Using Arduino for lake mapping

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

Objective
Chart a local lake using arduino.
Match GPS coordinated with depth readings to make 3d map of lake bottom.

What it needs to do
Record GPS coordinates
Record depth readings

What I know
There is a shield that can hook up an arduino board to use a cellular phone for GPS location and data logging--cant remember the name right now--
there are various handheld depth finders for small boat/ kayak/ canoe fisherman

Problems
Exporting GPS coordinates with time stamp
exporting depth readings
merging the 2 sets of data into a usable map.

2

you can buy GPS shields. Can you get an output from a depth finder...? if so, what is it's format?

You'd need a lot more memory - get an SD shield - store readings - every (TBA) time interval as you paddle about - GPS coordinates, depth.. and process later.

Down load the data - capturing with eg realTerm on a PC . Mathcad I know, but many other programs could do the mapping for you

regards

Allan

3

You will find this article on Sea Rendering interesting. It describes a very small boat with Arduino, that maps lake bottoms autonomously.

4

There is a very similar project here, by longjohn119. He also links to his blog, which lists all the PC software he used to process the NMEA data.

If you also need the parsed field values in your Arduino, you might be interested in my NeoGPS library.

Cheers,
/dev