Helix G3N Network / high-speed depth issues

So this might be a little confusing and I’ll try to keep it as clear as possible but I’ve been running into two issues with my new units and hoping for some insight;

Boat is a 2018 Yar-Craft 219TFX. It was originally rigged with a Helix 10 G2N SI on the dash with a shoot thru hull 83/200 glassed in transducer and the SI transducer mounted on the exterior of the transom. this was networked to the Minnkota Ultera. I was able to demo the boat set-up like this last fall and everything worked great. I had depth readings at speed and everything seemed to talk to each other great.

Over the winter, I finalized the purchase and added a Helix 10 G3N SI and a Helix 10 G3N DI. I would have been fine with the G2Ns however bird switched over to the 3s over at about the same time and the 2s became unavailable.

Because I wanted to have an SI unit at both the dash and the bow, and I use the dash units the most; I had the dealer move the G2N SI unit to the bow, and install the new G3N units on the Dash. They removed the old SI transducer from the transom and they installed the new SI Transducer and DI transducer in the same location. The SI unit was routed into a Y-Cable with the shoot thru hull unit and ran to the G3N SI. The DI transducer was conneted to the G3N DI. The Ultera transducer was connected to the front bow Unit (G2N). An ethernet hub was installed under the dash and ethernet cables from the 3 units and the ulterra were all connected. clear as mud, I’m sure, lol.

My issues; I have spotty or little depth signal when on plane on any of the units, specifically the dash units. Neither appear to be reading through the shut through hull transducer and I believe they are both pulling from the SI & DI transom mounted transducers.

The front unit, I can only get to read depth from the ultera transducer. The SI doesn’t look right no matter the settings and I cann’t select the rear shoot thru hull transducer.

I do notice in the menu when you try to select the transducers there are way more options than I have transducers.coming from Lowrance, I expected to see only the stuff that was hooked up and being recognized, not a bunch of non-used or generic transducer listings.

I also noticed if I mark a way point on the bow unit, it shows up on the other two as I expect. if I shut the bow unit off, the icon/way-point disappears. I was expecting that once I set a way-point it would store it in all three units so you don’t have to have them all running all the time to see all way-points.

So, from what I can tell, I feel like the shoot thru hull transducer that was hooked to the G2N is not compatible with the G3N. I did confirm I have the right y-cable. it this or there’s a software issue with the new units. Apparently I also need the G2N Si transducer as also installed as it doesn’t seem to read the SI or DI transducers from the G3N units. Seems ridiculous that I need 3 giant transducers on the back but who knows. I called bird twice and got two different answers so not sure what to think. I’d hate to buy and glass in another transducer and then find out that’s not it.

I like the clarity of the DI/Si and sonar, the menu’s are good, and the screens are easy to navigate but as a life long Lowrance user that made the paradigm shift, I’m finding this a bit frustrating. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a G2N Helix 10 SI. A friend bought a G3N Helix 9 SI. He was having trouble with the SI screen on the G3N. We hooked it to my G2 transducer to help trouble shoot. Humminbird told us the G3 Helix wouldn’t read the SI from the G2 transducer. I wonder if this is why the G2N at the bow is having trouble displaying the G3N shared transducer.

From the research, I have done the glassed in transducers can be difficult to get to work consistently.

I question having SI and DI transducers operating at the same time. I have an SI and a y cable and a regular 2D on my boat. I think this is the way to go. I don’t know if the make a Y cable for the SI and DI. On my old boat, it had DI on it and I added SI on a second locator. If I had both locators on, the SI and DI transducers would fight each other, messing up both of them. You can hit the power button on either locator and turn the sonar off. Do one at a time and see if this changes how they operate.

You need to have all locators on to share waypoints. An option is to put the one you aren’t fully using in standby mode. This dims the screen, all you have to do is hit a button to wake it up. To put it in standby mode it the power button and select stand by.

I’m not really running into any problems with the SI and DI both running at the same time on the two different units. I do get some noise reflection on occasion but not a ton. It does seem ridiculous that the SI unit can pull down-imaging from the SI transducer while the DI unit has to use the DI transducer and can’t pull the down imaging from the SI transducer. If I had known that up-front, I probably would’ve changed how the boat was rigged and which units I ordered.

I’m leaning towards the glassed in traducer not being compatible with with the new G3N head unit, that or the y-cable. I’m currently using the y cable to connect the glassed in transducer and the G3N SI transducer to the new G3N SI head unit and it’s not working as it previously did. I’ve had three boats with glassed in transducers an all have worked flawlessly including this one last year before we added the additional head units, network components, and connected the glassed in unit to the G3N head unit

As far as waypoints, that’s kind of a bummer as I only need/use the bow graph maybe 20% of the time. Guess that just means all of my way-points will need to be marked on the built-in dash unit as that one is on 100% of the time if the boat is in the water. so if I want to see the point that I marked on the bow unit on the other, it has to be turned on at all times equating to extra draw batteries and more wear on the unit when I’m not even using or have any need for that unit to be on. Pretty sure Bird could fix this with a software updated.

After owning both systems I can say Lowrance has advantage and better system when it comes waypoint sharing, networking, and transducer sharing.

Probably the most frustrating part is when I made the commitment to run all Humminbirds, nobody seemed to know anything about the new G3N units, including bird. Both my dealer and myself had to call several times working back and forth together while they were rigging and it still isn’t quite right. It’s disappointing that a person lays down this kind of cash for these things and cann’t get them to work right and the manufacture does’t even quite have it figured out.

I think you are probably correct about the glassed in transducer compatible issue with the G3N. I agree Humminbird could do a better job with documentation. I have a few things I am working through also. I put a new Ulterra Link trolling motor on this spring. It is feeding back and causing interference on the SI when connected to the network through the ethernet and when the trolling motor transducer is hooked to the locator at the bow, it will feed back through either one when hooked to the network. Very frustrating to spend that much money and use all their stuff and still have to sort through issues. I read on another forum that someone ran a ground from the that ethernet connection to the battery and it fixed the interference issue.

I am still adjusting my transducers to get them to read better. I took the boat out last night and the 2D is working great now, it never loses bottom. And I got the SI and DI to read up to 15 mph. Last year on my old boat I had the DI reading up to 35 mph. It is pretty cool to mark fish going that fast. Hang in there, work on one problem at a time. When you get everything working correctly they do perform well.

Here is a link to Humminbird shared data/view table

https://www.humminbird.com/sites/humminbird_site/files/transducer_support_grid_v10_0.pdf

It is a pretty extensive list.

You may also have to turn off the chirp functions to get some of the views to be available on the G2N to G3N units.

great list and info, too bad nothing on the new G3N units. Looks like they’ll have to update those charts.

Just follow-up note for anyone that’s followed this thread or ran into similar issues looking for a fix. It sounds like my shoot thru hull transducer is indeed NOT compatible with the G3N SI unit. The y-cable is correct (9M SIDB Y) so I have ordered a new shoot thru hull transducer. I’ll update again once it’s installed and tested, probably be a couple of weeks.

For reference, the existing shoot thru hull transducer is a XTM920T. I will be replacing that with a XP9HW (add T to the end if you want temp).

I also verified that there is no way to actually save waypoints between units. If you mark a waypoint on the bow unit, it will only show up on the network if the bow unit is powered up and vice versa. If you want to save those waypoints to the other units, you would need to save them from the bow unit to a SD card and then transfer the SD card to the other units and save the points accordingly.

A few other notes, you can share the G3N SI signal to both the G3N DI unit via the network. You do not need to install the G3N DI transducer as it can simply pull from the SI transducer. I was able to verify and make this work.

I have also been told my G2N SI bow unit should be able to receive the SI signal from the G3N SI unit. I have not verified this but will be doing a system reset and software update on the G2N next weekend and supposedly this should work. It was not working as of this last weekend but hope a system reset and software update takes care of this.

With that said, slowly but surely I might get it all working! I’ll update over time as I get these glitches/bugs worked out.

Final update, all is happy and everything is finally working and dialed in. I ended up resetting and updating all three units and re-selecting the appropriate master/slave units and installed the new shoot through hull transducer.

For reference, the correct shoot thru hull transducer for the G3N units is the XP9HW. I now get much better 2d signal and returns, actually see fish arc’s instead of blobs, and it appears to give depth readings at speed. It was rough both days I fished and I need to do a little more testing on the speed/depth thing before I call that solved but it seemed much improved.

I have unplugged the DI transducer and you with all networked, the G3N DI unit will pull both DI & SI signals and display both from the G3N SI unit. I was also able to get the G2N bow unit to properly display the SI/DI signals from the network. So, at this point, I’ll call this solved. Certainly post or pm me if anybody reads this and is running into similar issues and I can try and help you out.