Topic: What if this were to happen??

[thedudster]

  I fish freshwater, and see where all these are necessary:

1) You bounce GPS data back and forth between units. Your Navionics chip is accessible from the console unit and the unit forward, so you are viewing the same lake chart on both units at the same time, if you want. All points are view able from both the units. You create a plot and send it forward, the trolling motor communicates w/ fwd unit and follows GPS track data at speed determined (up to 2 miles in length)
2) During your free trolling looking for a pattern you stumble on some significant cover and you dash to mark the spot from upfront. The mark automatically sends the point back the the master unit at the console and marks the Navionics chip in the main unit.
3) I don't need a hand held unit with a minor plot, I can plug in the hand held unit and it becomes the transmitter from the master unit, then translates the data to the trolling motor and at the touch of my foot pedal, the track begins. You can flip from track to manual at the flick of a switch located on the foot feed of the trolling motor. ie... My buddy hangs up, so I switch off the tracking and go retrieve his diving lure, or what ever, turn the unit back on and it starts where I left off, or puts me back in position then tracks forward according to the point I am at.
4)  And last... You can save the new data collected along the way... edited of coarse! to a card located at the main unit.
5) I can switch from front transducer to rear to maintain that break point as I drift.

You see, after all these high dollar gadgets I purchased, they don't give me, the fisherman, the freedom that these units should be giving. The truth is that to get these units to do this is very simple... I am in touch w/ Humminbird at this time to develop these features. If they turn me down, I am going to do this on my own. What I want is feed back that you understand what I am posting and what you would like your units to do.... ON A FISHING BASIS!
 
NOTE: We can't fish at 70 miles per hour crossing a lake. I saw a post about the boat swerving left to right to maintain the track. The GPS data is updated at 1 second intervals... at 70 MPH I can be off coarse quite a bit and the correction will need a super fine tuning to process this data at that speed.

[ITGEEK]

I don't really understand what you are saying.
Interlinking units can share waypoints between units.
It would be nice if you could share the map cards between units, but
I don't think you can now.
It would also be nice if the GPS could get a signal faster than 1 second apart.
Improvements come in small steps.

Now that you are getting technical and want to build something neat.
Build this:
Have your unit remote control steer your boat in a zigzag pattern.
Once fish are located, have the unit mark a waypoint, and identify what species of fish, and determine the best presentation to catch them.
Have a robot use a rod/downrigger to catch and retrieve the fish.
Have the unit remotely steer the boat remotely back to you at the dock.
You don't even have to go out on the water.
 

[sonar2000]

   OK but who will have to clean the fish.....

So we can make this happen but at what cost to the unit. 
These inexpensive sonars will suddenly become $10,000.00......
Chuck

[Roddy]

Remember the cane pole,can of worms laying on a river bank watching clouds all afternoon!!!:-) Roddy

[sonar2000]

That would make life too simple.  .... .....

Chuck

[sonar2000]

Hopefully one of our member here will jump in and give some thoughts as he does several of these items, like the auto pilot..

Now if someone can identify the fish species and the associated lure I am all for that...

Chuck

[thedudster]

Thanks for the response!
As far the latter: I have already created the software to ID the fish by species...   
Now for the units, I am inserting some scenarios for you to view.
In a few conversations w/ Humminbird... it seems the autopilot will steer your boat on any plot you give it. I am not real sure about this, but it seems that it will do that.

The other thing is, you have to be somewhat kind of fisherman to figure out what to present to get a bite!!

[Bob B]

Looks a lot like the architecture I dreamed up on a post here a while back......called it a sonar client / server.

Interfacing the i-pilot  has been on my wish list for a while also. 
Why not be able to send a track to the i-pilot from the HB. 

This is the kind of innovation that HB could do to really bury the competition.  Looks like they are getting back to innovating with the 360 degree sonar....maybe they will keep it up.

There are some pretty amazing features in the Lakemaster Contour Elite software.....this could be another one.  After all, Johnson Outdoors owns Minn Kota, Humminbird, and Lakemaster........getrdone

[LocDown]

There's a guy on crappie.com that is currently working on something similar.