Product Description
For years, we’ve heard people say, “Why are multibeam sonars weren’t so expensive…”. Well, complain no more.
Introducing the Sonoptix ECHO multibeam imaging sonar, which brings an impressive set of capabilities at a revolutionary price point that’s less than half the price of competing products! It’s a pleasure to use and enhances your ROV piloting experience.
The Sonoptix ECHO comes with a pre-installed WetLink Penetrator and JST GH connectors, making it plug and play with the BlueROV2 and easy to integrate with other vehicles.
Benefits of a Multibeam Sonar
Multibeam imaging sonars, sometimes referred to as a forward-looking sonars, are a tool for navigation, inspection, and object detection. Providing enhanced situational awareness in poor visibility conditions to allow navigation with easy, detect lost objects, and inspect underwater infrastructure. They’re one of the most common and useful ROV accessories.
A multibeam imaging sonar provides a top-down picture of the surrounding environment and seafloor, much like the Ping360 Scanning Imaging Sonar. However, they are based on completely different sonar technologies and there are some important differences. Rather than scanning one angle at a time, a multibeam sonar is able to update the entire image at once, many times per second, giving you a much more responsive experience. While a scanning sonar can image a full 360 circle, the multibeam imaging sonar is limited to a smaller angle (120 degrees for the Sonoptix ECHO).
You’ll find a multibeam imaging sonar on nearly every large inspection and work-class vehicles and on many small ROVs, especially those used for search and recovery and in poor water visibility conditions.
More Details
The ECHO features a dual frequency design. At long ranges, it operates at 400 kHz, providing up to 200 meter range with a 90 degree sector angle. At shorter ranges of 30 meters and below, it operates at 700 kHz to provide fine resolution and detail with a wider 120 degree sector angle.
With 64 receive elements in the transducer, it has 256 beams with angular resolution of 1.5 degrees.
The high frame-rate, low latency interface provides a responsive experience that makes it easy to use when piloting the ROV.
The ECHO is a compact, rugged unit built from titanium and plastic with a 350 meter depth rating. The available mounting bracket and BlueROV2 Roof Rack holds it at a 5 degree angle to provide an optimal view both forward and of the seafloor.
It operates on 9-28V and consumes up to 25W of power when running. It communicates over an Ethernet interface and requires a Ethernet Switch when used on the BlueROV2.
The Sonoptix ECHO hosts its own web-based user interface, meaning that you don’t have to download any software and it just works on any device or computer. The live data view is provided as an RTSP video stream that can be streamed into other applications and intuitive user controls allow the adjustment of range, gain, contrast, and colour palette.
Learn More
Please review the BlueROV2 integration guide to learn more about how the sonar can be connected to your ROV and to learn about basic operation. Also check out the Blue Robotics guide to types of sonar to learn about all of the available options.
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