USB Charging Port Battery Meter Topo Maps
 

I use an old phone of mine with no sim card for off road mapping. Comes in very handy, one must just preload the maps you need as with no cell service it will not update the maps as you ride. Problem is with the screen full bright, and the gps on, the battery can go pretty quick. So I mounted a usb charging port on the bars, and it includes this cool battery meter as well. I connected directly to battery with a 5 amp inline fuse. Wires mounted along existing wires and tucked safely out of harms way. A few days back I was riding without a map and ended up in a restricted area, actually an Indian Reservation. This will prevent that.Oops.....

Ooh that's interesting, never thought of using an old phone. So when you "preload" the maps, are you just downloading a google maps area for offline use? Or another map app?


I never really wanted my phone on my handlebars, I feel like I'll be looking at things out of habit when I shouldn't be. But a decent stand-alone gps unit is usually $200+ so I haven't pulled that trigger yet, and this might be something to look into. It's all that I'd want up front: just a map with a little arrow on it.

I do the same. The app I use is called AlpineQuest, on Android, but there are others. Gaia is another very popular one, but they require a subscription which is behavior I can't condone from vendors or app developers.


AlpineQuest is a one time purchase and can download to locally store maps from OpenStreeMap, the USGS, and other sources. I prefer to use the OpenStreetMap "cycle and hike" map which usually pretty comprehensively displays dirt roads, trails, tracks, and so forth. It can't do turn-by-turn navigation but it has all the other GPS map features including waypoints (with import/export), routes (line on a map), and a whole ton of other features I'm probably not taking full advantage of.


You can just drop the .gpx route files for the BDR routes into it, for instance, and it magically works.

Mapping options
 

I am using Top USa, it is a one time purchase of 30 bucks or so. I can load lots of different maps, including the US Topo map series, all the way down to 16x zoom evel.The maps for my area, probably half of Arizona, were about 3 maybe 4 gig of data. One could also load music and play that at the same time, I personally would rather hear the bike and any potential objects I may collide with. Going for a night ride in a bit, I love riding the open desert on a cool night, especially with the map display. :clap:

where in AZ are you?

Time to dig out my old S7. It's still in great shape and the battery is good. Need to figure out the rest of it, but it would be awesome to use like this.

I use OSMand+ and Avenza on an old Android phone. OSMand+ has topo, hillshading, trip planning, etc with pre downloaded maps so no cell connection is required. Avenza also uses preloaded maps including USGS topo maps so the whole US is available free. Mostly I use Avenza to display USFS MVUM maps so I know where my quad is legal to ride.

I would offer - one good thing about Gaia is that it does a bang up job with IDing go/no-go land use. It is good in offline mode, with no cell service (or SIM card), but really, for not wanting to roam places you don’t want to be…

Casa Grande, Arizona
 

Casa Grande. right off the 10, south of chandler.....

That's cute. Everything here in the green tunnel of the northeast is no-go land, so that makes figuring it out easy. Anything that hasn't got a yellow stripe down the middle or is a marked forestry fire road is probably A) private property, B) impassable, or C) both.


You can't spit here without some NIMBY getting in your face about it. Everyone has their own little slice and doesn't want anyone else to enjoy any of it, because we've got so many people here that everyone has already ruined it for everyone else.


Some day I'm going to win the lottery and buy a mountain in the Appalachians somewhere, and I'm going to put signs around it that say "yes trespassing."