Current Version: 17.05
Where to find the T4A Africa Guide:
- The Guide is included on the T4A GPS Maps SD card since version 10.05. If you insert the SD card into your GPS, the guide, which contains valuable POI information, can be accessed in various ways, depending on the GPS model you use.
- If you did not purchase our T4A GPS Maps SD card, but purchased our 16 regional map download links, you may request a download link for the v17.05 Africa Guide. Please note that this file is 810 MB in size and that the download will take approximately 45 minutes – 2 hours depending on your internet connection.
Activating the Africa Guide:
- If the Africa Guide is included on your SD card: it is automatically available and activated on your GPS via the T4A GPS Maps SD card. No settings are required.
- If you did not purchase the SD Card, and received an executable link from us, then please read here on how to install the guide on your GPS.
Accessing the Guide:
This Africa Guide can be accessed under “Extras” on your compatible Garmin Device. Follow the steps and screenshots further below.
Overview of this Guide:
This Africa Guide enables you to look up descriptions, contact details, rates, facilities and activities on offer for lodges and campsites in Africa directly on your GPS. Also included are searchable picnic sites and border control information, perfect for your next road trip.
You can also look up information on various attractions (eg. wine farms) and activities (eg. 4WD-trail) that exist as Points of Interests (POI) on our maps.
A photo is also displayed on your GPS of the POI if we have one available.
We’ve recently introduced a new category “Communications“: use this to find the nearest point selling airtime, offering internet access, or wireless, or where the nearest public phone is, or a good mobile reception spot.
Also new is our “Shopping” category: to help you find your nearest shop of choice, and the nearest place selling gas.
For more information on this guide, please have a look this T4A Africa Guide Document.
ROAD ALERTS:
We included Road Alerts on our GPS Maps SD card up to ver 11.10. (ie. Oct 2011). These alerts were specifically for Cattle grids, Warnings and Changes in the Road condition. An alert would automatically pop up (ie. taken you have enabled proximity alerts on Custom POIs on your GPS) a few metres ahead of the warning POI’s spot. NOTE: we discontinued our Road Alerts on the SD card from release 12.05. Too many people complained about the annoyance of road alerts, and we do not have a huge request from the market for these alerts.
The Road Alert files are however available for up to ver 15.05 (ie. May 2015) on our website, as seperate download links. You can download your preferred Alert file from our T4A GPS Road Alerts Page. (Please note: As these alerts were configured in 2015, some of them will no longer be true, therefore please use these files at your own discretion).
On the Road Alerts Page – please click on the Alert file name you would like to receive, in order to send an email request to our sales staff.
Troubleshooting:
Our Africa Guide is not compatible with these unit/s:
– Old Nuvi 310 (it doesn’t have an “Extras” feature in order to access the guide).
Photos not showing on the guide:
The Garmin Colorado GPS series was designed without the functionality to show photos in these files.
The Montana GPS also did not show any photos, but Garmin released a new software update in October 2011 (v3.60) which fixed this. This fix is available on the webupdater on the Garmin site.
The Oregon 300 GPS: if no photos are shown, update to the latest firmware. Oct-11 this was v4.20. The latest software updates are available on the webupdater on the Garmin site.
The GPS Unit switches off when accessing some POIs in the Africa Guide:
– Some newer GPS units, like the Nuvi 40, does not accept long text fields if built into the Africa Guide in a certain way, many older GPS units did not have this problem. As from version 12.05 this problem should no longer occur, as T4A has changed the way the Africa Guide is built wrt using fields for long strings of text etc. If you do experience this problem, please contact us, so that we can supply you with a later version of the Africa Guide.
Difficulty in accessing the information on the Africa Guide on the Garmin eTrex 20
The only way to access information on the Africa Guide is via a POI on the GPS map on your GPS unit.
Once you have chosen the POI you are interested in on your GPS, press the “menu” button on the side of the eTrex, and then scroll down and choose the option “Review Point” on your GPS screen…a photo and information will pop up if it is available for that particular point.
ACCESSING THE T4A Africa Guide: it will be available under ‘Extras’ on your compatible GARMIN GPS as follows:
This information can be accessed in various ways on your GPS depending on the Garmin Model you are using.
(Note: with some of the newer GPS models, this POI information is directly accessible from the maps view page etc.)
But for the older models, you can follow these steps:
Choose “Where To” on your GPS screen:
Then choose “Extras“:
Then choose the “T4A Africa Guide“:
Then choose the category from the list you are interested in:
The points of interests (POIs) will be displayed in order of closest proximity to you:
Choose the camp you are interested in, in order to view more detail (ie. photos are also displayed where available):
Then hit GO and Tracks4africa will navigate you to the place you are interested in.