@paul-unterweiser or others: Any experience with these sonars? Blueprint Subsea | Oculus From the last newsletter I had from VideoRay, it looks like they are adding support for these and they are intended to be more affordable than say a Blueview.
Kevin a Blueview is a major piece of equipment. A BMW is more affordable than a Blueview. Prices of sonars the same as all technology are coming down. I am not sure the price of the Oculus if it is even close to a Blueview it is a unit you would only buy if you had full time secured contracts.
Sorry, no experience with Blueprint Subsea, although those demo videos look pretty darn nice. What sort of price did they quote you?
Haven’t asked yet, but I played with the software and it’s pretty nice for our purposes.
@paul-unterweiser Got a quote back. They are like $12k for the low end model and then go up incrementally from there.
That’s about 1/3 the cost of a BlueView sonar (assuming it’s similarly featured). Not cheap but a big step in the right direction. 
It seems there are two markets; one for those with money/grants/commercial use, and one for hobbyists like myself with a limited budget. $1000 is the upper limit and $500 would be preferred.
I have been thinking of building a scanning sonar for my (working) ROV. Visibility in the Ottawa River is only a few feet so I would be happy with a range of 10m mainly to avoid running into a rock. Shape imaging would be nice. I will start with one of my transducers from junked sonars. An affordable high frequency transducer which I would mechanically scan would be nice. If small enough and near neutral buoyancy my arm can scan (wave) it. Another option is to take a fish-finder and try to split it with the transducer in the ROV and the display at the surface. I suspect it would be next to impossible. A boat transducer is not designed for depth so another challenge. I use CAT5 cable (4 pairs stranded & tinned) with one pair for RS485 communications, one pair for ROV video, one pair for Robotic Arm video, and the final pair for high voltage charging (converted in the ROV). I would switch the Arm Video pair of wires to sonar video. Specialized custom cables are for the wealthy. Two cables are asking for trouble, even if tied together.
My maximum target depth is about 200m and my present tether is 100m.
Pavel, what form would your video be in?
Imagenix 852 is OK
II have used it to find a big guy.
Hello guys,
Tritech Micron Sonar is about 10K USD. Micron Sonar | Tritech | Outstanding Performance in Underwater Technology
I can get them second hand for about 5K USD.
If anyone is interested let me know.
Cheers,
E.
Is the Micron that much these days? The Imagenex 852 is $5,800 USD brand new.
Wow ok. That seems very accessible for a sonar. Is it any good?
I think it’s on par with the Micron. The unit is little smaller and the software is a bit different from the Micron, but it’s manufactured in Canada which makes sales and repairs more accessible to us in the US. They recently came out with a version that was specifically designed to work with the BlueROV2 so be sure you let them know what it will be installed on.
hey guys @paul-unterweiser @etienne,
There is a company working atm with a sonar which will cost around 3k!
Company is DeepVision and its actually going to be adapted for the BR2 on the next january.
Regards,
LG
Well if DeepVision is coming out with a scanning sonar for 3k, I’ll buy one of those! They make good stuff and their software is fairly up to date.
Do you guys have links for the sonar?
3K is very cheap indeed. It would be nice to see the specs.
take a look there
Regards,
LG
Hi guys,
That’s a side scan sonar. Not really for ROV navigation.
Cheers,
E.
Deepvision is developing a side scan sonar (SSS) for BR2, not a forward looking sonar. The idea with a SSS on the ROV, is turning the ROV to scan, in stead of having a scanning sonar.
I haved used the sonar The Imagenex 852,but it seems only shows flat
There seems to be some confusion as to what the different types of sonars can (and cannot) do. A “side scanning sonar” uses the vessels’s position as a reference and displays a historical view of what passed beneath it. A “forward scanning sonar” displays what is ahead (to the sides and astern) in near real time. So in other words, a side scanning sonar shows you what is behind you and a forward scanning sonar shows you what’s ahead. A forward scanning sonar, such as an Imagenex 852 or Micron, is most useful in navigation in limited visibility. You can limit the arc of the scan to speed up the refresh rate.
Here’s a quick video of what the display from the 852 looks like: