I just noticed something last night on my Elite 7 Ti that was finally enabled in the February firmware upgrade (V2.5 for Ti, V4.5 for the HDS Gen3) something I've been griping to Lowrance about since they went to built-in Wifi/Go Free. They have enabled the "NMEA 0183 over Ethernet" protocols and bridged them over to the WiFi using port 10110 and UDP protocol. (This was already done with the HDS Gen2 and above Ethernet outputs which the Ti doesn't have) I don't know if they had the NMEA 0183 over Ethernet bridged to the WiFi on the HDS Gen3 or not since I don't have one but I suspect it was not before this latest update since both units use the same LAN cores and the same Wifi/Bluetooth chip so the code is likely the same

What this means is you can now use a Windows tablet or laptop running Reefmaster and get the real time NMEA 0183 data over WiFi. Programs like Open CPN can use this connection directly but it's not too awfully hard to make it work with Reefmaster and other software by using a Virtual Serial Port program to turn it into a serial port you can hook up to with Reefmaster like any other serial or USB device. I'll likely be using a free program called NMEA Router like I was using for the WiFi device I documented on my blog (bottom of page) to overcome the problem of Lowrance not enabling the NMEA over Ethernet to the WiFi internally. One of the nice things about using Virtual Serial Ports is you can hook up several programs to one port at the same time and without using any wires between the finder/plotter and tablet/laptop ... You could also log the NMEA 0183 data on the tablet/laptop and SL2 on the Elite Ti at the same time.

After I work out the particulars in the next week or two I'll post a little tutorial on how to do it on my blog. This is an easy way to get NMEA 0183 data to a computer without have to mess with wires and USB and level converters and once set up should so all you have to do it hook up the computer to the Elite Ti WiFi access point like you do with an Android phone or tablet app, click the link to start up the router and start up Reefmaster and enable the Live feature. At the same time you can also use a web browser to access the webpage I documented on my blog to transfer your USR (Trails, Routes, Waypoints, etc) files and other logs screenshots and data between the finder and

Has been working. www.rusfishing.ru/forum/showpost.php?p=8684730&postcount=3832

That was posted after the February update ,,,, It didn't work before the 2.5 update ,,,, I know this because I've been griping to Lowrance's engineers about it since the Elite Ti came out and pointed them to the workaround solution I made last year and is shown on my blog .... The largest user base for Lowrance is the US and not many Americans read Russian language websites (I do, I love Google Translate) so most users have no clue and this isn't the only forum I posted this message on. Now if only Lowrance would fix my other gripe ... why can't I use a Bluetooth keyboard for cripes sakes? It's like they put Bluetooth in there but don't seem to have a clue on what to actually do with it besides Power Poles with Bluetooth which isn't a very big market/user base. I'm tired of hooking up wires when things like WiFi and Bluetooth only add 5 bucks tops to the cost of any device. The WiFi module I used which is full legal power (100 meter range) only cost me $3.15 and in any kind of manufacturing volumes would cost below a buck. Why am I wasting my time with overpriced NMEA 2000 networking that's based on 30 year old technology (CAN bus has been in cars since the 80's and that is all NMEA 2000 is physically) when there are much better and much **cheaper** options available?

Also the program he suggested won't work on 64 bit Windows, the free version only works with 32 bit Windows, I've been using the Eterlogic program since 2008 and if you go back on my blog to 2010 you'll see how I used it to crack the bult in GPS in the Gobi 1000 modem (Lots and lots of Russians have used those pages to crack the Gobi 1000, Google "Gobi 1000 GPS" and my site will be in the top 3 hits where it has remained since 2010) .... I suggest a program called NMEA Router since it has a free 64 bit serial port emulator built in plus you can use it with a cheap portable WIFi router to create a wireless NMEA 0183 network ... For instance I'll take off the WiFi device I have on the NMEA 0183 output of the Elite Ti and put it on my homemade weather station (bottom of page) and send that data to the NMEA 0183 network along with the Elite Ti 's output where it can be accessed by all my Windows and Android devices. My windows tablet is set up to automatically hook up to to the NMEA network and start logging to a file on boot up. Everything is logged from launch to trailering no matter where I go or what I'm doing whether I'm mapping or just going out fishing. Eventually I want to make a fishing database that automatically logs position, depth, air and water temps and barometric pressure so I don't have to enter that information by hand every entry

BTW anyone interested in the NMEA multiplexer/logger I made or the weather station can download the Arduino code from my GitHub repository. Unlike most Arduino GPS loggers it logs entire NMEA format sentences and not just comma delimited lat/long numbers and takes special care to make sure the depth data input and writing to the SD card takes place during the 'rest period' of the GPS output. In a 1 second time slot you have to read the GPS and when it's in the rest period read the sonar depth and then write both to the SD card BEFORE the GPS spits out the next reading. If you don't then you have a good chance of losing depth info or having it mismatch with position data or not getting everything written to the SD card. I log in NMEA sentences because I have some Python scripts that reads the HDOP, PDOP and other xDOP data and uses it to cull out sentences that are no good because high xDOP readings. Another script I use to cull out any bad depth sentences like the occasional 1000 meters or zero meters reading you get from interference with the transducer (I've gotten weird readings in weedy areas or that have a lot of flooded trees and brush)

I may go back to logging my data for Reefmaster in NMEA 0183 format and only using the Elite's logging for sidescan overlays since I can't find an easy way to cull out bad position and depth data in the SL2 format. So what I'm going to be doing in the first half of the summer is making identical maps one using NMEA 0183 data I've processed for bad data versus the SL2 data that won't have the bad data culled so I can compare the differences and see how much of a difference the 'massaging' of the data makes in the accuracy of the maps produced. Maps are only as good as the data used to make them which is why I don't use Insight Genesis or Navionics community maps because I can't control the quality of the data, cripes I can't even add a shorelines so if they don't provide one the maps look like crap and will be inaccurate close to shore. That's why I'm shelling out a couple hundred bucks for a program like Reefmaster so I can control the data quality and simply make better maps than either Insight or Navionics or Lakemaster/Dr Depth can produce.

Well this turned out to be a bust .....

They way they implemented this is stupid, when you turn off NMEA 0183 output sentences off on the Elite Ti it still transmits the sentence but with no data in it. What that means is pretty much every NMEA 0183 sentence the unit uses is transmitted so instead of getting 3 GPS sentences and 2 Sounder sentences I end up with over a dozen, most of them with no data (a bunch of commas) . While that seems to be OK with most of my mapping software (Reefmaster, Dr Depth, OK Map and OziExplorer) it means when I send it to a log file the file ends up full of worthless data I have to clean up. If I don't then when I run it through a script to parse out all the sentences with a high DOP readings it'll lock it up. I guess it's not smart enough to know what to cull with all that junk data included and I'm not smart enough to rewrite it

I may just go back to my hacked implementation because the NMEA 0183 serial outputs only transmit the sentences you have turned on and nothing more which is the correct way and just works better. Plus I can easily add it to a WiFi network of other NMEA output sensors/finders. For some reason known only to Lowrance they chose to use TCP instead of UDP protocol like the NMEA specs and most everyone else uses. Fortunately I could likely have my old hack up and running in about an hour Remount box, remove a panel, hook up 4 wires, button everything back up and make a quick modification to my routing/multiplexing software on my Windows tablet which is set up to boot with the Nmea Router enabled and starts logging from start up to shutdown. I'd get that hour back just on the first NMEA log file I didn't have to cull data from

And I still can't use a Bluetooth keyboard on a unit that is advertised having Bluetooth, it sure would be nice to have log files, tracks and waypoints that say something meaningful instead of 0000, 0001, 0002 ........or do much or anything else with the Bluetooth. Being able to use something like this with these finder is to me a complete No Brainer