Advanced: Offline Maps

With GeOrg version 1.1.0 you can use offline maps within the application. This is useful if you’re geocaching in areas without network availability or in foreign countries where mobile internet might be expensive or not available at all.

Basically you download or create an offline-version of your favorite maps within a given area. Then you put these file onto your SDCard and tell GeOrg where they are.
GeOrg understands so called Map-Tile-Packs. You can find some ready to use Map-Tile-Packs on the andnav2-download-page. Just download the pack you need and unzip it onto your SDCard.

Your own Map-Tile-Pack

If you’d like a real custom Map-Tile-Pack, you can easily produce them yourself. Here’s how:

First download the TrekBuddy Atlas Creator. It’s a great software and it’s free!
Select …

  • the Map source (e.g OpenStreetMap, Google, etc)
  • the area of the map you want to download
  • the Zoom Levels you need (higher numbers equal greater zoom)
  • Select the AndNav atlas format (really important!)

… and add your selection to the Atlas’ content. One word of warning: At least with OpenStreetMap there’s a limit on how many Map-Tiles you may download from a given IP per day. Try to stay beneath 100.000!
There’s also a video detailing the process available here

Here’s an example screenshot:

After you have everything prepared, hit “Create atlas” and the Atlas Creator will download your Map-Tile-Pack. When it’s finished, you get a dialog with an “Open Atlas Folder”-button. Go there, select the Atlas you just downloaded and go down the folders until you find a folder that contains only other folders named like your zoom-levels. This is the folder you’ll want to copy to your SDCard. Here’s an example:

Getting the Map-Tile-Pack into GeOrg

Now that you’ve created or downloaded your Map-Tile-Pack, copy it onto your phone’s SDCard via USB-connection. You can place it anywhere you like.

Start GeOrg and go to Settings -> Map – Options -> Offline Map. First you can set a descriptive name for your map. Then select the path to your Map-Tile-Pack with the “Select”-Button. If you did it right, the dialog will display some information about your Map-Tile-Pack like maximum zoom, tile size or file extension.

Finally you can set a Fallback Map. This map is used whenever you zoom or pan to positions on the map not included in your Map-Tile-Pack, meaning that GeOrg will fallback to online maps for that areas, if an online connection is available.

This is how the dialog should look like:

Using the configured Map-Tile-Pack

That’s easy. Just go to the MapPage and select the Custom Map-Type. GeOrg will switch to your Map-Tile-Pack.