SonarTRX Introduction

The main focus of SonarTRX software is the generation of geo-referenced raster images from sidescan sonar recordings. SonarTRX can also be used to extract depth (echo soundings) from these recordings, for bathymetric processing with GIS or 3'rd party terrain processing utilities. SonarTRX can be part of a very affordable tool-kit for exploring & mapping the seabed from your kayak, jet ski or small boat.

Google Earth View of SonarTRX images

SonarTRX example use:

SonarTRX supports recordings from the most affordable sidescan sonars available, including fishfinder-style products such as Humminbird sonars with Side Imaging, Lowrance StructureScan and Garmin SideVu. SonarTRX also supports generic XTF files from sidescan towfish, StarFish XTF and vendor-specific recordings from SportScan & YellowFin towfish (by Imagenex) and DeepEye 340 towfish (by DeepView.)

SonarTRX built-in viewer / editor

The screen-capture of the SonarTRX viewer (above) and the mosaic image below is from an area with coral reef patches and sand channels with sand waves. The above picture shows a very "noisy" environment above the reef as compared to the sand channels. It was recorded from a kayak using hardware & software costing < ~ $2,500 (U.S). (Note: Even lower cost sonars are available, making it possible to do sidescan surveys for a litte more than $1,000, including hardware & software.) The slant range corrected, geo-referenced image below is generated by SonarTRX from a recording made from a kayak, using a Humminbird 998c-SI. It shows sand channels with wave ripples between patches of coral reef:

Google Earth View of coral reef and sand waves

Geo-referenced images created by SonarTRX can be viewed and annotated with Google Earth Pro using KML, or they can be imported to other mapping and GIS programs for further processing. The use of KML files to reference the images, allows for low cost sharing of sidescan image-tiles by simply distributing the kml files and uploading the associated images to any web-server. SonarTRX images can be imported to ESRI products, Manifold GIS, Global Mapper, QGIS and other GIS systems.

In summary, with SonarTRX, you can:
With the optional PlusPack features (A/B), you can:

For a detailed list of program features, please see the Feature Matrix document (PDF)

Please see the support page for the latest release notes. There is also a short, (silent) video available from the tutorials page and example image-output on the samples page. The sample kml files can be explored with Google Earth Pro, the free desktop application.

To confirm SonarTRX's compatibility with your particular sonar recordings please contact support@sonartrx.com and include a sample recording from your sonar unit. If the sample recording is larger than 4 MB, please use a file-sharing or file-transfer service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, WeTransfer etc.

SonarTRX can be purchased online, via our online store, or contact sales@sonartrx.com with complete contact information, for purchase via PO/Invoice.