Humminbird 997 ice fishing

I'm going to do this like a politican on Sunday morning news programs. I captured these through the ice with my Humminbird 997 today. Guys couldn't find the submerged fish house.

http://www.accuemap.com/Ice_fishing_...nbird_997.html

WarrenMN

Wow what a shot, did U have to do much cut & paste to get that pict-one turn or 1/2 ??;)

No, thats the way I recorded it. I'm trying to find a way to turn that rectangular image into a circle, the hard part. I may go out this weekend to do some more with the 997 and new video's. I want to see how well I can find things on the bottom from this summer. The ice hasn't instilled any great trust in me again this year.

On the main page has a link to screen captures of that fish house, the boat and other stuff I found this summer if you want to compare.

WarrenMN

U mean u just stuck in? & turn on, thought u have to turn it in circles to get pict

Sorry if I misunderstood you. Yeah, thats what the five gallon pail and PVC were for in the bottom pic. I put the bucket over the ice hole and the PVC with the transducer on the end through. The PCV and transducer rest on the board to keep it level. Then I just smooth as I can rotate that handle.
WarrenMN

Did you attatch the transducer to the pvc below the water and use the other part (shown) as a crank handle to turn the xducer? Kinda like a boring bit arrangement.

No sorry's necessary U do great work .how many times did U turn to get pict. I would Think?(thats work) if u go around more then once u start to override pict? unless there is no wiggle in downPVC. Reason I ask is while we lost all ice in Illinois we are in for coldspell 17-22 hi temps starting middle of next week, they say winter may actually come & stay awhile. We have only had 2 or 4 days of real ice then melts before freezing the next week for 3 days. Anywho I do not ice fish but many friends do, so I may try to duplicate your hard work & go play on ice with them.But ice must be very solid for this old feeble guy. I have a old handheld Garmin GPS 76 so I may be able to mark general areas. Any good rule of thumb on sidepicts what is width of that center area/dark blue under boat at say 10 feet and at 20 feet., Cause if shooting thru hole sidefinder will not see directly below and within say 10 feet of hole right???

It pretty much works like it was on the boat except the motion has gone from forward to rotational. I used a four foot, or bit more, piece of PVC under the crank. With the height of the bucket, I wanted to make sure the transducer was well under the ice for up to 24 inches of thickness.
When I realized at the second hole that the handle was 90° out of whack with the handle I quickly adjusted it and wa la, like aiming a rifle. One of the guys that had looked earlier for the shack walked over the distance and direction I told him and bored a hole that fell directly on top. Maybe tomorrow I'll run back out and set the side distance to half or less to get some close ups. The water is way clearer now so I may take the camera and laptop to record some video's too.
The full plan is if I can find a way to slice the screen capture up line by line then put it back together like a fan folded open with the center line the pivot point of all the lines, I should be able to make it extremely close to what it actually is, even be able to make a map out of it.
I'm hoping there won't be any reason for it but the main idea behind it for me was search and rescue or recovery. If it works the way I think it should, which it may not, a person could use some thing like this to scan an area to locate objects of interest and be able to tell where on the ice to drill a hole so they can lower a camera, maybe like I did with the telescoping pole to get inside the fish house for the videos.
The screen capture was one full rotation but to really pin point the direction I swiveled it back and forth a couple times and guessed how far by the distance it was from the one side with the side out set at 100 ft. It looked a quarter of the way so I told him to go 25 to 30. After he drilled the hole, his camera landed right on.
Cane Pole, thats why I asked about the stepper motor your playing with. Some thing like that should give a nice smooth scan. I was thinking a trolling motor steering drive would be interesting too. Its easy to tell when you start and stop by the screen. I'm going to just crop that part off to start the geo reference.
WarrenMN

I see what your are doing.

A trolling motor would work, but the start/stop point would be somewhat a problem.There is a lot of slop in the steering of all of the TMs.

I would build my own circuit using a basic stamp module and a continuous rotation model servo. The model servos typically have 50 oz/in of torque which is more than sufficient to rotate the transducer.They are smooth and also pretty accurate (via programming).

here is where I get some of the stuff I use. I use the basic stamp.
http://parallax.com

Can you build electronics? I can write a program for you. I could set the unit up so you could use your laptop (via serial port) to program start/stop points and speed of rotation by using data field entries.(fill in the blanks).
I got a couple of projects to complete before I could start this. I don't mind helping. I don't charge either...haha

Think I'll pass on a mechanical system. This lets me steer it to snoop an object. Thanks for the offer. One of the reasons I was thinking the trolling motors is if you had a search and rescue where you couldn't get into and troll by, say in a corner near a lock and dam, you could use this to sweep into it.
Maybe some one else will pick up on it.
I have my ham license but I don't do projects any more. Been too long ago since I played with any thing like that.

WarrenMN