TMJ-Mobile Map Creation/Conversion

TMJ-MapOrganiser Utility

One of the most useful features of TMJ-Mobile is its ability to display your track, waypoints and location on a map saved on the phones memory card. These maps need to be stored in the TMJ file format - the MapOrganiser allows JPEG and PNG files to be converted into the TMJ format and it can also download and assemble maps from OpenStreetMap.

Please Log-in to your TrackMyJourney account to download this utility

Instructions

You will need the Java 1.6 Runtime in order to run the Map Organsier, available free from www.java.com.
Extract the Map Organiser zip file to a folder on your hard drive and double-click the 'Start Map Organiser' file to start the program. Linux/Ubuntu users should use the startinubuntu shortcut or type java -jar TMJ-MapOrganiser.jar at the command line to start the program.

Converting PNG and JPEG Images to Map Files

1. Use File/Open Image File... to open a JPEG or PNG file.

2. In the Bottom/Top/Left/Right boxes enter the coordinates of the extents of the map. Coordinates should be entered in decimal form, North and East positive, South and West negative, with a period (.) as the decimal separator (eg: 51.25673 etc).

3. If the original map image was created with a Mercator Projection use the Tools/Convert from Mercator Projection to convert it to the rectangular projection required by TMJ-Mobile. Note that this will slightly distort the map along the Y-axis, but will ensure that it aligns correctly when displayed on the phone.

4. The utility breaks the map up into smaller tiles which are more easily handled by TMJ-Mobile. Enter the Width and Height of each tile. This should always be greater than or equal to the screen resolution of your mobile phone. (Usually 120x160, 176x220 or 240x320). If it is set too large then TMJ-Mobile might have trouble holding each tile in memory (at any one time it needs to keep 4 tiles in memory). Generally the default tile size of 320x320 pixels should be fine.

5. If you want to be able to zoom out of the map on the phone, select one or more zoom levels from the list (Ctrl-click the items to select multiple zoom levels).

6. If you have selected multiple zoom levels you may find that the smaller zoom levels appear a bit feint or blurred on the phone. This has been improved in v2.6 by using a customised (though slower) resampling method, but if you would prefer to create the smaller zoom levels manually, untick the 'Automatic Image Resizing' box. When the program creates the TMJ file it will firstly chop up the source image into individual tiles and will then display a message prompting for the tiles to be resized. You should then open the tiles in an image editing program and manually resize them to the selected Tile size.
   Note that IrfanView (Free from www.irfanview.com) has a good batch-processing function which allows this process to be semi-automated, including applying sharpening, contrast, brightness and colour-palette optimisations.

7. To further reduce the output filesize and speed up map loading/display on the phone the 'Force 256 Colour Palette' can be used to reduce the number of colours in the output file. Note that these palettes are optimised for OpenStreetMap maps created via the Tile Server window - results may vary when using maps from other sources.

8. Use File/Save TMJ File As... to generate the final TMJ file. The utility saves the individual tiles to disk then combines them into a single TMJ file. For large maps this process can take a while - just give it time!

9. Transfer the TMJ file to your phones memory card, then in TMJ-Mobile go to the Map page (press 6) then use the context menu to select the map file.

Downloading Maps from OpenStreetMap

• Use the File/Create Map from Tile Server menu option to bring up the OpenStreetMap dialog.

• Select a Map Source to define the map rendering style.

• Enter the Bottom/Top/Left/Right coordinates of the map to be downloaded from OpenStreetMap or select one of the preset locations. If a map already exists in the main window you can Left-Click/Right-Click to set the Top-Left/Bottom-Right coordinates respectively.

• Set the required pixel Width/Height for the map or leave the Auto box ticked to have the map set to the optimum size.

• The 'Fit to Tile' button adjusts both the lat/long extents and width/height values to fit the map to the current tile size, reducing any wasted borders around the map.

• The 'Use Cache' option keeps a store of the downloaded tiles on the local computer to avoid having to re-download the tiles each time the view is adjusted, saving time and bandwidth and reducing the load on the OSM servers.

• Drag the zoom slider to select the map 'scale'. Note that at higher zoom levels the map size can become very large - the map extents may need to be reduced to prevent it becoming unmanagable.

• Click the Start Processing button to begin the map download.

• Once the map has been assembled follow the above procedure (from Step 4 onwards) to generate the TMJ File.

Notes

• Requires TMJ-Mobile version 0.5.5 or later.

• If you are using very large maps you may need to run the 'Start Map Organiser (1GB)' file, which allocates the program more memory for image storage.

• Use only JPEG or PNG files. If using PNG files ensure that they are in 8-bit 'indexed-colour' format.

Thanks...

Many thanks to Andy Allan for allowing tile downloads from his excellent OpenStreetMap-based Cycle Map and also thanks to CloudMade for access to their tileserver and Mobile-optimised/No-names OSM rendering styles.

TMJ Map Merger Utility

This small utility can be used to merge and rearrange the 'layers' from one or more TMJ map files together to form one large file. Each map layer is displayed on the Map page of TMJ-Mobile using the [#/*] keys or via the context menu.

1. The utility is included in the MapOrganiser download and can either be started manually or via the Map Organiser Tools menu.

2. Click the Import TMJ File button to open the first file for merging. A list of the layers/zoom levels in the file is displayed on the left side.

3. Select a layer/zoom level and click the >> button to add it to the output layer list, shown on the right-hand side.

4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until the required layers are listed in the output list.

5. Rearrange the layers using the Up/Down buttons and rename them as necessary. Note that the top item in the list is the first layer that will be displayed when the map is opened in TMJ-Mobile. It is recommended that the layers are ordered such that the most detailed layer is at the top of the list and the least detailed at the bottom.

6. Click the Save TMJ File button to export the merged file.