My blushing bride of almost four decades got herself a new iPhone and iTablet (whatever they are called, I don't do Apple products) This was an unannounced acquisition. To keep my head from popping when she hauled her new booty home, she worked a deal for a new, essentially free, Samsung Tab E for me. Whoo-hoo! Anyway, that's the back story for anyone who cares.
I've wanted an 8" or so Tablet for awhile to play with two things: 1) Off Road Computer Assisted Navigation (ORCAN) 2) OBDII access to all of the data going into and out of the computers and sensors in my vehicles.
The first thing I did was to acquire an 128 Gig SD Microchip for the tablet. Maps take up a lot of space to cover any amount of area in any detail. I need to cover large portions of two states in detail, and smaller portions of two more states in detail. (Sorry British Columbia. I know I'm heading up that way in the TJ or JKU, but not looking at maps there yet. In a few weeks maybe) So now there's Enough Storage available for my uses on the tablet.
The second thing I did was look into tablet mapping applications. After rooting around in the App store and online, I came up with two apps that seemed to fit the bill for storing and displaying maps appropriate to ORCAN. These are Gaia Maps and Backcountry Navigator. Gaia Maps has a slightly better interface and access to slightly more configurable / customizable (is that even a word?) maps that show the things that I need in a form that is usable. Gaia Maps is also based on "software as a subscription". I refuse to follow that paradigm, it just irks me. Enough that Gaia Maps was eliminated from contention. If that doesn't bother you, check them out. The final contender is Backcountry Navigator (BCN), which is the one I installed and am playing with.
So now I have an appropriate Tablet, enough memory / storage and a reasonably suitable application. BCN has a fairly large group of maps available, ranging from Open Streetmaps to USGS National Mapping and various CalMaps. Open Streetmaps focuses on urban and suburban areas mostly, and may not be suitable for ORCAN. CalMaps is pretty good, but again, it is subscription based and I haven't figured out how to get the very nice custom maps that you can create out of CalMaps and into BCN in an easy, straight forward way. You're supposed to be able to do that, but I haven't got there just yet. After several attempts and failures, I set that aside for now. That leaves us with the USGS National Mapping data set. I have played with that for a bit and it looks like it will suite my needs for the moment. BCN has several configurations of that map set built in and easily select-able. I chose to work with the USGSTopo map set, that allows zooming to the 1:24K level and shows things like road names and United States Forest Service (USFS) road number to the spur level and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) roads and road numbers. These maps can be zoomed to the 1 mile level (level 15 in BCN) on an 8" screen and still be very usable. There's a way to have a clean map at a higher zoom level in BCN, but I haven't played with it yet. You can zoom to a half a mile on the screen (zoom level 16 / 17 in BCN, max zoom is level 18), but after that lines and features start to get very fuzzy. In addition to that, I have Garmin 62 and 64 GPS's for working at that scale with add-on map packs. Those are typically scales that work for walking, but don't work so well for ORCAN.
Next up is to see if the GPS chipset in the Tablet is up to the task of actual navigation in an ORCAN environment. If not, there is an add-on GPS sensor available that is. It plugs into the charging / micro USB port on the tablet and provides high accuracy signal reception from the GPS satellite array. The newer version may or may not also receive signals from the Russian GLONAS constellation, which would be a bonus. The combination of GLONAS and GPS is very accurate and highly available.
That's what I have so far. Screen shots and more description later as I use this out in the woods. So far, I've only walked around the block a couple of times with this setup. It's not getting installed in the TJ until the hard case gets here. Tablets usually aren't splash protected or dust proof. That's a must for my uses here in the PNW.
I've wanted an 8" or so Tablet for awhile to play with two things: 1) Off Road Computer Assisted Navigation (ORCAN) 2) OBDII access to all of the data going into and out of the computers and sensors in my vehicles.
The first thing I did was to acquire an 128 Gig SD Microchip for the tablet. Maps take up a lot of space to cover any amount of area in any detail. I need to cover large portions of two states in detail, and smaller portions of two more states in detail. (Sorry British Columbia. I know I'm heading up that way in the TJ or JKU, but not looking at maps there yet. In a few weeks maybe) So now there's Enough Storage available for my uses on the tablet.
The second thing I did was look into tablet mapping applications. After rooting around in the App store and online, I came up with two apps that seemed to fit the bill for storing and displaying maps appropriate to ORCAN. These are Gaia Maps and Backcountry Navigator. Gaia Maps has a slightly better interface and access to slightly more configurable / customizable (is that even a word?) maps that show the things that I need in a form that is usable. Gaia Maps is also based on "software as a subscription". I refuse to follow that paradigm, it just irks me. Enough that Gaia Maps was eliminated from contention. If that doesn't bother you, check them out. The final contender is Backcountry Navigator (BCN), which is the one I installed and am playing with.
So now I have an appropriate Tablet, enough memory / storage and a reasonably suitable application. BCN has a fairly large group of maps available, ranging from Open Streetmaps to USGS National Mapping and various CalMaps. Open Streetmaps focuses on urban and suburban areas mostly, and may not be suitable for ORCAN. CalMaps is pretty good, but again, it is subscription based and I haven't figured out how to get the very nice custom maps that you can create out of CalMaps and into BCN in an easy, straight forward way. You're supposed to be able to do that, but I haven't got there just yet. After several attempts and failures, I set that aside for now. That leaves us with the USGS National Mapping data set. I have played with that for a bit and it looks like it will suite my needs for the moment. BCN has several configurations of that map set built in and easily select-able. I chose to work with the USGSTopo map set, that allows zooming to the 1:24K level and shows things like road names and United States Forest Service (USFS) road number to the spur level and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) roads and road numbers. These maps can be zoomed to the 1 mile level (level 15 in BCN) on an 8" screen and still be very usable. There's a way to have a clean map at a higher zoom level in BCN, but I haven't played with it yet. You can zoom to a half a mile on the screen (zoom level 16 / 17 in BCN, max zoom is level 18), but after that lines and features start to get very fuzzy. In addition to that, I have Garmin 62 and 64 GPS's for working at that scale with add-on map packs. Those are typically scales that work for walking, but don't work so well for ORCAN.
Next up is to see if the GPS chipset in the Tablet is up to the task of actual navigation in an ORCAN environment. If not, there is an add-on GPS sensor available that is. It plugs into the charging / micro USB port on the tablet and provides high accuracy signal reception from the GPS satellite array. The newer version may or may not also receive signals from the Russian GLONAS constellation, which would be a bonus. The combination of GLONAS and GPS is very accurate and highly available.
That's what I have so far. Screen shots and more description later as I use this out in the woods. So far, I've only walked around the block a couple of times with this setup. It's not getting installed in the TJ until the hard case gets here. Tablets usually aren't splash protected or dust proof. That's a must for my uses here in the PNW.
