Lowrance GPS/fishfinder???????

Saltwater Striper Fishing
21

Sea hunt, I’m not sure the old LMS transducers will work properly on your hds. You probably need to hook up the transducers that came with your Hds.

Bob, I’ve got the same unit you do and mine has the fishing hot spots card in it. It works real good on all the lakes, but no info on the coast. You can probably find one on eBay for pretty cheap.

'06 Mckee Craft
184 Marathon
DF140 Suzuki

22

I never thought that the old transducer might not work with my new unit. Figured if it fit it was right, but I will be contacting Lowrance today to see if they are compatible.

23
quote:
Originally posted by Happy Bob

I’ve got an LMS337c that I inherited from dernflatlander(thank you, Jim)and I am wondering what map I should get. Any suggestions? I’m still trying to figure the GPS out.
Thanks, Bob

Bob Van Gundy
Marine Designs,Inc.
Custom Aluminum Fabrication
803-727-4069

I use Navionics Hot Maps for the lake and like it. The only thing to watch out for if you go with this chip is that there are different chips for different regions of the country. South Carolina lakes are on the chip for the “East”, not “South”.

'07 198 DLX Carolina Skiff
FS90 Suzuki

24
quote:
Originally posted by SeaHunt0012

I never thought that the old transducer might not work with my new unit. Figured if it fit it was right, but I will be contacting Lowrance today to see if they are compatible.

If it has blue connectors it will work. The small xducer is either dual frequency at 83/200KHz or just 200KHz single. The large xducer is 50/200KHz. If it has grey connectors it is 192KHz and will not work properly. Make sure that the bottom of the xducer is clean and paint free. It should be parallel with the bottom of the boat in an area of little turbulence. The lower half of the xducer should be submerged when on plane.
25

Well my transducer seems to be mounted in the correct position, and it is the blue end so it fits right in. I contacted Lowrance today and they told me it will work fine. I will be going out on friday to do a test run to see if it works any better than it has before.

26

SeaHunt, have you hooked your HDS-5 up the a VHF radio? I have a new HDS-5 Gen 2 and I can’t get my radio to display the GPS data.

27

I sure haven’t. But I definitely want to, along with a fuel monitoring gauge. How did you go about wiring it? Are you local?

28

I’ve wired it everyway the book on the Lorance tells me to and I’ve gotten nothing on the radio so far.The radio is an new Icom 504 and I’ve called them and Lorance a couple of times and still can’t get it to work. I even tried hooking up the old Garmin to it and can’t get it to work with the Garmin either. My next move is to sent the radio in to ICOM and have them check it out! I’ll let you know what happens!

29

Lowrance customer service is very helpful. If they can’t fix it maybe its the radio? Please let me know what ends up happening! Good luck!

30
quote:
Originally posted by striperskiff
quote:
Originally posted by Happy Bob

I’ve got an LMS337c that I inherited from dernflatlander(thank you, Jim)and I am wondering what map I should get. Any suggestions? I’m still trying to figure the GPS out.
Thanks, Bob

Bob Van Gundy
Marine Designs,Inc.
Custom Aluminum Fabrication
803-727-4069

I use Navionics Hot Maps for the lake and like it. The only thing to watch out for if you go with this chip is that there are different chips for different regions of the country. South Carolina lakes are on the chip for the “East”, not “South”.

'07 198 DLX Carolina Skiff
FS90 Suzuki

Is there an adapter that will convert a micro SD(MSD) card to work in a unit that uses a regular SD card? I can’t seem to find anyhting but the MSD cards.

Bob Van Gundy
Marine Designs,Inc.
Custom Aluminum Fabrication
803-727-4069

31

radio shack has them

32

BestBuy or really any electronics store should have them. Maybe even a cell phone store, since I believe that is where they were originally used.

33

Thanks guys.

Bob Van Gundy
Marine Designs,Inc.
Custom Aluminum Fabrication
803-727-4069

34

SeaHunt! I got the GPS to radio data exchange, figured out. On your Lorance HDS 5 this is what you do.

  1. On the Menue button go to the Settings Screen.
  2. Scroll down to Network push enter.
  3. on Network screen scroll down to (in my case) NMEA0183 push enter.
  4. Scroll down to Output and highlight the little button. If it is black it’s off if it is Blue it’s on. You want it to be Blue. I guess the defaultsetting is Offso you have to turn it on for the setup you have. The book isn’t clear that you have to do this. When I did all this the GPS data came up onthe radio. I’m a happy man!
35

EASY - You have to make sure your unit is told to send the “sentence” and the radio is told to read it. Wiring is simple, the transmit of one is the receive of the other, just match polarity. Don’t get hung up on wire colors and just find transmit + and connect it to receive + and vice versa.
Then make sure they are set to talk to each other by digging through their menus. It is more intimidating than it is difficult.

BG

36

btogag! I got it now. I’ve been playing with this thing for a couple of weeks and I’ve got it figured out now! I was looking to see if the Lorance and the radio were set on the same baud rate when low and behold I found out the Lorance output was turned off! I guess OFF is the factory default setting? Once I turned it ON, I was good to go! I sure went through a lot of menues and sub-menues before I found it though.

37

Awesome. Glad to hear that you figured it out. I will be doing the same in the next few weeks. The question I have is the boat came wired for a LMS-330 I believe, anyways I just disconnected that one and connected my new HDS-5 head unit. Everything works, but my question is are the wires the same? Are there wires missing? I called Lowrance and they told me those extra small wires were for things like auto pilot and things of that nature, is that true?

38

SeaHunt; You do have some extra wires! You only need to hook up two wires though, to make the Lorance transfer data to the radio. It’s a real pain in the ass though. You have to hook the Lorance NMEA data Out (+) to the NMEA data IN (+) on the radio! Then you have to hook the Lorance NMEA data out (-) to the NMEA data IN (-) on the radio. Also you have a woven wire shield coming from the Lorance. The woven shield is a common ground(-) that you can ground to the radio ground wire. All this will do is ground the 2 systems together. I don’t have any other systems to hook up at this time so I will put Butt connectors on the end of the unused wires and just dead end them. Make sure you tape or seal the Butt Connectors shut. I seal them with liquid electrical tape. What kind (Make) radio are you going to hook up to the Lorance??? I have my radio and Lorance wires hooked up to a flat trailor wire connector plug. I did this so I can take them out of the boat easily! I know that if I hooked them up any other way I would risk pulling a wire loose sooner or later. The trailor plug is water proof also. I leave the boat on the trailor and electronics seem to walk off if you don’t take them home with you!

PS; Now that I’ve got mine hooked up and working, that makes me an official CF.com Electrical hookup GURU! Any questions :question::question::question::smiley::smiley::smiley: