Marine project portfolio currently includes eight marine company product development partnerships (more information available on the main Portfolio page).

Active Research has enjoyed a strong partnership with EchoPilot Marine since 1995. During that time eight new product designs and existing product redesigns have been commissioned and realised.

The latest commission was to design the hardware, software and acoustic components of the new range of Forward Looking Sonar (FLS) models.

The FLS is EchoPilot's flagship product range, which now features the FLS Gold pictured above (top of the range), FLS Silver (lower specifications and price) and the FLS Bronze (smaller budget product).

Active Research has more recently worked in an advisory role to EchoPilot as it modified the FLS technology into the 'Sidescan 3D' and 'Wreck Finder' products. For further information on the FLS range, please browse the EchoPilot website.

Project Goals
Low cost
High quality LCD grahical user interface
High performance to cost ratio
Low current consumption
Miniature transducer - small hole in vessel's hull

The system processes the analogue signals from the encased transducers, and encodes the results as marine industry standard NMEA 0183 sentences. Various model combinations / specifications available.

Airmar controls the supply of commercial quantities and we supply to low volume customers and our customised design partners. Our partnership with Airmar gives us access to their excellent custom transducer design capabilities at extremely competitive rates.

For further information please view the Airmar website.

Project Goals
Compact design (45 mm x 32 mm), reduces size of depth sounder, multiple depth sounders
Fully enclosed depth sounder circuitry, best signal to noise ratio possible and no cable loss
Proven, highest performance depth algorithm in its class, rejects water borne noise
Tracks seabed depth at very high boat speeds - proven up to 48 knots.

The Triducer software project was commissioned internally to Active Research to allow full demonstration of the Airmar SMART depth transducer's capabilities.

It is a freely distributable 'freeware' program, which allows a standard PC RS232 communication port to receive the Triducer NMEA signals and display the results graphically on a computer. The current digital values are a shown on 'virtual' LCD panels and historical graphs detail all preceding values.

The software can also record (spool) the received data to a file, which may be replayed at any time. This creates a system capable of recording exactly how deep the water was, how fast the vessel was going and what the water temperature was at each sample point. Naturally, this is invaluable in monitoring the vessel's overall performance and for the insurance requirements of hire companies.

Downloaded the latest version of Triducer here.

Key Benefits
Simple to use
Small program, requires minimal PC specifications
Records all received NMEA data
Displays current and historical data

A development partnership was created in 1999 with LM Technical Services (LMTS) to customise the standard SMART depth transducer, and create a version capable of very high accuracy and resolution.

The resulting customised transducer can produce centimetric depth output with an RMS depth resolution of 2 cm. In conjunction with a GPS unit and computer, this allows incredibly accurate survey mapping of the sea floor. The depth information output has been further enhanced to allow estimation of the sea floors exact material composition.

The survey sounder is available from LM Technical Services in Lymington, Hampshire. For further details, please browse the Ohmex website.

Project Goals
Higher accuracy / resolution sounder
Performance on a par with survey systems costing over 10 times as much
Compact and low cost solution to meet small site marine survey requirements

Actisense is the brand name registered by Active Research for trademarking our own products, as it is a distictive, unique and very descriptive name.

Full information on all Actisense products is available from the Actisense website. A introduction to each is provided here for quick reference:

NMEA Data Combiner Key Benefits
Data from 4 opto-isolated NMEA 0183 data inputs is combined into 1 NMEA output
RS-232/PC output allows a PC to read the combined NMEA and special NMEA outputs
'Fit and forget' design, configuration can be fine tuned to meet individual requirements.
Full self diagnostics built in
Intelligent filter and priority system

Active Depth / Speed / Temperature Key Benefits
Depth range up to 10 knots is 0.3 - 200m using Airmar narrow beam transducer
Three frequencies available 150, 200 and 235 KHz
Very low current consumption
Very long maximum cable length of 100 metres

PC Interface Key Benefits
Opto-isolates any attached equipment (for example computer) from any damaging voltages or currents
possibly present on the vessel's wiring network
Enables user to reprogram the Active Depth / Speed / Temperature module with a new program
(for example hydrographic / fishfinder)