Chesapeake Times, Vol 12 | Jan 2023 Happy New Year! It is 2023 and here at CTI we are planning some interesting changes to SonarWiz to get more done with less mouse clicks. First, let’s go over what SonarWiz currently offers. We added automatic processing of side scan sonar data in SonarWiz V7.4. The auto processing in this version added the ability to perform bottom tracking, EGN gain processing, and individual GeoTIFF export when a side scan sonar file was imported into SonarWiz. All of these actions were performed without user intervention. If you are not familiar with auto processing …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 12 | Oct 2023 Although the SEGY file format is getting closer to celebrating its 50th birthday, originally developed in the mid-70s, our industry still considers these the standard for storing sub-bottom profiler data. We have come a long way from its original specifications for magnetic tapes and SonarWiz has required multiple updates over the years to customize the exports coming out of the program.  With the recent introduction of Topographic corrections and tidal corrections in the 7.09 release, we also needed to give a face lift to the CSF to SEGY export dialog as previous versions …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 12 | Jan 2023 Next month, I am presenting a talk entitled “Automated ways to distinguish areas of viable targets against a uniform seabed”. It is still a work in progress, but I wanted to share a few of the techniques and results. Note that all the tools used for this project are in SonarWiz, and we’re just using them in a slightly different way. The idea of the project came from an AUV mission but the approach here can be applied to any survey operation. From a typical sidescan sonar, the data creates a mosaic of …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 12 | Jan 2023 In SonarWiz 7.10.02, we are releasing a large update to the SonarWiz Magnetometer module. The goal of the update is to better integrate the magnetometer module with the rest of the program and to add missing utility functions that were previously only available for sonar files. The largest change to the user interface is the addition of Magnetometer Drawing Modes. Drawing modes in SonarWiz are found on the View Menu and they give the user control over how a dataset is displayed in the Map Window. Previously, the user had limited control over …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 12 | Jan 2023 In the upcoming release of version 7.10.2, we’ve added some additional capabilities for realtime monitoring. The sensor graph window, used to show a graph with a brief history of a sensor value, has been expanded to be able to graph more than one value of interest at a time: To add or remove graphs, click on the gear icon near the top left of the dockable sensor graph pane. In addition, note the expanded list of values that can be graphed; most of the same numeric values that are available in the system …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 11 | Oct 2022 Chesapeake Technology offers variety of products to collect and record real-time data from sonar/mapping devices. “Servers,” as we call them, act as a bridge between a running instance of SonarWiz and the hardware or software interface of the sonar device. See the SonarWiz download page (https://chesapeaketech.com/download-sonarwiz/) for a list of currently-supported devices. 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 …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 11 | Oct 2022 In older versions of SonarWiz, the Coverage Report was used to create an image file of the percentages of coverage for a sidescan survey. The tool also could include data being removed from the far range or nadir data and would result in all the coverage statistics needed. Unfortunately, as surveys are getting larger the code and method in which this report is using got slower and slower to the point where we had a large outreach of customer complaints. This old report was pulled out of the program as it did more …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 11 | Oct 2022 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 thelatest release of the software. Split – Auto (to take out turns) and with a mouse, for breaking a line at a specific point. In this project, …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 11 | Oct 2022 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. Why did we decide to switch geodetic libraries? The geodetic library is responsible for accurately converting a geographic position on the Earth (latitude, longitude and altitude) into, and out of, the Cartesian coordinate system (X,Y,Z) used internally by SonarWiz. In other words, it …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 11 | Oct 2022 Software development has been on my mind lately. SonarWiz V7.10.00 is a big release and has been under development since June 2022. In this version of SonarWiz we made a significant change by updating our geodesy engine. This update took a significant amount of the development time. During development we had to replace the current code while trying to not rewrite significant parts of SonarWiz and to keep SonarWiz’s backwards compatibility. While rewriting code can be good we have to approach it with a bit of thought. As a programmer I have an …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 10 | July 2022 “Nearly headless? How can you be nearly headless?” Although I do not believe Hermione Granger ever had a need to use SonarWiz, we here at CTI have been asking the same question. As our ever-evolving industry (like most others) require increasingly more automation and headless solutions, we have begun to implement more and more automatic options for the SonarWiz workflow but similarly to Sir Nicholas, they are still nearly headless. The problem we needed to solve was how to take the user interaction out of the following steps in the workflow: Recording Data …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 10 | July 2022 Recently, a client reported that their sidescan data did not properly overlap when projecting the sonar imagery using either the sensor or course made good (CMG) setting—the two heading options available in SonarWiz. In the end, it turned out that the sidescan compass had not been adjusted for magnetic declination. Once we applied the appropriate correction in SonarWiz, the data snapped into alignment and the client was happy. I realized while working though this ticket that some people do not understand how the heading projection options in SonarWiz work. I was also surprised …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 10 | July 2022 For many years now, the geodesy system in SonarWiz and related utilities has been based on an open source library called CS-Map. Associated with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (osgeo.org), CS-Map provides functionality that allows for coordinate transformations between combinations of geodetic and grid positions. SonarWiz depends on this functionality to import data recorded with latitude/longitude positioning, among other things. A number of upgrades and alternatives have been explored/tried in the past, and rejected (or in one case, rolled back) for one reason or another. Meanwhile, we’ve had increasing requests for support for …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 10 | July 2022 Improvements in SonarWiz sometimes occur mostly under the hood.  These changes alter the way SonarWiz works without changing the way SonarWiz presents itself to the user.  This article details some important changes to how SonarWiz works internally regarding real time navigation data. Previously, SonarWiz would record the navigation data in the real time data files, CSF and XTF or SEGY.   When a user would adjust the position of the sonar using layback, the modified position was saved in the files as well.  The original position was not saved thereby making it difficult …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 10 | July 2022 In the next release of SonarWiz, you’ll see a few changes to the Project Explorer. The first, is the addition to a new folder, specifically for LiDAR data files. In the past, these were listed under bathymetry, and the new folder will provide the user a better way to distinguish these two data types. Last year, an option was added to create two files when running a multibeam and Lidar sensor simultaneously. This change continues that work for keeping these files separated, allowing the user to focus on just one sensor as needed. …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 9 | April 2022 In the latest release, SonarWiz is now more able to import and process the Motion Tolerant sidescan packet from Edgetech sidescan sonars.  The data packets, stored in subsystem 70 and 71, are collected by the Edgetech 6205s and 4205 Sidescan sonars. Until this update, SonarWiz relied on the data file having either the standard CH1-2 records (subsystem 20 and 21) or having the CH1-2 having already been replaced (using an option in EdgeTech Discover software) by the Motion Tolerant variant. Now, with this update, the sonar operator does not have to decide during …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 9 | April 2022 We’re happy to announce that Terradepth and Chesapeake Technologies have entered into an agreement to collaborate on a solution for Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) in mosaiced imagery data. This integrated workflow will connect Chesapeake’s SonarWiz software and Terradepth’s Absolute Ocean (AO) platform, making a seamless and straightforward approach from collection to processing and full analysis.  Once a mosaic is provided, the output will generate an area of targets identified. In this image below, the green blocks are targets found by Absolute Ocean’s automated machine learning algorithms. Absolute Ocean is a cloud based platform …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 9 | April 2022 I described our support for Tides in SBP (Sub-Bottom Profiler) data in a previous article (CTI Times #6).  In this new article, I will elaborate on how SonarWiz uses this and the other vertical offset information to correct the sonar image. The Topographic Correction in SonarWiz for SBP (Sub-Bottom Profiler) data straightens out the along track path of the sonar so that it is flat.   The resulting image shows the seafloor as it is in the real world.  In the illustration of an uncorrected image below, the bottom should be a continuous …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 9 | April 2022 In recent and upcoming releases of SonarWiz, there are a couple of digitizer improvements of note. In 7.9.2, a new feature was added to synchronize scrolling positions between multiple open waterfall windows. Presently, the control to turn this feature on and off is in the Advanced preferences page: Upcoming releases will include a toggle on the digitizers themselves: With this option enabled, and two or more digitizers (SSS/bathymetry or SBP) showing, scrolling in one digitizer will cause the others to scroll to the same position if possible. This enables the user to keep …

Chesapeake Times, Vol 9 | April 2022 What is Automated Processing? Automated processing is processing without human intervention. The purpose is to quickly and efficiently process large amounts of data with minimal human interaction. For sonar data processing, automation promises to remove or reduce the need for humans to perform routine and repetitive tasks. Automation is also an important component of semi- or fully-autonomous on-board data collection systems that, by design, do not have human operators. In SonarWiz, we have addressed each of these two automation roles in recent releases of the program. First, sidescan and bathymetry each have the …