I really like having it, and I also love the fact that it’s a fraction of the price of almost every other imaging sonar I have seen. I can’t tell you if it would be useful for you because that depends on your budget and the environment you dive in.
It’s extremely useful and I partly rely on it at most of my dive sites here where the visibility is usually 5-8 feet. Most of the lakes around here have reasonably steep slopes to a mud plane. One of the very useful applications is that I can explore on the mud plane and see the bottom of the slope on the Ping360, so I know my distance from the slope and my angle to the slope. It’s usually pretty easy to go parallel with the shore.
A great example is when I went to Soda Lake. I couldn’t see anything, but I was able to do some “IFR flying” by using the Ping1D to keep me 2-3’ above the bottom and the Ping360 told me my distance and angle relative to the shoreline so I knew where I was.
Soda Lake, Washington “Zero Visibility Zero Problems” - Dive Log - Blue Robotics Community Forums
The downsides are that it was useless on my Lake Chelan dives because the dive site is just a straight steep slope down to 250’ with great visibility, so there isn’t any reason to use an imaging sonar at that environment. I think the usefulness decreases as the visibility goes past 50’ because it’s faster and easier to just pivot the ROV and look at everything around you.
Although, The Ping1D echsounder is always useful because it lets me know if I’m landing on something when going down a slope. It’s also nice to descend at full speed and then slow down when I get about 15’ above the bottom.
I don’t think I can change the scan rate. That was automatically set based on the range setting and the scan degrees setting. I can choose the angular resolution, if that is what you are asking. It was set to 1 degree. I can increase it for a coarser scan if I need a wide scan and also a very fast
refresh rate.
I definitely agree with you about the boat. One of my primary mission when I bough the ROV was long drift dives in the Columbia River. My access to Lake Chelan is also extremely limited because it looks like most of the lake is only accessible by boat.
I have to get an inflatable boat because my only vehicle is my old Camry and I only have 1 parking space at my apartment. Any boat I get has to be able to fit inside my Camry and also be able to be set up and used all by myself. I’m still primarily considering that Saturn SD330W because it’s big enough that it should be reasonably stable in the water, it looks like I can handle it myself, and it will most likely fit in my car no problem. I would build a mount for the front bench that holds my laptop drybox and the tether spool.
