I have an all Garmin boat. All latest software. UHD 93sv’s at console and bow. Console has a GT56UHD transducer off the back and the bow uses the Force. The two 93sv’s are networked together directly.
The console unit ClearVu never shows a thing. Ever. It only shows the bottom. The water column is always just black. The SideVu and traditional seem to work fine. I will get a beautiful mark in traditional and ClearVu has nothing. I have changed color schemes, I have messed with contrast, I’ve messed with brightness, I have messed with interference, I’ve changed frequencies.
ClearVu on the bow unit does show stuff.
I grabbed one example from tonight… may not be the greatest example but I’m fairly sure that one mark on traditional is a fish on the bottom.
What the heck am I missing?
I believe it’s working as intended. ClearVu will never provide the best insight when the boat is moving, in my understanding. It’s a brief still snap shot of what’s under the boat. That mark on the bottom in 17’ is not a large fish, and would not show up as such on the ClearVu.
My examples are somewhat contradictory, one shows walleye under the boat at 1mph, and the other at 0. Just factory settings for me. I would putt around and find some larger fish on traditional before getting too worked up. Good luck!
Do both units have the latest update? If not then I’d update first and see if that helps.
If the units are networked then as a test you could disconnect the GT56 from the console unit and view the Clearvu transmission from the Force to see if that makes a difference. Doing this would rule out it being a problem with your console head unit. Then try the 56 on your bow unit to see what that looks like. If there’s a problem with the 56 I’d call Garmin CS. They’re usually pretty helpful.
I never have issues seeing structure and fish marks on my GT36 ClearVu (fish show up as dots) and what I see on CV is synced up with 2D so something definitely isn’t right
Oops nevermind about the software I missed where you said they had the latest.
This was true years ago perhaps it changed, but garmins transducer due to patents doesn’t have a designated crystal in the ducer itself for DI, they splice together the 2 side imaging crystals to form it, which makes for a not very accurate image.
My lowrance DI is kick a$$, whom I believe holds the original patent for the DI, my Garmin DI is not very good. Good for distinguishing weeds and that’s about it. There was some heated topics on here in the past about it, couple may even got booted for it. Either way, that was some time ago, perhaps you need to change your settings.
Garmin imaging got better a few years back with the release of the GT34 and 54 but now I’d put it on par with MEGA imaging with the GT36 and 56 which is what the OP is using.
What model transducer are you referencing that had bad down imaging?
Believe it was the original striker series that were quite poor, I have the striker plus which can attest to is not great, functional yes, but not on par with my lowrance.
I believe it’s working as intended. ClearVu will never provide the best insight when the boat is moving, in my understanding. It’s a brief still snap shot of what’s under the boat. That mark on the bottom in 17’ is not a large fish, and would not show up as such on the ClearVu.
My examples are somewhat contradictory, one shows walleye under the boat at 1mph, and the other at 0. Just factory settings for me. I would putt around and find some larger fish on traditional before getting too worked up. Good luck!
I watched this video to get a better understanding of the differences… I’m not sure it has to do with speed? Dude is cruising around 4-6 mph.
Do both units have the latest update? If not then I’d update first and see if that helps.
If the units are networked then as a test you could disconnect the GT56 from the console unit and view the Clearvu transmission from the Force to see if that makes a difference. Doing this would rule out it being a problem with your console head unit. Then try the 56 on your bow unit to see what that looks like. If there’s a problem with the 56 I’d call Garmin CS. They’re usually pretty helpful.
I never have issues seeing structure and fish marks on my GT36 ClearVu (fish show up as dots) and what I see on CV is synced up with 2D so something definitely isn’t right
Oops nevermind about the software I missed where you said they had the latest.
I actually thought of trying this as I was typing up my post. I will try swapping the transducer. Good idea.
I got on with Garmin support chat and this was the verdict:
-I would turn the zoom and depth range off from auto and set it out to about 30-35 feet, turn up the brightness just a hint
-The image just simply looks like it isn’t able to identify suspended targets in that specific view, which could be a hardware failure in the clearvu element, but let’s try those couple of adjustments and check back in soon?
I have seen similar posts to this on Garmin Facebook pages and another solution that keeps coming up is to make sure your down view and side view are not running the same frequency.
I have seen similar posts to this on Garmin Facebook pages and another solution that keeps coming up is to make sure your down view and side view are not running the same frequency.
Well… this did have some effect. I had tried it previously but didn’t give it much time. I dropped ClearVu to 810. Is this as good as it gets?
I’m no expert, but it looks like changing color pallets might help some. From there working with settings might find your sweet spot. Found a very good youtube which you might like as well. Hopefully I can link it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkYnZNcRsEE
Garmin won the last lawsuit over the DI patent Vs. Lowrance. When Garmin was losing the earlier lawsuits they had to remove the center DI crystal in their transducers and changed the naming from 93DV to 93CV. When Garmin finally won the patent lawsuit they went back to using the center crystal in their transducers and changed the color of the plastic covering the crystals from black to gray. But there were a lot of customers who bought the CV units. Now this is Mr recollection of how that transpired. I currently own a EchoMap 73SV with GT-54 ducer and EchoMap 73DV with a GT-23 duvet…I think. Neither are plus or UHD models.
I’ve kind-of shifted my mentality on ClearVu from “this is a new age replacement for traditional sonar” to “ClearVu gives you a more detailed look at structure, but it is NOT a fish finding tool”.
Now that I’ve done a deep dive, I don’t think it’s a view that I will have up a whole lot… but could be useful in certain situations.
Coming from Humminbird, I think their down imaging is definitely superior.
Thank you for all the input and tips along the way.
