Lowrance Sonar Viewer Question

Hoping someone here can offer a couple suggestions.

Fishing all weekend at a buddies cabin near crosby, The Navionics map chip I bought is NOT accurate for anything other then avoiding shallow reefs so I have been trying to make some of my own maps.

Heres what I got. I saved sonar data to a SD chip in my 113HD, I had succesfully run sonar viewer and saved the files in .csv format for use in 3dfield. Saturday I was out all day and had a 445mb file saved. Here’s the hook, When I run sonar viewer, the pause button is depressed and I cannot “play” the file. The 445mb file turns into a 27mb .csv file that seems to be a tiny slice of what it should be when I open it in 3dfield.

I did call lowrance CS, guy I talked to had no ideas. The file has 300,000 soundings so him telling me the file was just to short to play does not hold water.

It seems that the file is loading but walking away from the computer does not seem to help. I am saving the data to an old laptop that I thought was not up to the task of opening the file so tried running it on buddies cabin computer. (3ghz with 2gb of ram, should be more then enough) I get the same thing.

I dont know what I could have done wrong with the recording. I hit menu twice, click on start recording, select the drive to save to and go.

Anyone have any ideas how to get sonar viewer moving?? The guy from lowrance put me on hold and told me that he ran a file in the 500mb range so the size of the file should not be the problem. That was my first thought though.

IDA Pro Staffer, Doc Samson would be a good source to help you. He checks in here a couple times a week but if we don’t hear from him soon I’ll shoot him an email and ask him to read your post. Here is his website.

I might be able to help. We’ve run into this problem before. The files are just too large to process. There is a limit to how much data a file can open.
Its really best if you only record in segments of an hour or so then stop and restart. When working with the guys the first time I tell them to work an area, if your going to map, in a grid. Then use a name thats going to remind you later where you were.
Even if you did get Sonar Viewer to out put that much data, 3DField’s default grid at 102 X 102 over that large an area is going to miss all detail.
We’ve been using laptops, Panasonic CF-18’s, with a new program called DrDepth that is the cats meow for mapping. It can process SLG files straight out with out SonarViewer but when using it to create the map as you go along is the best of the best.
DrDepth is http://www.drdepth.se There are demo files that will run under File – Demo if you try it out. Be sure to check out creating a map as you go and the 3D map function on the run.
I’ll post twice here so you can see how one of the guys I was helping last week set his laptop up. These are smaller than what Doc uses, but almost as good.
WarrenMN

How one person set up their laptop using a Ram mount.
WarrenMN

From the side.
WarrenMN

I should have mentioned also that there is a program out that will convert shp files into Lowrance usable LCM files. Its a freebie. Email me and I’ll send a copy.
A note on 3DField. All though DrDepth is my program of choice for collecting data, I think 3DField is the best program for making maps till you jump up to the $600 to $800 range.
Good time to mention this, Doc has another class coming up at Joe’s and this is the kind of stuff he’ll be covering. Check it out at http://www.hightechfishing.com
WarrenMN

Warren is probably right. The only files that I can’t run in the SonarViewer have been large files.
Warren talked about my classes. The Lowrance School talks about the SonarViewer and how to use it in one section. The Lowrance School covers the basic and advanced uses. The mapping class is not for the basic user. The Joe’s classes will be my last ones this year.

I just picked up on a Lowrance LMS-350A unit. It’s an old unit, but like new. The unit works great, however, I have been looking all over the web for a trolling motor transducer, with no luck. Does anybody have any idea where I might locate one??

Any help would be greatly appreciated….THANKS!