Earl Ledge
Member
I had great hopes for this chart rewriting technology. Last season I ran Sonarcharts Live into my iPad using a wifi and transducer system called T-box. The transducer was only effective down to about 200 feet, but it worked as advertised, allowed my to identify and chart holes and humps that did not otherwise show on my charts, even though previously, of course, the sounder and GPS readings did allow you to search these things out.
I picked up a Lowrance Elite Nine at HC after reading about the Sonarcharts option and speaking with people at the Chandler. Well surprise surprise. It turns out ( with the sounder I got) you have to take OUT your Navionics chart chip, put a micro sd chip into the Chartplotter, drive around the area creating a sonar log while navigating with some totally different machine, take the sonar log to a computer and send the file to them, wait a bit, download the processed file and then, I'm still not clear if you somehow mind-meld this new file into your Navionics chip or only can use the newly processed chart while the new chip is in, and only for that area. Overall, you can see where this is heading. Last year as I jigged for bottom fish, my iPad rewrote the chart using Sonarcharts Live and the Navionics fifty buck charts on my iPad.
This year I am driving around looking at my bright new Lowrance screen thinking, screwed again by misleading advertising, and unclear statements where you only discover the limitations and handicaps after you buy the product. Who wants to take out their nav chart to make a sonar log?
I'm assuming I am not the first person to go through this. I have watched a lot of Youtubes on this and find that I now feel I have been screwed. On the other hand, I am hopeful I have simply overlooked some key pieces of the puzzle and that you folks can straighten me out...?
I did write to Lowrance Canada, and they confirmed that the Nav chart has to come out to record a sonar log. That's as far as I got with this.
I understand there is a method through NMEA and a wifi box to beam the Lowrance transducer feed to the IPad. Is anyone doing that? Cheers and happy Saturday.
I picked up a Lowrance Elite Nine at HC after reading about the Sonarcharts option and speaking with people at the Chandler. Well surprise surprise. It turns out ( with the sounder I got) you have to take OUT your Navionics chart chip, put a micro sd chip into the Chartplotter, drive around the area creating a sonar log while navigating with some totally different machine, take the sonar log to a computer and send the file to them, wait a bit, download the processed file and then, I'm still not clear if you somehow mind-meld this new file into your Navionics chip or only can use the newly processed chart while the new chip is in, and only for that area. Overall, you can see where this is heading. Last year as I jigged for bottom fish, my iPad rewrote the chart using Sonarcharts Live and the Navionics fifty buck charts on my iPad.
This year I am driving around looking at my bright new Lowrance screen thinking, screwed again by misleading advertising, and unclear statements where you only discover the limitations and handicaps after you buy the product. Who wants to take out their nav chart to make a sonar log?
I'm assuming I am not the first person to go through this. I have watched a lot of Youtubes on this and find that I now feel I have been screwed. On the other hand, I am hopeful I have simply overlooked some key pieces of the puzzle and that you folks can straighten me out...?
I did write to Lowrance Canada, and they confirmed that the Nav chart has to come out to record a sonar log. That's as far as I got with this.
I understand there is a method through NMEA and a wifi box to beam the Lowrance transducer feed to the IPad. Is anyone doing that? Cheers and happy Saturday.