Re: Water Depth Surveys

Iain Mackay wrote:

> I'd like to survey the depths profiles of a number of small hill lochs
> ('lakes' in you live outside Scotland).
>
> This will be done from a very small boat and I think a portable unit that
> combines GPS, Depth Sounder and a USB (or similar) PC connection might be
> one way forward..
>
> Does anyone know of a suitable unit that might meet my needs? (I have seen
> Hummingbird equipment advertised but I'm not sure about the PC connection).
>
> Also, does anyone have thoughts on software for this type of application? -
> normal 3D mapping software isn't ideal because the 'Z' coordinate will be
> supplied by the depth sounder, not the GPS unit.

A depth sounder, being a marine equipment, could have a NMEA serial port.
If you combine this with the GPS NMEA serial port, all you need is a
serial port NMEA multiplexer that combines the various NMEA strings and
a piece of logging software, which could be as simple as hyperterm
logging to disk. Then, cruise around on the loch in some pattern and
post-process the logged data.

A possible problem could be that most professional marine equipment uses
RS485 whereas most consumer GPS equipment uses RS232 for the serial
communications.

--
Joop van der Velden - pe1dna@xxxxxxxxx


.

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