Mounting Setup
There are two ways to specify the physical mounting of Omniscan with respect to the vehicle. If you have a single Omniscan, you can specify the transducer angle and IMU orientation within SonarView. If you have more than one Omniscan on the vehicle, you must specify the mounting details in a config.json file.
Configuring a single Omniscan within SonarView
Once you have connected to a single Omniscan with SonarView, you can find the "Mount Setup" button under the Advanced Settings section of the device controls.
Click there to open the Mounting Setup dialog. If SonarView has made a MAVLINK connection to a vehicle, the vehicle's heading sensor data will be used, and the dialog will not show the IMU mounting section.
If the Omniscan is mounted forward on the vehicle, the transducer horizontal mounting angle should be 0 degrees. Positive angles to the right, so if mounted on the starboard side it would be +90 degrees and port side would be -90 degrees. Angles are typically in the cardinal 0, +/-90, 180 directions, but any angle is valid. See the illustrations below which define the transducer directions.
If the vehicle's heading not being used you must also specify the angle of Omniscan's IMU. For the FS model the IMU is within the case, and the IMU direction is toward the end of the case where the cable comes out. For the SS version, the electronics module is independent of the transducer so the horizontal mounting angle of the electronics assembly must be specified. The IMU direction for the electronics module is defined in the image below.
These values are stored in the device, so you do not have to enter them every time. You can use the Mounting Setup dialog to check that they are correct.
Configuring Omniscan mounting setup with config.json file
If you have more than one Omniscan on the vehicle, the mounting configuration must be specified in the config.json file. This file is located in the same directory where SonarView log files are stored. If you are not sure where your log file directory is, see how to set it here. If config.json is not present, one will be written with examples. Here is an example config.json file having configurations for 2 or 3 Omniscan devices. We refer to these as "User Defined Sessions." The format of the file must conform to JSON standards. If it does not, you will get error messages.
During SonarView device discovery you will see the individual Omniscan devices as well as User Defined Sessions with "name" as given in the config.json file representing a SonarView session with multiple Omniscan Devices.
"name" may be anything you would like to call the configuration
"note" is also is just an arbitrary name you can set for each device
"product_id" must be "os450" for Omniscan 450 FS or Omniscan 450 SS
"url" should be formatted as shown. Omniscan 450 communicates with tcp, ip address must match the actual device settings, and 51200 is the required port number for Omniscan 450.
"transducer_deg" is the angle in degrees at which the transducer is mounted on the vehicle. 0 degrees is forward, +90 is starboard side and -90 is port side. Angles are typically in the cardinal 0, +/-90, 180 directions, but they don't have to be.
"imu_deg" is the angle of the IMU Direction in degrees at which the IMU is mounted on the vehicle. 0 is forward and positive angles are CW from there. This value is only required if you are not using vehicle heading. If you are using Omniscan's IMU for heading, you need to specify the IMU direction only for the first device, and that is the device whose heading will be used.
"doppler_enable" is optional, defaulting to true if not included. The "Triple Omniscans" example above shows a forward looking Omniscan with doppler enabled, and a pair of side scan devices (at +/- 90 deg) with doppler disabled. The advantage is here is that you may use doppler on certain axes without reducing the imaging ping rate on the non-doppler channels.
If doppler is enabled on some devices but not others, the first device in the list should have "doppler_enable": false. This is because the first device is the "master" and if there are non-doppler devices, one of them should be the master. Inter-device sync may have anomalies if the master is a doppler enabled device.
When setting up multiple Omniscan devices, either 0, 1, or 2 devices (and no more) may be enabled for doppler. If 2 devices are doppler enabled, this pair of devices must be oriented 90 degrees apart. Typically this would be one looking forward and one to either port or starboard although this arrangement is not requirement. These restrictions may be relaxed in a future SonarView release.
If the multiple device session name does not appear in discovery, check that the ip addresses of the device match the addresses indicated in the url lines in the config.json file. If illegal json syntax is encountered, you should get an error message. To change IP address, or update firmware, select the individual device in discovery rather than the multiple device session.
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