2009 Lowrance Info

[ffishman]

Looks interesting. But, I just put a LCX38 on my boat, and I don't think I would want to be the first buyers of it. Too many bugs, usually.

[crappieman]

IC, you might want to revisit those ideas. From my old recollection the infancy, of side imaging was introduced some 15 to 18 years ago by a company called Bottomline. They introduced a unit with side finding capabilities which was later evolved to units today. During that same time, Bottomline was selling units that were 600 X 800 pixel counts, unheard of at the time. Everyone has their favorite company in todays market. Todays sonars are a result of older companies introducing technology ahead of their time. The companies leading the way today are the ones who push the limits. Of the units you mentioned none has the picture quality of Lowrance, not last year nor next year, but what the heck, I'm a Lowrance fan, so in reality it's meaningless to anyone else.

[I Walleye]

It will be very interesting to see what kind of real world performance they get with these. I will say that from the press releases that I have read I'm impressed, and this is coming from a guy who 3 months ago was so mad at Lowrance I swore I'd never purchase another unit of theirs.

[Backwater Eddy]

I find it even more interesting they are now discovering less power works to achieve the better performance in the new HD units.

Seams to me another manufacturer has been doing this for nearly 30 years now, and just a few weeks back some were calling that "Old Outdated Technology"

Funny how things change so quickly...Eh?

Originally Posted by Backwater Eddy

I find it even more interesting they are now discovering less power works to achieve the better performance in the new HD units.

Seams to me another manufacturer has been doing this for nearly 30 years now, and just a few weeks back some were calling that "Old Outdated Technology"

Funny how things change so quickly...Eh?

You are just seeing the result of technology changing in the past 30 years that you mention.

Using more power or less power are two different ways to deal with the sonar unit's signal to noise ratio.

If you use less power, your front end electronics must have a higher s/n ratio which means more accurate tuning (and with older technology, trips back to the manufacturer/service depot for periodic tune ups.)

Very few people will put up with returning their sonar units for tuning on a regular basis. People now days don't even want to return their units for software updates. We want to be able to do that ourselves and have come to expect that.

Higher power allows using a receiver with a easier to maintain lower s/n ratio which is easier to build and cost less. Pure and simple physics and economics. If you build 100k units a year, cheap and simple is good.

In the past 30 years, electonics has changed big time. Now with the DSPs, "programmable' analog components and major computing horsepower in sonar/GPS units, the new units can now utilize lower transducer power because the units can self tune. Compare the prices of the unit that you are refering to and the new Lowrance units. Compare features.

Let's see, I have a "home computer" from 30 (1978) years ago. I think I'll stick with the new computer. The old one, even though it uses less power, doesn't handle the internet very well!!!!


VernH

[rebs]

any of you guys selling your 38 unit shoot me an email with price, my son is looking for a 38

[Backwater Eddy]

Vern I hear ya. The processors and computing capabilitys used in these new marine sonar/gps units could have ran all the Apollo Missions ...10 times faster. Doesn't that blow a guys mind Eh?

I started to watch the Garmin units closely about 5 years ago, and I could see them gearing up for huge leaps in technology with a focus on making it as user friendly as they could. Hummingbird was right in there too, they all are peaking over each others fence to see what is up and this has a lot of positive change rolling. Lowrance is taking the leap now with the new HD units.

The next question is with the new consumer reality's will these new units be priced to move in a tight economy?

[Like2Fish]

Here is the link to the new units at Lowrance.

http://www.lowrance.com/en/Products/...arine-Systems/

Like2Fish

Originally Posted by Backwater Eddy

Vern I hear ya. The processors and computing capabilitys used in these new marine sonar/gps units could have ran all the Apollo Missions ...10 times faster. Doesn't that blow a guys mind Eh?

I started to watch the Garmin units closely about 5 years ago, and I could see them gearing up for huge leaps in technology with a focus on making it as user friendly as they could. Hummingbird was right in there too, they all are peaking over each others fence to see what is up and this has a lot of positive change rolling. Lowrance is taking the leap now with the new HD units.

The next question is with the new consumer reality's will these new units be priced to move in a tight economy?

I did a little search on the power of the Apollo computers. Here's what I found..

Apollo Guidance Computer
Dimensions: 24 x 12.5 x 6 inches (HxWxD)
Weight: 70 pounds
Power requirement: 70W at 28V DC (standby: 15W)
Computer circuitry: About 4,000 integrated circuits
Clock: 1MHz
Fixed memory: 36K words*
Erasable memory: 2K words*

Sonar unit computers are well over 1000 times faster (probably more like 5000 times if you add the word size benefit of 64 bit compared to 12 bit words.) Another source said each IC contained only one gate consisting of about 6 transister equivalents. Compare that with today's processors having 100 million transistors....

Most cell phone/PDAs are more powerful than the Apollo computers.

I too, saw the power of GPS unit increase with their bigger screens and charting capability. I was pretty happy for many years with waypoint, route and simple track features until I saw my buddies 1 ft contour maps.

We (12 guys, 4 boats) fished Rainy Lake in August with the newest map chips. We had both major map sets to compare. One showed a football sized structure that came out of 70 ft of water and peaked at 24 ft. We had 3-4 boats drifting on the structure nailing the 'eyes. Many boats passed us a few hundred feet away (still in the 70 ft water) stopped, looked at their graphs, pulled out paper maps, shook their heads, fired up their boats and took off. Their paper map matched the one map chip. The guys with the better map chips had to hide their chip everyday cuz the guy without kept trying to "liberate" one for himself....

The prices of the better units may not come down much but their capabilites are certainly more impressive. There may end up being some really good used equipment deals cuz of the economy.

Vern

[Backwater Eddy]

We can find the moon with less, and miss a rock pile with more..that's funny.

Amazing the leaps in technology we take so much for granted these days.

Thanks for the research Vern.