[TG] [TG11] Axiom Pro 9 Livemapping Issues

[Sharp and Ready]

Hi There,

I'm a New Zealand based fisherman and have owned my Axiom Pro 9 for approximately 5 months, after updating my OS software up in Jan/Feb I have now inherited a few software glitches/bugs when trying to use the Live Mapping feature over my Navionics maps.

The feature originally worked like a dream out of the box without needing to refresh any screens or changing my zoom level. It previously would redraw my charts in real time over my maps on the chart viewer.

It has become so unusable that I no longer enjoy using my Axiom chart system at all. I'm pretty gutted as this was one of the reasons I chose the product.

I have been in touch with the NZ supplier but they are also at a loss as to what may be happening.

Can someone please help?

Tai

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hi Tai,

Are you able to give me a little more detail about the problem with the Navionics SonarCharts Live on your display? Personally I don't recall hearing of anyone else seeing a drop in performance, reliability or functionality in SCL after a software update.

We certainly saw in the previous Lighthouse 2 displays that when you had a large amount of SCL data on a card that the redraw time of the SCL contour data would progressively slow down as the display had more and more and more to redraw on each chart movement or range change. What this would look like is that the background chart data would load almost instantly, but then the SCL contours would draw on top in square 'tiles' one after another over a period of some seconds. On charter boats with huge amounts of SCL data, this redraw could take a long time. Does this sound like what you're seeing? LH3 should be much better than LH2 for this.

Would you be able to send some photos or video showing the problems you have?

Thanks,
Tom

[[email protected]]

Having the very same experience. The problem for us is, as far as I know we don't have the option to update to LightHouse 3. We are running A65 and ES 98 MFDs, networked. The ES can update, but the A can't (?). So we're stuck. Running v 19.03 currently. It's really become quite a problem. Almost unusable, as the OP mentioned. What is the solution?

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Randy,

There's a practical limit (in processing power and memory) to the amount of SonarChart Live data that the display can and still give a fast update rate. The way the displays handle having very large amounts of SCL data is draw the original, key Navionics chart data (important for navigation) first and then add the supplemental SCL overlay in tiled squares later, as processing and memory requirements allow. This is generally only a problem in systems that do have very large amounts of SCL personal bathymetry data. There isn't really any way round it being slow to redraw that large amount of data, that's not a Raymarine issue as such but a normal characteristic of computer graphics processing (it takes more effort to redraw a complex scene than a simple one), but what you can do is reduce the amount of data to redraw.

The recommended way to reduce the amount of data to redraw and speed up the display is to upload your sonar logs to Navionics on a regular basis, when you do an online chart update. Navionics will then include your logged data into future chart updates (which both you and other boaters can take advantage of) in an optimised format which will still give high resolution and detail, but which will be fast for the display to redraw. You can then remove your personal SCL data (make very sure to not remove any Navionics chart files!) from the card. This has the additional advantage that it backs up your sonar logs so that they won't be lost in the instance of a chart card problem down the line, whereas at present if you have a problem with the card then you lose everything.

You are correct that a-Series displays can't be updated to LH3: this is because LH2 R19 is already pushing the limits of that hardware (a-Series has less memory and a less-powerful processor than eS-series) and we couldn't get the more advanced LH3 to run properly on a-Series hardware without cutting out key features.

Regards,
Tom

[[email protected]]

Hi Tom-
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, and confirming my suspicions on this feature. I guess my issues with this situation boil down to this: We have a great feature that turns out to be too taxing on the computing resources of the device, but VERY FEW options for controlling it.

There are numerous things pushing piles of additional data onto our A65

1) The default setting for SonarChart enabled MFDs, as I understand it is "on," so all devices are logging sonar data and storing it. There are numerous posts from people who are surprised to find weird pink and red lines following their tracks ;-)

2) There is no setting on the MFD to restrict the collection of this data, without shutting it off altogether. A setting that would limit sonar logging to depths less than 150 or 100 or 50 feet would be spectacular. Of course, if this feature were developed, it would probably only be available in LH3, so it wouldn't even help us. Grrrrrrr.

3) In our networking setup, the A65 is at the helm, where it's imperative to have the sonar log data viewable. For some reason this data can only be seen on the MFD with the card installed. If we could have the card installed in the ES98 at the nav station, and share that data through the network, my guess is that the greater processing capability of the ES98 would help a lot to make the whole system more usable, no? Why can't it work this way? As it is now, it seems we're asking the most of the unit with the least capability.

4) It has been suggested before to "turn off sonar logging when it's not necessary." For full time cruisers out in areas where existing charting is minimal, it's hard to define an area where this data isn't helpful, if not absolutely necessary. Even if we could, remembering to turn it off, and then back on again is unlikely in real world conditions.

Regarding your suggestion of uploading sonar logs regularly and relying more heavily on SonarChart view from Navionics, on the surface this seems like a good option, but our experience so far is that quite often we see no difference in the downloads from Navionics, even after months, or years, of uploading the same depth data for a given area. My suspicion is that our logs are often disqualified, because our depth data is tide corrected, and the tide data on file with Navionics we have found is often inaccurate, which in their QC would make our depth data seem inaccurate.

Having said that, we are indeed using SonarChart more now, especially as we can no longer rely on our MFD to display any sonar data when we really need it. So frustrating.

Can you provide specific instructions for safely removing sonar log files from the chart card? I'd like to start there, I guess (which kills me), and try to move forward with a clean slate and better data management. But in my opinion, Raymarine is NOT doing their part to help with this data management issue.

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Randy,

There are two different features that we're talking about here. Both can cause the display to slow down in its operation if there's enough data (as enough data to handle at once will slow down any computer system), but the data required to cause a significant slowdown is pretty large in each case.

Sonar Logging is enabled by default. Sonar Logs are not visible but are used to refine the contour data in Navionics charts when uploaded to Navionics. I believe that sonar logs are automatically cleaned from the card once uploaded. If sonar logs are being uploaded to Navionics but not incorporated into future chart updates then that's something that would need to be taken up with Navionics, but in our experience uploading logs from this office's staff members' own personal boating (anonymous, no special service) is that they tend to be available in chart updates pretty quickly.
There's no benefit at all to logging sonar data and not uploading, so I would advise people to keep logging enabled but upload regularly and they should see no problems. Or disable logging if they don't want to upload.

SonarCharts Live is the live personal bathymetry/contour generation that the OP was asking about. SCL does not slow down the operation of other parts of the display/chart, but can take a while to load tile-by-tile when there is a very large amount of data.

If you feel that uploading to Navionics and then downloading an improved chart doesn't work for you, the data in question is stored in the folder \Navionic\UserData on your chart card. The Sonar Logs are a series of .SDF files in that location, and the SonarChart Live data is in the lsdCache subdirectory I believe. I wouldn't recommend deleting from the Navionics card in the first instance, but renaming files or folders (e.g. from lsdCache to lsdCache.bak should be a safe thing to do.

Regards,
Tom

[[email protected]]

Hi Tom-
I see what you are getting at, now, with a bit more clarity. Essentially the plan would be to leave Sonar LOGGING on constantly, to gain that data, upload it regularly, and then either limit the areas in which we actively use SonarChart Live to display, or make more use of the SonarChart itself, from Navionics (best option).

This all sounds good (although unfortunate) on paper, but in practice is tricky for sailors like us. We often go weeks or months before having an internet connection reliable enough to upload/download files with Navionics server. During these times we are often in and out of remote areas with minimal charting. So... the SCL feature was one of the main reasons we purchased the Raymarine MFDs and Navionics in the first place, and now we're discovering that we can only make limited use of them, in particular in areas where we need these features the most? I'm sure you can see how we would find this frustrating.

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hi Randy,

Yes, I understand. All I can say is that I suspect that any manufacturer's display of a similar year of design and price would have a similar level of performance, since there are no magic shortcuts to reading the SCL data off the card, holding it in system memory and then drawing it on the screen, these all unavoidably take time. Obviously high-end systems (our gS-series in the LH2 generation) and newer designs - the Axiom range - have more powerful hardware that can cope better with these demands, but I suspect that any manufacturer's comparable product would perform no better at drawing a large amount of SCL data than your a-Series.

Regards,
Tom

[[email protected]]

Hi Tom-
Thanks for the info, and I guess that makes sense. It also makes it clear that the dealer I worked with in 2015 had no idea what kind of load would be put on these units with the SCL feature, as he assured us time and again that these units would more than cover our needs, given our plans. SCL I think had just come out, so he probably had no idea.

For the purpose of future planning, is there a new unit (Axiom or other) that is touch screen only and would fit in the same footprint at the a65 unit we currently have? It uses that MAX amount of space available at the helm.

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

No, I'm sorry to say that there isn't - the Axiom 7 is the smallest in the current range, and it's a bit wider (210mm as opposed to 168mm) although not quite so high. The templates for the two displays are attached. We don't currently do any chartplotter display smaller than this.

Tom