What systems are people in uk using for maps and off road use

[Scotty lock]

hi guys
I have seen a lot of posts for different mapping systems but some are no good for uk us or Europe. I want to use a system that is compatible for use Home in uk and in most European countries...possibly further afield like Africa and other countries....which has the means for on and off road use and has a good data base. I know their is dedicated systems and apps for phones,iPads, etc...but wanting peoples personal experience using them and if they feel they are good enough for the job of overlanding. Also what coverage is like and if signal, gps, etc was good are they had issues....

I have bought a normal gps and satnav which are very good for roads for most of the on road options and gps good for some off road options but never used one for anything other than hill walking. I don’t know how useful they are for vehicle travel off road.

 

[T-One]

My setup from a previous thread, is use it for world wide travel:

i run a Panasonic Toughbook CF-19 convertible with touch screen and a marine grade GPS chip for all things NAV in the car.
It's a ArchLinux based setup with marble Desktop for navigation, satellite images and OpenStreetMaps, it's a bit like Google Earth.

I prerender all the OSM data on my workstation and copy it to the toughbook so i have full offline maps.
Offline POI and address routing is handled by MoNav which integrates with marble completly.
For offline turn by turn navigation on roads i installed navit, but because i have a navigator with me all the time and she likes the sattelite map view within marble so much we don't use it often.
One of the killer features of this setup is the ability to fetch huge areas of satellite images and store them on an external HDD, with an OSM overlay merged into it it's like google earth/maps hybrid view but completely offline.

We are used to 3 renderings now and we prerender them for every area or country we go.
Thunderforests Mobile Atlas layout for high contrast street navigation.
Thunderforests Outdoor layout for all things away from streets.
And a hybrid rendering of satellite images with OSM Streets overlay.

It's also possible to add multiple online OSM providers in marble, free and commercial ones with all kind of different layouts and satellite image sources and just download a defined area for offline use within the application, but that's not a good approach if you have to handle huge areas for multiple week long trips.

If you're not that tech-savvy i recommand the Locus Pro or OruxMaps (both Anroid) with an external GNSS receiver like a Trimble R1 (highend top tier) or a Navilock (cheap but ok), because most of the internal phone/tablet receivers are crap and won't work well offroad.

I also use a garmin GPSmap 64 as a backup and handheld device (OSM compatible) but i will drop it for a Garmin inReach in the near future because of the extra satellite communication in emergency situations.

 

[nickburt]

By far the best mapping for the UK is OS maps, either on Memory Map or Viewranger. Both will run on pc/Ios or Android and both have pretty good coverage of Europe - at a cost!!
We have used maps.me in Europe, but it's not too good at showing you the difference between normal roads and tracks etc... We also use Garmin Western EU, which is quite detailed, but not obvious what's tarmac or not.
Another to consider is Earthmate.

 

[Tim]

I use a dedicated Garmin GPS for street navigation but when that let me down just as I was about to drive down through Spain to Morocco I was able to use Maps.Me on the iPad without any problem. As has been already said it might not be the best option for working out the difference between a track and a road ahead of time. I've also been playing around with OsmAndMaps on both phone and iPad on and off for a bit and find that very good. You can download five maps for free and that's certainly enough for my needs.