Chesapeake Times

At the end of October, it’s a confusing time of the year for me. I don’t know if I should be watching baseball, basketball, football, or hockey, as they are going on at the same time. Maybe I will watch 3 innings, one quarter, one half and one period, hoping to get the good parts of each game. Then will catch the news that night to make sure I didn’t miss anything. But in the end, if my team isn’t playing, I probably won’t even watch the games.

Trying to make the analogy here for SonarWiz. Give it a few minutes …

In the latest SonarWiz release – version 7.10, there were over 60 updates and features, as we touched on many of the programs with new features and options, to make processing and collection better and easier (that’s the goal). The biggest update in this release has been the revised and updated geodesy section. It took time and required the team to do a lot of testing to make sure everything was correct. The release added a few new sonar drivers for data collection, updated the project explorer, sub bottom reflectors updates, magnetometers anomaly detection updates, display of coverage map and statistics in the main map window and more.

This edition of the Chesapeake Times will highlight a few of these updates and changes. But I don’t expect everyone to use all of them. It would be great, but I know a lot of folks concentrate on a single sonar system, and some of these other features don’t mean much to them. A bit like the baseball game without your home team, or the football game going on at the same time as the basketball game. We pick one but know we can read about the others afterwards.

We still have a few months to the end of the year, and the team is keeping busy. We are planning two more releases this year - one will be presented at the Winter training. The training event is December 5- 8 in Wilmington, NC. The first day we will do our SonarWiz101 primer, as it was a huge success last year, followed by a few presentations from our partners – including Edgetech and SBG. During the event, we

will have a mix of presentations, hands on practical work, boat demos and time to meet with our partners in the industry. Something for everyone and certainly will keep folks busy for the week. The full schedule and more information are on the website.

I hope everyone had a successful and productive survey season.

Harold, General Manager

Software Development at CTI ................................... Christopher Favreau, CTO

Edgetech eBOSS - RealTime & Post-Processing...... Jonathan Fleetwood, Engineer

SonarWiz 7.10 Introduces a New Geodesy Engine... David Finlayson, Chief Scientist

Building an Artificial Reef: Tools in Data Processing. Harold Orlinsky, General Manager

Updating Coverage Mapping Options ....................... Patrick Zynda, Support Engineer

As a programmer I have an instinct to rewrite sections of code that I see. The old code might be at first glance hard to understand. It might be ugly. It might just be part of a section of code that we are trying to debug. As attractive as rewriting the code to our liking might be, we have to remember that code doesn’t wear out. It is not like a shoe that gets dirty and the sole wears through. Old code has many hours of development and testing time invested in it. It has been tested by users and has worked for a while. Sometimes for a long time. Time has been put into it to make it sturdy and run correctly. Rewriting it might get rid of the old bug and make it nice and pretty, but it costs time to write it and like a mythical hydra it could introduce new bugs....

In an upcoming release, Chesapeake will include support for a new server, interfacing with the EdgeTech eBOSS system. eBOSS (BOSS is "Buried Object Scanning Sonar") is a 3D SAS sub-bottom profiler providing sub-surface volumetric imagery. SAS (Synthetic Aperture Sonar) is a technique in which the high resolution normally available from a large receiver array can be mimiced using a smaller array. This technique requires precise navigation and substantial processing for good alignment, so eBOSS systems will normally be outfitted with an inertial motion unit on very stable platforms, with powerful topside boxes for processing.... Read full article

In SonarWiz 7.10.00, we are introducing a new geodetic engine. The new engine is based on the popular open-source PROJ library and gives SonarWiz support for modern dynamic datums, datum ensembles and derived projected coordinate reference systems (CRS) we have not been able to support in previous versions of SonarWiz.

Working with our clients, I have come across many uses for the software. Recently, it was used for a project offshore Florida to build an artificial fish haven. The reef was being built with discarded concrete badge pilings, dumped in an area approximately 7 miles offshore Florida east coast.

But getting to final results took about a half dozen tools in SonarWiz, some recently updated in the latest release of the software.... Read full article

We hope you will visit us in Wilmington, NC for our Annual Training Event, which will take place at Cape Fear Community College this December 5-8.

The class will cover both theory and hands on use for all the modules in SonarWiz. As in past years, we will offer an Introduction to SonarWiz on Monday morning, the day before the official start, as well as presentations that day from Edgetech and SBG. During the week, we'll also be welcoming back industry partners to exhibit and provide on-board boat demonstrations. We hope to see you there!

Privacy Notice: Your email address (and other personal information, if applicable) is being used to fulfill your request to receive newsletters from CTI. Use is subject to CTI’s Website Privacy Policy. CTI complies with the EU's GDPR laws. Continued reading of the newsletter is implicit acceptance of our Policy, and you may unsubscribe at any time using the link below.