (to save time when creating test maps and copying them to your Nuvi)

How to have my Garmin show directions of signs

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