Hi Justo,

The sonar viewer is only available when a the track has been imported from a compatible sonar format, and the original sonar log file is still present on your PC.

Reasons the sonar button might be disabled include:

• Track log was imported from CSV or GPX file, which do not contain sonar information (I'm guessing this is not the problem in your case).
• Lowrance slg or sl2 files were imported with the option Use slg2txt.exe selected in the GPS equipment profile. If this option is used, ReefMaster imports a text file generated by the slg2txt application that contains just depth and position information, but no sonar data. If this option is checked, uncheck it and re-import the affected sonar logs.
• The sonar log file is an slg file recorded on the "low quality" setting. Files recorded using this setting are compressed and ReefMaster is unable to import the sonar data from them. Do not use this setting - it is not required with the capacity SD cards available today.
• The original sonar file is not in the same location it was imported from. ReefMaster does not copy sonar data during the import process. Instead, it creates an index on the original file and loads data from that file as required. If the file has moved, you should get a warning and an option to set the new file location.

If none of those apply, the file may be corrupt. Please let me know, although if that is the case there is unlikely to be much we can do about it.

Matt

Ok thanks Matt,


I think I just imported the logs from sd card (which has since been erased ). I also checked the slg2.txt box I think. I will have a look tonight.


On another note if I copy the database file for a project and give it to a mate, will it work in his program?

I was sharing log data last night but obviously couldn't because I deleted the logs after importing them. I thought I might be able to give him the database folder?

Regards
Justin
By the way that log which I thought was corrupt has worked now since I have setup the sounder profile for slg2.txt section (hope this makes sense)

I would suggest that you always have a backup of the original sonarlogs. (I use a small external HD for this.) You have no idea what sort of cool things you can do with those sonarlogs in the not so distant future.

Team Colibri wrote:
Exactly, always keep the sonarlogs to be able to take advantage of future features/programs.

/Martin

fatjusto wrote:
Yes. Not sonar view etc though, but map gen for sure.

/Martin

As per Team Colibri, I also use a small HDD to keep a copy of my sonar logs. I file them in date order (e.g. 20140314 for today) so that it is easy to find files from separate locations. This date format is easy to sort on my PC.

I keep all my tracks, any underwater video I may have taken, waypoints and sonar log files . You need to treat this as valuable information. After all you have gone to the trouble of collecting it...

Meggs

I'm also running into issues trying to get possible sonar data into Reefmaster. I've imported the DAT tracks from my card off the Humminbird but it isn't accessing the SON files associated with these tracks. The SON files exist in separate folders. Is there something else I need to do to get the sonar files in the project?

So long as the associated sonar files are in a sub-folder with the same name as the DAT file, then RM should find them. What is happening when you import the file? If the tracks import OK, then RM is finding the files. Are they not showing in the sonar viewer?

The tracks are showing up fine in the project. It's just not showing the sonar viewer function and I just upgraded to the most recent version of RM.

The likeliest explanation is that the tracks were not in the original location when the upgrade took place. RM needs access to the original sonar log files to replay sonar. Have they moved? If so, you might need to reimport to be able to view the sonar. Track depths are all contained within the workspace DB, so the sonar files are not required for mapping once they have been processed.

It seems to acknowledge that the sonar files are there as it is taking a while to process the tracks. Unfortunately after going through the process it still doesn't seem to be there. Any ideas? There are three SON files in the folder of decent size.

So you import the tracks freshly in the new version of RM, the sonar button is disabled? That really shouldn't happen for Humminbird logs, so something doesn't sound right. Track-points are showing OK in the track view? (i.e. the track itself imported successfully).

Matt