Ping Viewer 3rd Party Sonar Support

Is this software compatible with other sonar unit’s? I have a Tritech micron mk2 sitting gathering dust, and wondered if I could use it with the BlueROV2? (The Tritech software wont run on windows 10) I did plug it in, update drivers etc, it listed both 1d and 3d as devises for a moment. I am running it straight to the laptop USB via rs485 adapter for testing, so not on the ROV at present.

Hi @murf,

Ping-Viewer is an Open Source project and we are open to anyone that wants to add support to others sensors. Right now, we only support Ping1D and Ping360, were both follows the ping protocol specification.
But adding a new sensor should not be hard.

Has anyone tried integrating a 3rd party transducer such as from Garmin. I have extras, so I’m wondering if I could use PingViewer with it.

Hi @jtheriault, welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

I’ve merged your post into this existing one, as they’re on the same topic.

As above, Ping Viewer is an open source viewer for sonar equipment. It is currently set up with viewing modes for echosounders and scanning imaging sonars, and device support has been implemented for the Ping Sonar and Ping360.

To allow viewing a device that is not already supported would require either:

  • Creating a proxy program that presents the device as one that Ping Viewer can already interface with
    • currently such a program would need to support the relevant communication protocol for talking to the device, and the ping protocol for talking to Ping Viewer
  • Modifying Ping Viewer to natively support the device
    • the simplest approach for this would likely be adding the device as a new device type, which would need its own communication protocol implementation, but could likely re-use a fair amount of the existing data-display and interface code
    • pull requests are welcome :slight_smile:

Thank you.

I’ll do some digging on the Garmin transducer communication protocol (if its available).

Jim

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