The pictures below show the city of Belo Horizonte respectively in the Garmin MapSource®, Lowrance MapCreate® and Magellan MapSend®. In spite of the fact that Belo Horizonte is the third largest Brazilian city with more than 2.1 million inhabitants, the map only shows some main highways and the simplified border of the urban area. The side picture shows the level of detail of the map of Belo Horizonte City (where I live) in GPS III+.
These maps possess a low level of detail but cover all the World. GPS manufacturers have had to resort to public domain maps supplied by the government of the United States, through US Defense Mapping Agency. For developing countries, the main source of cartographic data are the government agencies that often don't possess structure and budget to provide the maps that the market demands. The use of background maps by GPS users in Latin America always has presented difficulties because of the lack of available digital maps. In spite of the emphasis on Latin American countries, the techniques shown here can be applied to any other part of the word. By Odilon Ferreira Junior - Author of GPS TrackMaker®ĭoug Adomatis of Travel by GPS ( The present article shows the Author's personal experience with the MAPDEKODE program together with GPS TrackMaker® and MapSource® for creation of complete background maps for Garmin™ GPS receivers.