I explore abandoned mines from the 1880-1920's all over arizona. There are 10,000+ of them and this takes me to stunning vistas and on awesome adventures. I go all over the state. Normally there are no roads and barely discernible old mining roads. I dont go to the obvious and easy ones, I go to ones no one has been to in 100 years. This means its a real adventure as there is no one else who has been to these in most cases. No guides to get me there. Many times these are not even marked on topos. I get the locations from a very old book kept by the AZ mining historical records people. Many times the locations are vague. In over 10 years of doing this ive discovered I need top grade topo maps and hi-rez sat maps. The 64st loaded with City Navigator, the Topo US 24k maps, Birdseye Topos, Birdseye hi-rez sat images and some GIS maps and GPX files of mine locations are ALL needed in almost every trip, literally switching between them and doing different combos as needed. The sat images are really useful as you can see whats on the other side of a hill without going over it. The 24K topos and Birdseye topos are killer useful in 3D to hike to the sites. Im working on getting a GIS map of the geology into the 64st as well. As my adventures take me all over the state, I never know exactly where im going next, I need all the maps / images / POI's, GISs and more for THE WHOLE STATE loaded at once. I cant stop and load maps as i go as there is *ZERO* cell service where I go.
So, this presents a serious set of issues. I need HUGE amounts of room to put all this stuff in. I currently have a 128GB SD card and its full. Im thinking about going to 256GB. I will know in the weeks ahead.
128GBs is clearly unsupported In EVERY way by Garmin. Most here might consider this is not possible. WELL it works great. It does take FOREVER for the 64st to boot, but, once booted its the whole state with lots of maps all instantly available.
Before I get into how to do this,,, I want to complain. It takes 3-4 WEEKS of download time to get a whole state worth of Birdseye images. Thats running 24/7. Its a Garmin birdseye server speed limitation - its a cloud based big time provider - so its Garmin not paying for faster speeds for users. . Also it requires incredible patience to draw a thousand boxes to download images in birdseye. The hardware needs to support large format SD cards and needs to support FATex. Also it needs a faster interface to read the cards. If I could draw one big box for the state and the server did more then 1Mbps and FATex was supported that would have saved me 4 weeks of work of 3 hours a night and 4 weeks of 24/7 downloading. It would reduce everything to a few hours of downloading and 30 mins of actual work on my part. Currently Base Camp is stuck in the 80's, Its like trying to use a TRS-80 to do Google Earth.
Im going to have to do this guide in steps as I cant do this all in this one post.
So im going to start with prepping the computer, mem card, tools needed and a general overview of requirements.
Part 1.. Before you begin.
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First up. Resign yourself to a LONG process. This will take a month.
Second. You will not be able to use your device for a month as it will need to stay hooked up to the computer the whole time as each file will be checked for activation as each one downloads by physically checking the attached device. Once you start - you cant reliably stop and restart. You gotta go all in one shot.
Third. You really need a separate computer. One running XP ( BaseCamp was designed for XP ) or Windows 7. More modern versions of windows and all apple versions are more buggy and not worth the risk of having to start over because of corrupt files. As Basecamp is buggy its best that NOTHING else is installed on the machine and you do nothing else with it while its doing Birdseye downloads.
I bought a Tecra M9 from ebay and then bought a 1TB hard drive and installed a retail Win 7 Pro on it with NOTHING else. I HIGHLY recommend setting up a seperate computer just for this use. You MUST have AT LEAST TWICE the HD space as the largest card you intend to fill. This is because when you load the device it creates a additional set of files on C ( no matter where you put the database and/or add shortcuts to ) that will double your overall set of files. So you need at least 512GB of free C: space. I find a dedicated cheap but reliable laptop is perfect for this.
PUT EVERYTHING ON C: Dont use shortcuts to other drives or change your database. Best to just create a huge C: thats empty.
Ive NEVER been able to get everything downloaded and loaded from a computer that was in use for other things. Base Camp is buggy and can lock up and you can get weird issues. A clean install of windows and then a clean install of NOTHING but basecamp DOES WORK PERFECTLY. As long as you follow my additional steps I will outline as I go. So I CANNOT EMPHASIS ENOUGH THE USE OF A DEDICATED COMPUTER WITH A NEWLY INSTALLED WIN 7 or XP.
Order a good quality USB cable. Ive found the ones that have come from Garmin to be less then ideal. Shorter is better, and get one thats expensive and high quality. You dont want to fight with a bad cable.
I use high end SD cards. I dont think they really help read speed, but maybe. They do help in write speed when loading them as we will load them via plugging them into the computer to load them. I have used a number of the 128GB cards, but have not yet tried the 256GB cards. The Toshiba Tecra M9 laptop has a SD card slot we will use later to load rather then loading it in the Garmin device. https://www.sandisk.com/home/memory-...microsd-uhs-ii
You will need to PLUG IN ETHERNET. *DO NOT* use wifi !. The use of wifi will lead to corrupted downloads and a lot of extra hassle. So plan on locating the computer next to your router for a month and plugging it in. You may need to buy a Ethernet cable.
A loss of internet during the entire month, even if its just for a second could lead to corrupt files and base camp getting confuzed and even having to start again. So be aware you will need UNINTERRUPTED WIRED Internet connectivity for a month.
Base camp Birdseye downloads are seriously effected by latency. Ive found that DSL ( AT&T ) connections, or cable supplied internet with spiky latency and packet loss will cause all manner of corrupt downloads. So you need to be sure your internet connection is latency stable. Base Camp has a time out for each of its thousands of files per download. Its not very long. If they time out it will not retry automatically and will just skip the files prompting you to retry later. So you need to be aware of the quality of your internet connection before you begin because if your connection has any packet loss or latency jumps you may NEVER be able to get a good set of downloads. A good way to monitor your connection is to use Multiping and set its interval to 1 second and let it run for a few days and see how things look. If its a nice flat line and it has no red you should be good to go. This is a HUGE issue that caused me months of work till I figured it out. DSL = NO WAY.
I also recommend a external USB hard drive so you can backup your base camp data. After a month of effort you dont want to loose it. So a good external 1 or 2 TB drive is a good idea.
So.. The above stuff needs to all get settled out and ready before we begin.
Once you have all the above worked out, download and install some things.
1. Garmin Express
2. Base Camp
3. MiniTool Partition Wizard FREE edition. You could also buy the least expensive version. I did. You need this to format the 128GB SD Micro card to FAT32.
4. Multiping - optional to keep track of your latency and packet loss to spot issue. https://www.multiping.com/
Start up Garmin express, register and update your device. Start up Base Camp and get that all hooked into your Garmin account and happy while plugged into your device. You can even try a few Birdseye downloads to test things out. You can load your device and get a feel for how all that works. DO NOT TRY AND DO MORE THEN ONE THING AT ONCE. So first plug in your device and WAIT for Base Camp to read it all into its files. You will see bards loading until its all finished. ONLY THEN should you start a BIRDSEYE DOWNLOAD. Then WAIT FOR IT TO FINISH ALL DOWNLOADS BEFORE YOU LOAD THE DEVICE.
Your 128 GB mem card will not work yet, so dont install yet.
Thats it for this first installment of how to use Base Camp to load 128GB of maps. Once all the above is ready to go, your ready to start loading things. BUT. Its very specific things in order and you gotta follow the steps for it all to work.
I will continue this in the next day or so.
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COMPLAINT.. ALL the INSANITY LEVEL COMPUTER NINJA SKILLS REQUIRED ABOVE WOULD BE UNNESSARY *IF* GARMIN SUPPORTED exFAT, HAD A MODERN VERSION OF BASE CAMP COMPILED IN THIS DECADE. PAID FOR FASTER SERVERS AND SUPPORTED LARGER SELECTION SETS ON BIRDSEYE.
