Vexilar Sonar

[keithwhite]

Hi 

I have a vexilar SP200 Sonar unit installed on my boat (£146) and its very good,  its communicates by WiFi to an its own android App or Navionics app on phone/pad etc. It would be very useful if openplotter could pick up the NMEA messages and output them on the NMEA 2000 network. 

There has been some work done on this by Michael P. Scherer  at https://github.com/scherererer/SonarPhony.  Is this something that could be added ?

Cheers

Keith

[Saqqara]

I've been interested in this device as well. I dream that we could court Vexillar into making something that was a good citizen on a network using standard protocols. Not just depth info over nmea but imagery as well. Let their be unlimited developers writing client software for their unit and it would seem they might reach more people.

[Newt2u]

I’m not sure there are standard protocols for this kind of data. Essentially it has s a 1D radar that must communicate strength of return;distance couples. I have one as well a great little device.

[TechnicallyReal]

Hi all - I just ran into the same issues and took it upon myself to make my own Android app that connects the SonarPhone to the latest version of Navionics. It also acts as a replacement to the original SonarPhone app in other ways as well (sonar chart, settings, etc).

It's not in the Play Store (yet) but if you know how to sideload an app, you should be good to go. I can't post links yet as I don't have 10 posts, but it's at github dot com/RyanEwen/sonarphone-nmea-bridge