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Posts: 406
Location: Stones throw away...finally!! | I curently have 2 Lowrance GPS units networked, running off of one puck in the back of my boat. I am curious if I was to purchase another puck for the front of the boat, is it difficult to hook up, or is it simply just disconnecting the cable from the back puck, and hooking up the new one. I think it would really help me when fishing very slow or when drifting as I would have two contact points and the direction arrow would be less likely to get all turned around...like when the boat is drifting straight backwords. Is this a waste of time, or does anyone that has a setuplike this have any comments. Thanks. |
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Posts: 2323
Location: Stevens Point, WI | Yes, it's that easy. On your power cord for each unit, there is two sets of black and red wires. The bigger red and black are to power the unit, the smaller set is to give power to your NMEA network(your puck). If you have your units networked, you should only have one set of the smaller wires powered. If you've got all the power leads hooked up, you don't want that. It can blow your gps antenna, only one set of the smaller wires should be powered in the network.
I've run both setups multiple times, I like the network better. I've found that there isn't a difference or enough of a difference that it effects my fishing to use both pucks. I personally like having my backup puck for a spare if my other one goes down, which does happen with gps antennas. |
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Posts: 28
| I think a lot of people overlook the "position error" when thinkiing of accuracy with a gps. next time your on the water or have the gps on, go to your satalite page and look in the upper left hand corner of the display. A lot of the time this position error is over 20' depending on the strength of your signal at the time, and if you watch it for awhile, it does move up and down quite a bit. It can be more than 20' a lot of the time. If you were running a 20' boat, those two pucks would be less than 20' apart. I think there are way to many people hung up on thinking their gps is accurate to a 3' circle around the puck, all the time. This isn't the same system the navy uses for launching tomahawk missles.
I have two gps units, front and the console, and one puck about the center of the boat, and it is on the network. Agree with above, that the second puck is a spare.
pmv |
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Posts: 406
Location: Stones throw away...finally!! | Thanks for the replies. The comments were very helpful. |
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Posts: 307
| A second puck will not give you more directional accuracy like I think, you think it will. The network will take the most accurate reading from the which ever puck has the best signal at the time. A GPS has no idea which direction the boat is pointing only which direction the puck itself is tracking. Adding a second puck does not add directional data to your GPS, it will be pretty much the same as what you have now, maybe very slightly more accurate.
I know I didn't explain this very well, if you've got questions just ask. GPS theory can get a little confusing for people. |
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Posts: 1185
Location: Wishin I Was Fishin' | I like to add the GPS accuracy to the overlay data. Only some newbs in my boat mistake it for depth until I tell them otherwise. |
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