Hi @zarbokk, welcome to the forum 
As some context, since the time when this thread was initially posted I’ve now started working for Blue Robotics
I haven’t tested this in a while, but I’ll try to set some time aside tomorrow to see if I can determine what the maximum reasonable speed is for a serial-USB connection with the ping-python library. It won’t be as fast as what Ping Viewer can achieve (because it’s compiled c++), but as Patrick mentioned it should at least be faster than 20 seconds, and will depend on the connection type and settings, as well as the transmitting settings. If it’s relevant, changing to an ethernet connection is now much simpler than it was before, because we’ve released an Ethernet Switch that it can be plugged into. I’ve described the changeover process here, but we haven’t yet updated our official guide to include it.
I would note that the ping-python library has had various speed improvements since when I was working with it last year, but they’re only available in the latest version, which is Python 3 only. If you’re connecting from the topside computer, or a standard Raspberry Pi that’s not running our Companion software, you can safely install bluerobotics-ping with pip (you should get version 0.1.2).
If, however, you’re trying to run your code on the Companion computer there can be some issues, because ping-python is already installed there on Python 2, and installing it for Python 3 as well will overwrite the ping-proxy.py script that’s used by the Ping Echosounder. If you’re only using the Ping360 then it should be ok.
Unfortunately the firmware that supports auto-transmitting is still not publicly available. If I understand correctly that’s mostly because there have been issues making a suitable cross-platform software that can actually install it onto the device, and that’s also been a low priority lately because of focus on other critical projects.
You shouldn’t need to refer to Ping Viewer when developing the functionality you want, although it may be helpful to do so for things that Ping Viewer already does well. That said, if you’ve got any particular questions about how to achieve a particular thing then you’re welcome to ask about them here (or in a separate topic, if appropriate).
I’ll be better placed to respond to those once I’ve had a chance to refresh myself on the current state of connecting via ping-python, which as mentioned I’ll try to do tomorrow