lx7

they gave us a split second view of the face of it. this is as clear as i could make it.

Thanks for sharing

Anybody know what this little chummy is gonna retail for so I can start saving? Might have to turn my LX-5 into a tipup checker

I know right?
Ready for some facts myself

This is the best I could come up with, sounds like details to be released the second week in July:

Over a decade of cutting edge sonar design in the making, the radically innovative LX-7 reportedly houses what MarCum calls “the optimum blend of sonar DNA,” incorporating the speed and response time of an analog flasher with the realism and screen resolution of a high-grade multicolor LCD.

“The result,” company engineers report, “is a totally immersive and interactive fishing experience. Anglers will benefit from multiple simultaneous water column perspectives, while they’ll also arm themselves with new levels of valuable, previously unknown information.”

One layer of such information technology (IT) emerges from MarCum’s development of “FootPrint Scan,” which reveals a 3-D footprint of sonar coverage. “This IT is key for pinpointing fish targets relative to your lure while ice fishing. It also provides optimal spacing between adjacent sonar signals to avoid interference at all times.”

MarCum concluded: “LX-7 will come preloaded with the full menu of MarCum’s patented sonar features, as well as accoutrements like a USB port for software upgradability. Stand by for full LX-7 product debriefing, the week of July 11.”

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I know right?
Ready for some facts myself

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Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the day Marcum will start the unveiling with pics and details regarding specs, etc.

I bought the vz825sd camera last winter and with the flat screen and with no sun visor the only time I could really see a good picture was in a dark shanty. I could not use my camera while sitting in the open even on a cloudy day and it looks like the same video screen on the Lx 7. I would wait to buy one until I saw it on the ice on a bright day. Personly I dont think you will see the graph.

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I bought the vz825sd camera last winter and with the flat screen and with no sun visor the only time I could really see a good picture was in a dark shanty. I could not use my camera while sitting in the open even on a cloudy day and it looks like the same video screen on the Lx 7. I would wait to buy one until I saw it on the ice on a bright day. Personly I dont think you will see the graph.

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Displaying video on a screen is far different than displaying graphics. Expect the intensity of the display to be the same as what you see from other major manufacturers of open water electronics.

But holding out to see one in action isn’t a bad idea either. I’m quite confident you’ll be impressed.

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I could not use my camera while sitting in the open even on a cloudy day

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I spent many days in the boat last winter. Although there were some bright days that made viewing less clear, I can’t ever say that I couldn’t use it. In fact, we used it every day we were out.

I wouldn’t know how they work in a dark shanty though.

James, or anybody else that can answer,
I thought there was an argument with LCD type of sonar having a lag, being not in real time. If so, why would Marcum go this route?

From my understanding Trav, Marcum whitled the lag time down to .02 seconds. (5 times faster than eye to brain)

It’s called True Time™

Here’s a link to the Marcum LX-7 Web Page<<

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James, or anybody else that can answer,
I thought there was an argument with LCD type of sonar having a lag, being not in real time. If so, why would Marcum go this route?

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This question is a very good one as it gets to the heart of the technology that is the engine that makes the LX7 such a ground breaking new product.

Mechanical flashers have been the gold standard on the ice for a long time primarily because a flasher can process incoming information picked up by the receiver and display it almost instantaneously. Some refer to this as a “real time” display. Of course there is no such thing as “real time” considering that even light takes time to cover distance. So instead of “real time” what the flasher offered was the ability to display incoming signals faster than the brain could perceive a delay.

Attempts by other companies in the past to use a color LCD display out on the ice were met with poor results. The issue was the delay between the time something happened, like an angler jigging a spoon upwards, and the time it took for that information to be displayed on screen. Obviously if the brain can perceive a delay between motion and that motion being displayed on screen this is a serious limitation.

MarCum has been working on matching the “real time” performance of their own industry leading flashers with a new line of ice electronics that would use an LCD display. It wasn’t easy. It took an incredible amount of R&D but they finally nailed it this past winter. The LX7 translates incoming information and writes it on the display in 0.02 seconds (20 milliseconds). This puts the new LX7 on par with the existing LX line of flashers with regards to response time. To make a long story short, the new LX7 LCD is fast. Really fast.

That brings us to the next logical question. Why would MarCum want to invest all this time, effort and money into a new platform that offered response times on par with the tried and true mechanical flashers?

There’s a number of reasons but the biggest one is that ice electronics companies have basically reached the performance limitations of mechanical flashers. But MarCum also knew there was much more that could be done for the ice anglers if a solid state piece of electronics was built on a “real time” LCD display.

Like what you ask?

Improved target separation for one. The LX7 offers 1/2″ target separation.

The ability to offer display options is another. On the new LX7 you never waste a single line of available resolution as the machine automatically locks on the bottom and uses all available lines of resolution to display the water column. In the past you had to select a depth scale that was deeper that the actual depth fished. If you fished in water shallower than the depth scale setting, say in 10′ of water on the 20′ scale, you wasted 50% of your available resolution. Those days are over with the LX7.

And how about a revolutionary way to zoom in on and display portions of the water column without using 50% of the sonar dial to do it? Enter the vertical zoom bar!! You select the portion of the water column you’d like to zoom in on and that water column is displayed to the right of your flasher dial without splitting the flasher dial in half. The result is no wasted resolution and a more intuitive way to display a zoom window!

The LX7 also offers users complete control over what information is displayed. Want to see one huge flasher dial? You can do that. Want a flasher dial and a vertical zoom window on the right? You can do that too. Or what if you don’t like the round display of a flasher. You can choose a full water column vertical display on the left with the vertical zoom window on the right.

And perhaps even most impressive…. the LX7 offers on open water mode. On the ice it will function like a regular graph except this graph doesn’t have display lag issues. In a boat… you have a 8″ full color fish finder. Can your current flasher offer dual purpose 12 months of the year use as an open water graph? This feature alone doubles the usefulness of the LX7 versus a traditional mechanical flasher.

And I’m only scratching the surface here. There’s so much more we’ll be talking about in the days to come but I did want to put this info out here as a starting point to help people wrap their heads around this new release from MarCum.

If anyone else has any questions on the LX7, let me know. I’ll do my best to answer them. If I don’t know the answer I’ll grab one of the factory guys out here at Icast and get the scoop straight from the guys that made this a reality.

Has there been any changes to the signal interpretation?

Specifically has the signal processing changed from the LX5?

In the past, Marcums Processing included correlation between the timing of signals received after one pulse with the timing of signals received after the next pulse. If thetiming is not coherent, the controller assumed that the received signal is not an echo return of a pulse generated by the unit, but instead is noise generated by another source.

Has the controller’s ability to process signals using the RAMDAT memory been altered?

The lx7 draws heavily from the previous generation flashers, uses what worked well and made improvements now possible due to the new display and hardware.

As for how the signal is processed or what changes have been made to the signal processing… that will remain a trade secret.

I can share that the lx7 uses dual processors.

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Has the controller’s ability to process signals using the RAMDAT memory been altered?

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Beat me to asking that question.

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Has the controller’s ability to process signals using the RAMDAT memory been altered?

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Beat me to asking that question.

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Questions regarding features, specs and capabilies are welcomed. Questions that would require the release of sensitive or proprietary info would do little to actually help ice angles get a handle on how this product is different from its predecessors.

Is there a cable that would be available to use the US2 on the MinnKota Terrova to the full advantage for the new Marcum Lx7?

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Is there a cable that would be available to use the US2 on the MinnKota Terrova to the full advantage for the new Marcum Lx7?

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Not at this time.