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Lowrance Off Road GPS Tips, Tricks & Tech

Announcements, GPS Lab

Massive Lowrance Satellite GPS Maps – The ball is back in my court, Finally.

6,289 Comments

Lowrance and I have a habbit of playing Ping-Pong of sorts.  They do a system upgrade, I find a way to maximize the capability, in which case they do a system upgrade, and I find a way to maximize the capability. Behind the scenes this has happened many times in my journey to bring various devices to the off road industry. I do realize that from the outside, it doesn’t seem like i’ve gotten much done but behind the scnes, I’ll make your head spin.

For many years the Lowrance systems have had support for a maximum SD card card size of 32GB. and before that there was once a 2GB limit. 10 years ago the 32GB limit was great, but times have changed. It’s put me in a situation where if I were to go through the grueling process of making a large map beyond that limit, It woldn’t be supported. However, There was a recent software update to HDS Carbon, Live, and Pro as well as Elite FS that now seems to be (exact details to be verified) support SD Cards of atleast 256GB.  Being the techy nerd that I am and what I know about this type of technology, the support implemented for 256GB should grow with technology for a long time to come. Latest sd card sizes becoming available right now are up to 1TB! My sd card supplier has a 1TB sample card on the way. I level up and make larger gps maps, one of the servers that I use for processing map data is getting a significant hard drive upgrade which are being onboarded as I write this. The first goal will be to cram imagery of the entire state of AZ on one card. With a few clever computer tricks, math and magic, I should be able to get this done.

However, there is one more big question. The trail data on top of the Imagery.
I need feedback from you. I’ve gotten feedback about how awsome my high detail gps maps are, however, they are very time consuming and a ton of work… very frustrating at times. It would be unreasonable to expect that same type of attention to detail for every road / trail in the state or country.
My question is, is that ok? Have I been going overboard on my other offerings? Clearly I can’t run every road in the state myself but I can do some basic edits and correction to official data. Some guidance would be much appreciated. Ultiamtely I need to produce something that is worth my time but also is something that makes my customers happy.

Please drop of feedback in the comments below.

Thank you
-Steven Lutz

 

 

GPS Lab

Side-by-Side Infrared Belt Temp Sensor for Lowrance Off Road GPS

If you drive your side-by-side hard, and are concerned about the belt breaking due to excessive heat, then you may want to check this out.
This is a new product that I’ve been working on for some time now and want to get some feedback. please post comments below the video the YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ20XCJKrDk
In short, This product uses an infrared sensor to measure the temperature of the CVT drive belt, and sends the temperature to the Lowrance GPS to be displayed as a data overlay. There aren’t any modifications required to the Lowrance itself, just enable the proper overlay. The infrared temp sensor hooks up via a single cable into the NMEA 2000 network for quick and simple install.

 

GPS Lab

The Off Road GPS Lab!

Since the beginning of Rugged Routes, there have various projects and setups going together behind the scenes which include methods that are not documented by Navico or Lowrance. The vast majority of their documentation is geared towards the guys and gals that play on the water rather than on land, like us. So thats where the GPS Lab comes in. Being that we’re most interested in using Lowrance GPS’s off road, we’ll be posting some in depth how-to articles on various Lowrance off road GPS tech projects & setups including but not limited to interfacing a Lowrance with a ham radio for APRS operation as well as hooking up various other sensors and accessories for off road vehicles. So stay tuned, subscribe to the GPS Labs RSS Feed or even just follow us on Facebook.