Humminbird AutoChart
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Forum Post Guidelines: This Forum is rated “Family Friendly”. Civil discussions are encouraged and welcomed. Name calling, negative, harassing, or threatening comments will be removed and may result in suspension or IP Ban without notice. Please refer to the Terms of Service and Forum Guidelines post for more information. Thank you
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Fish-N-Fool
- Commander
- Posts: 566
- Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2010 12:25 am
- Location: Vay, ID
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Humminbird AutoChart
Just wondering how many guy use Auto chart and how useful you think it is. I just got a new Humminbird ci SI combo unit and if this will chart my uncharted lakes here it would be really cool. I think I;m going to get the reg, AutoChart vs. the AutoChart pro. as for the extra bucks I don't see the value of it.
Re: Humminbird AutoChart
I have a 598 CI HD SI and Im curious about AutoChart as well. I should probably check to see if it will work with my unit. I keep the software up to date, but its a few years old now.
Re: Humminbird AutoChart
I think it can be confusing to try and figure out if your fishfinder is compatible with Autochart.
The main issue with compatibility is whether you can view the contour maps you made while you are on the water (i.e. showing your GPS position on the chart while you move around which is definitely a huge deal). This compatibility issue has to do with whether your fishfinder will read the charts on the "autochart zerolines card" that you get with autochart. If it doesn't read the card properly, you won't see the chart. Instead you will see the unimap or whatever map is on your fishfinder. That is what I found out after buying autochart pro. Humminbird is working to upgrade software for their older units, but it really depends on which one you have. It seems that if you check "my humminbird" you can see what your latest software download is and it should say whether it is autochart compatible. For example, I am running: 688ci HD DI (Version 7.520)
Release Date: 02/16/2015. So I would think if you have a 2015 version or 7.5 or higher it probably is autochart compatible.
Here is something that I don't think is very clearly stated about autochart. Even if you have an ancient fishfinder, you can still make the maps on your home computer, YOU JUST CAN'T VIEW THEM ON THE WATER ON YOUR FISHFINDER. While that feature is at least 50-80% of the benefit of Autochart, if I could have gotten autochart for $70 I would have jumped on it right away because it would still be worth it to be able to make maps on my home computer and just look at them or print them out since most of the lakes and rivers out here are not mapped (or not very well). I made maps from a 2009 581i fishfinder. There were a bunch of tracks that I had on the finder and I just exported them to an SD card and could read them in autochart.
There does appear to be a workaround to use autochart with fishfinders without the software update:
http://forums.sideimagingsoft.com/index ... pic=7567.0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.humminbird.com/uploadedFiles ... rt_fix.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I didn't completely look at this fix, but it looks similar to what you do to make it so that you can work on your maps on your computer then transfer the updated files to the Autochart card you use in your fishfinder. So probably is a workable solution
The main issue with compatibility is whether you can view the contour maps you made while you are on the water (i.e. showing your GPS position on the chart while you move around which is definitely a huge deal). This compatibility issue has to do with whether your fishfinder will read the charts on the "autochart zerolines card" that you get with autochart. If it doesn't read the card properly, you won't see the chart. Instead you will see the unimap or whatever map is on your fishfinder. That is what I found out after buying autochart pro. Humminbird is working to upgrade software for their older units, but it really depends on which one you have. It seems that if you check "my humminbird" you can see what your latest software download is and it should say whether it is autochart compatible. For example, I am running: 688ci HD DI (Version 7.520)
Release Date: 02/16/2015. So I would think if you have a 2015 version or 7.5 or higher it probably is autochart compatible.
Here is something that I don't think is very clearly stated about autochart. Even if you have an ancient fishfinder, you can still make the maps on your home computer, YOU JUST CAN'T VIEW THEM ON THE WATER ON YOUR FISHFINDER. While that feature is at least 50-80% of the benefit of Autochart, if I could have gotten autochart for $70 I would have jumped on it right away because it would still be worth it to be able to make maps on my home computer and just look at them or print them out since most of the lakes and rivers out here are not mapped (or not very well). I made maps from a 2009 581i fishfinder. There were a bunch of tracks that I had on the finder and I just exported them to an SD card and could read them in autochart.
There does appear to be a workaround to use autochart with fishfinders without the software update:
http://forums.sideimagingsoft.com/index ... pic=7567.0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.humminbird.com/uploadedFiles ... rt_fix.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I didn't completely look at this fix, but it looks similar to what you do to make it so that you can work on your maps on your computer then transfer the updated files to the Autochart card you use in your fishfinder. So probably is a workable solution