Creating Dive Maps (Contour and Sidescan) from scratch

[Zeke XA3]

Not sure where to put this one but here goes.

I have some time, a little bit of money, free access to a vessel and weird need to map things.

I want to map some shallow (20 to 140 feet) dive sites and areas. Get some good contour maps and stitch together some sidescan for "photo" style images.

I was looking at using a piece of software called ReefMaster with Hummingbird or Lowrance transducer.

I also now Garmin use active maps to create contours but doesnt seem to support sidescan stitching?

Ive also now seen these little castable devices that work direct with mobile/tablets.

Anyone done something similair, recomendations, advice?

Im heading to FLL in 2 weeks so will have access to a range of units and transducers. I will be mounting this a temporary setup on a RiB and removing it between uses. Will have it set up on poles basically and tied into vessels power supply. The vessel has full electronics suite so wont need a huge display to see the data on the vessel its more for creating paper maps and photo maps on the tv for dive planning.

 

[Jared0425]

Before using the SAMM software, we would take Konsberg and Hummingbird images and waterfall and take the files over to the Adobe workshop program (their version of Microsoft paint). Then we would freeze frame a map of Google earth and overlay it to the area that we surveyed. It is a tedious process that we just bought a program. However...

If you are serious I highly recommend you pick up copies of this
https://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Encyclopedia-Side-Scan-Scanning-Operations/dp/098690340X

And this
https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reflec...s=side+scan+sonar+book&qid=1609212101&sr=8-10

They go in depth of what to do programming wise if you dont have $3k to drop on the SAMM software. And if you're curious, they are one of 2 companies based in Hawaii that specializes in this. One might be considerably more cheaper than the other as you are not using 4 different systems. Hope this helps a little.