Dan's Binford Mark III SSS modification ??

[Charles, Oak Island,NC]

A couple of years ago I built a Dan's side scan sonar (http://www.portup.com/~dfount/sidescan.htm)
except I used an Eagle LCG Recorder rather that the Lowrance X16.
We only had a couple of short trips out with just a short time to use it. It seem to function OK and the main problem being we could not go back over the recorder and look at the hits as you can with the paper unit.
This year I will use my X16 paper recorder with it.I am thinking of making one major change. I am thinking of mounting the unit on a bracket off the side of the boat about 2ft under the bottom of the boat.
We are working small areas with lots of turns and water depth of only 40 to 70 ft. This will make the search a lot simpler to do.

Would like to hear any suggestions or feed back on this idea.

[Carl]

Re: Dan's Binford Mark III SSS modification ??

Would boat vibration be an issue? What about rocking? I would think that towing a fish will produce a more stable image.

With digitizers, computers, and memory so cheap, would it be possible to digitize the SSS and directly display it on a laptop? Set it up just like a chart recorder, with the capability of backscrolling. Maybe even do some useful image processing on the fly.

- Carl

[Charles,OakIsland,NC]

Re: Dan's Binford Mark III SSS modification ??

After talking to several folks who use SSS and paying more attention to some of the History Channel programs I see that it's a mixed bag between towing and bracket. The neat thing with mine is I will be able to switch between the two different methods with about 15 min work right on the boat.

[Alec]

Re: Dan's Binford Mark III SSS modification ??

Have a look at:-

http://www.voti.nl/pic/index.html

These "PIC" chips have a/d s and are "easy" to program, a simple computer based solution while still using the reciever circuits of youe echo sounder.

Alec.



PIC chips

[Charles, Oak Island,NC]

Re: Dan's Binford Mark III SSS modification ??

but where would we get the "simple computer based solution" ?

[Per]

Re: Dan's Binford Mark III SSS modification ??

I'm in the planning of making something similar.
The plan is to take a ordinary laptop computer and use the sound card line input.
It got a 16 bit A/D with up to 48 khz sampling fq. It shouldn't be a problem to develop a simple software that plot's the echos and saves the data for future analysis. Also thougt of conecting a GPS to get a "location stamp" in tha data.

There is a nice freeware called OSCI that makes an oscilloscope out of the computer utilising the Line input. It could be useful during tests and setup.



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