Garmin Oregon 450 - Birdseye View

It was said that when technology became so advance, it becomes indistinguishable from magic.

I am going to show you some magical features of Garmin Oregon 450 GPS.

By the way, most of these features also works in Dakota, Colorado and other version of Garmin Oregon.

1. The first feature is "Birdseye View"
   Imagine you are a spy going to a foreign city, in order to find your target, you will need a device that will show you the satellite image of the city as it was seen by a bird from several meters above ground. That device will be a Garmin Oregon/Dakota GPS.
   1. In short Garmin Birdseye View is Google Earth in your pocket.
   2. Garmin Birdseye view is a subscription service. One year subscription costs around US$30. It includes unlimited download of maps anywhere in the world.
   3. In theory, you can do all these with custom map using Google Earth, that is a poor man's version of Birdseye view. But there are two problems..
      1. Custom map does not support dynamic zoom resolution, you will be seeing the same resolution no matter what zoom level you are currently at
      2. Custom map takes a lots of time to create, by the time you finish, you could have earned the $30 by doing a part time job.
   4. To use Birdseye view, do the following:
      1. Connect your GPS to your computer. Of course, you need a compatible device, e.g. Garmin Oregon, Dakota or Colorado.
      2. Start Garmin Basecamp. You would need to download Garmin Basecamp 3.01 or newer version (any older version does not work with Birdseye view). The Basecamp software is free.
      3. In Basecamp, highlight a list from the library. That will be the place the birds eyes view will be saved.
      4. Select New Birdseye view
      5. Browse to a region you would like to create the satellite imagery. It is not limited to North America. It can be anywhere in the world, for example, I select Casablanca in Morocco.
      6. With the New-Birdseye view active, draw a rectangle on the region you would like to select.
      7. Since I don't have an active subscription, it will only create a postage stamp sized demo version satellite image.
      8. Follow the wizard and select send to GPS.
   5. By default, the map is downloaded to the device. But you can copy the map to your SD card after the download is completed. So each download is limited to the memory of your device (which is usually 800MB)
   6. Some Birdseye view images are more detail than Google Earth.
   7. Since this is a subscription based service, I am not so sure if you can still view the image you downloaded after your subscription expired.

That's it. Thanks for listening.