Underwater Mapping using Sonar - Looking for some knowledge

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Zeke XA3

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Messages
301
Reaction score
32
Location
Queensland - Australia - Most of the time
# of dives
5000 - ∞
Good evening SB,

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The Short - Looking for knowledgeable people to help me learn/set up a sonar system to create 3d bathymetric maps.

The Long -

One of my pet projects for years has been mapping dive sites wherever i work, just very general lap and long and potions etc.

Now i am in a position where i have access to vessels, the knowledge of NMEA systems and lots of space to explore for diving...

A lot of modern depth sounders and chartplotter produce amazing picture clarity, im looking for a way to either save the side scan tracks from a charplotter so i can stitch together, or more ideally, save the depth, position co-ordinates from a depth sounder and import into a program to create a bathymetric map (i used Surfer back in Uni). I know some garmins and humingbirds have an option to create your own maps. Is this just a outline or using the side scan sonar images i cant seem to find out.

In a perfect world i would love a small towed array that can save the data for processing later on a land based machine. Tritech offered a good system at one point for about $4000 USD but that was a few years ago and tech has moved on so quick that an off the shelf garmin chartplotter with CHIRP transducer seems just as good resolution! Otherwise i can T hardware into the NMEA backbone if a vessel already has the right transducer.

Ive seen what seem to be some great programs like ReefMaster, if anyone has any experience?

Pretty much all of the work i would do would be less than 100 foot and a majority at less than 60.

There seems to be so much out there to use im getting my self confused, if some one can straighten me out a bit it would be greatly appreciated!
 
Both Garmin and Lowrance have "mapping" feature which allow you to stitch their data together into a bathymetric map. They aren't technically sidescan and sidescan isn't what you need anyway. Bathymetric maps use down looking signals. Garmin and Lowrance are both using transducers with a center signal plus two side lobes.
 
Yeah so looks like mutlibeam is better for the 3d mapping but Sidescan stich is a lot simpler since you basically join photos together.

Looking at the program i linked too i may be able ot test the free trail of that when we cross next as our nav computer already draws 0183 feed in from the depth sounder.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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