Open Street Map (OSM) is a collaborative community project the goal of which is to create a free, wiki (user editable) street map of the world. Although the project is in its infancy, large parts of the planet have already been mapped; including many of the urban areas in Thailand.

It is possible (but not exactly trivial) to load routable, Mapsource compatible OSM maps on to a Garmin GPS Receiver. Although the Thailand maps are not currently very useful, the maps of the US and Europe are quite complete. I'll be visiting family in California later this year and have already loaded the OSM map of the state onto my GPSR. Link: OSM Map on Garmin

The main point of this post is to solicit volunteers. The OSM project needs people who can contribute data (GPS traces and POIs) and people who are willing to create and edit maps. (To create maps you can either upload GPS traces and use an online map editor, or you can use an offline editor with your own GPS traces and downloaded OSM data.) Although creating the maps seems complex at first, once you get the hang of it you'll find it to be both easy and interesting.

As far as Thailand goes, most of the main urban areas have been mapped, but are severely lacking in POIs. Most of the one, two and three digit highways have been mapped, most of the four digit highways have not. Very little work has been done in rural areas. (By contrast, the map geeks in Europe are now mapping tiny details such as letter boxes and public toilets.)

For a good sample of Thailand, have a look at Khon Kaen

You can learn more about contributing to OSM here: Open Street Map Wiki.

If you have questions about Open Street Map, including map making, post here and I'll try to answer. I've only been mapping for a few months now, but I thoroughly enjoy it. Besides, it's a good excuse to get out on my bicycle and enjoy the countryside.

Please forgive me if this has already been mentioned elsewhere. I couldn't find it.

Open Street Map (OSM) is a collaborative community project the goal of which is to create a free, wiki (user editable) street map of the world....

Please forgive me if this has already been mentioned elsewhere. I couldn't find it.

This is the first time I read about Open Street Maps on ThaiVisa and I, for one, think it’s a great idea.

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Maestro

wow, kewl! If I ever get my CarPC installed I will definitely contribute to that project! Thanks for the link!

There is also a Malaysian project that wants to do a free map of Thailand, www.malfreemaps.com, check out the Thailand sub-section. Last time I checked they didn't have any map data for Thailand available yet.

I wonder what they think about the OpenStreeMap project and whether they collaborate.

Btw: it seems they had quite a fight with another Malaysian project about previously shared map data.

welo

sounds awesome. europe is full of map geeks

CloudMade provides extracts from OSM world map in different formats, divided by countries, from here you can go anywhere in terms of format, as most complicated part - extraction from gigabytes of OSM world map is done ;-)

Thailand is covered relatively poorly, BUT southwest asia in general are not bad, a while ago I made small web site for my travel references: http://www.travelmaps.la

and in recent monthes Vientiane map get awesome amount of details, most of POIs which I added manually now embedded at the OSM (though with the tile map POIs are not clickable)

for Phnom Penh and Angeles osm.org provides better coverage and details than LonelyPlanet maps and imho even better maps than the google and ms provides for this cities

OSM rulez! feel free to contact me if you have any question in regards of OSM gis data, web or local implementation, still with some limitations now all of this are FREELY available, for personal or commercial use ;-)

I not using GPS navigator, as I dont drive car, usually all I need is a good map with POIs, however nearly all GPS needs should be covered by this:

http://www.gpsbabel.org/

dll extracts from CloudMade, then convert to whatever format you want ;-)

Ah, I wondered where all those Vientiane POIs came from. Good work.

Ah, I wondered where all those Vientiane POIs came from. Good work.

thanks for kind words! usually during my trips I collect tourist maps, then place pois over real maps and add interactivity. different tourist maps provide different interesting pois, I think its good to have em in one piece; also tourist maps usually not detailed enough, in case of online map its easier to get directions.

btw, finished today map of penang:

http://penangmap.info/

island have many attarctions and thanks to Rapid Penang bus company nearly all of em easily and affordable accessible by bus ;-)

ie taxi from airport to georgetown cost 30RM, bus ticket is 2.70RM ;-)

It is indeed a great site, with of course the emphasis on all the data is free to use, to do bascially whatever you want with it.

I have been working a lot lately on Chiang Mai, Prasat, Surin and to a lesser extent Pai.

You can download an .exe installer for Mapsource and therefore uploadable to a Garmin device, I believe that there is support for other GPSR's too.

Was deeply satisfying to be using routable maps in Prasat from roads that I created.

In a geeky way, it's kinda addictive too, especially in areas that are unmapped, there is a load of work to do on OSM in Thailand, as the OP said, many of the bigger roads are mapped, but even they need work in terms of routability.

If anyone has tracks/poi's etc etc from a GPRS'r that they would like to share, please PM me (or the OP too proabably... don't want to step on his toes)

I have time and all the tools to add them to OSM at the moment.

Rich.