I like my screen so Hot that you see the bubble from minnows farting. Its so cluttered that it won't compare to anything you see online. However, it's virtually a camera underwater & all I need to see is my target & my bait so I make it work. This was a well needed video because I know thousands of people want to know the same thing. I'm running 2 12volt Lithium batteries in parallel for 2 LiveScopes. I see some of these screens so clear & wonder at times but if you need a clear screen vs cluttered but they both show you targets then you just can't fish anyway and you still won't be catching State Limits often. 🤣🤣 I'm 1 of those 158 Thumbs up. 👍
I rigged & wired my kayak myself. I have 8awg marine grade wire fromy battery box in back. The run down inside haul of my kayak, up front under my front hatch to my black box & nmea2000 backbone. I have 10" echomap ultra, lvs34 system, steady cast heading sensor. All power by a single amped outdoors 32ah 14.8v lithium battery. On full charge my battery reads 16.2v I have same voltage at all my devices. So it's "clean power" as people call it. My screen has always been crystal clear! I play with some settings but I don't change a lot. It always looks great! That battery will run everything for around 14 hours. But if I havey regular gt56 transducer off it will run lvs34 for way longer. I only keep my 3n1 transducer turned on if I'm side or down scanning. The rest of the time which is most of it I. Just using the lvs34 or both transducers are off & I'm fishing waypoints or visual cover. Idk if higher voltage makes the screen clearer? But correct size wire for length of run & all your connections do!!!! Have the least amount of connections as possible
thank you sir! You are the only one with a video that tested out this……. dedicated batteries don’t make a drastic difference as oppose to your connection/wiring job and settings that will maximize the units
As a installer I do not ever say volts make that much difference, but the difference comes into length of run time and how long the battery can retain the higher voltage. With higher voltage there is less amp draw which makes battery last longer. The 215ah is a beast so worrying about amp draw is not a issue but if someone has let’s say a 80ah then the higher voltage with less amp draw is more important. Hopefully that makes sense.
My boat has the ability to switch between 12v and 16v on water. What I’ve noticed is with the 16v I can turn down the gain to clean up the screen and then turn up color gain so images pop more. I’ve tried this many times and 16v came out better. As you know LS has to be adjusted for each situation even more power. I am an amateur no ties to Garmin.
I asked a Garmin rep about this issue.....he said there is an internal voltage regulator in the black box that supplies a steady 12 volts regardless of the input voltage which has an acceptable range from around 10 to 16 volts.
For whatever reason the MYTH that dedicated batteries, voltage, or massively oversized wire has some kind of impact on clarity of a LiveScope ( or any electronics for that matter) has taken hold in some people’s brains. As long as the wiring in your boat can deliver the required voltage demanded by the unit, it will work exactly as designed. In many boats this MAY REQUIRE a wiring upgrade (10awg or in extreme cases of LONG RUNS even 8awg). However it has no impact by on image quality at all. Ask any electrical engineer or even Garmin themselves. It’s like saying putting a super heavy duty extension cord on your TV makes the picture better. As long as your wiring can deliver the necessary voltage and current the unit will work- period.
Thanks for clearing this up. I'll be honest. I've been running these Garmin units for 3 yrs now. Id have to say that you should turn that gain down to 62 or so.i have to constantly play with my gain. Even in the same lake. Different depths changes the clarity on the graph. These garmins have a sweet spot. They are defintly finniky. But I've found a lower gain setting gives me better clarity.
Yours honestly looks pretty good. you can adjust some settings and clear it up some. What you are seeing is particles in the water That water is dirty. Also you are pretty shallow so the returns are more intense. If you were in deeper clear water it' would be pretty clean. I dont see anything wrong with it tbh.
Interesting test. I fish mainly out of a Hobie PA12 kayak and not a boat. I used forward facing sonar while using this platform and experienced a big difference between a 12v and a 16v lithium batteries with screen clarity. Interesting note is that i can not geound the black box to anything, because the kayak is plastic. I upgraded to an Amped Outdoors 32aH 16v battery and noticed a rather large difference in clarity with live sonar and also side/down/traditional imaging. IDK Just my experience.
This is like when rods went from power based to technique based. You need a rod for jigs, Texas rigs, etc etc when they are all just medium heavy fast. Now you need an “electronics battery”. It’s all marketing.
I know you said there wasn’t much difference when you switched to the stand alone but it looked cleaner to me. So I rewound and looked again and it’s for sure clearer. Not sure if it’s worth the extra effort but it did look clearer to me
I didn't see a main fuse or circuit breaker protecting the 8 AWG wire going to the bus bars. If you don't have one I'd highly recommend installing one as close to the battery as possible. In your case the ABYC E-11 electrical safety standard for boats, requires overcurrent protection to be located within 7" of wire length of the battery.
Using a single LVS34 doesn’t use much power but how much draw would 2 of the new LVS62 pull that some of the pros are using. Crazy that guys are running 3-4-5 FFS on a single boat. That battery will be my next one for sure though. Keeps it clean and light in the rear. Great video
there is a ground on the black box it’s self you connect it to a ground spot on the boat not a battery according to garmin. It’s supposed to get rid of interference haven’t tried it myself but it’s an option.
What fuse connections are you using? Alot of the issues come at the fuse. All my issues were solved once I got rid of the fuse blocks & went to the "seaclear" power harness & fuses...I have All on 1 31agm battery..
First off, I don't know where you are from, but in Southern states the flowers and trees are blooming and the pollen in the water can really cloud the screen. TVG on low will help a lot especially near the transducer and possible "rays" coming off. Never put noice reject on high as it will cause lag in bait and fish movement. Try playing with Color gain and Color limit to clear some fuzz. 69-70 is the "standard" gain that most use. Of course all water is different. Dereks's water looked pretty stained which also causes fuzz. As far as voltage to the unit, it has been tested and proven many times that higher voltage does not affect image quality. The Black box will regulate the input voltage down.
I run the 8616xvs units on my bass boat. One at the front and one at the console. Both have there own dedicated wiring and disconnect switch from each unit to the battery. I run 20v dewalt 10ah batteries using the sea lite connection to the black box for live scope with a disconnect switch to turn it off when needed. Im no live scoping pro but this is one way Garmin themselves told me to try for the best results with live scope. I don’t seem to show as much interference. But I don’t think my gain is at 72 either. It’s probably more around 60-65 if i had to guess. I’ll have to look the next time i go out to use it.
I've got mine isolated to a 23ah dakota lithium battery, wired with 10 gauge wire. The battery some days won't quite hold for 8 hrs, running a 10" monitor and the black box. Contemplating rewiring with 8 or 6 gauge, cheaper than a bigger battery. My question is, did it clear up any at all with designated wiring? God bless and have a great day.
Replacing 10awg wire with 8 or 6awg wire isn't going to give you very much more runtime out of a 23Ah battery. Depending on how long the wire is you'll gain maybe 5 to 10 minutes runtime.
@@tommckelvey3609 I appreciate you responding back. I've got a 94 ranger 487, so I'm looking at about 20 ft of wire. That was sorta the answer that I was expecting. I appreciate ya. God bless and have a great day.
Curious…did you screen shot each test point, and compare side by side on your PC? I’m extremely curious to see the comparisons side by side or even and overlay. Thoughts?
I didn’t screen shot. All the tests were about 5 minutes apart. It’s difficult to tell on a video. But from real time observation there wasn’t enough difference
So Derek, I"m a deer hunter, what is your opinion of me using a thermal drone from about 500 elevation where the deer cannot hear it, put it up over my farm and map the location of every deer its location, the direction its head is pointed and wind direction of the location where the deer is feeding or bedding. Then me using my phone and lap top to map locations and just sneak up on them in their bed and kill my limit of super huge bucks every season.
Only way to clean it up is turn gain down noise reject on high u do lose a little detail but it cleans it up pretty good try noise reject on high next time and turn gain down to 65%
@@ZZ430T56 Sonar Noise Rejection Settings Interference Adjusts the sensitivity to reduce the effects of interference from nearby sources of noise. The lowest interference setting that achieves the desired improvement should be used to remove interference from the screen. Correcting installation issues that cause noise is the best way to eliminate interference. Color Limit Hides part of the color palette to help eliminate fields of weak clutter. By setting the color limit to the color of the undesired returns, you can eliminate the display of undesired returns on the screen. Smoothing Removes noise that is not part of a normal sonar return, and adjusts the appearance of returns, such as the bottom. When smoothing is set to high, more of the low-level noise remains than when using the interference control, but the noise is more subdued because of averaging. Smoothing can remove speckle from the bottom. Smoothing and interference work well together to eliminate low-level noise. You can adjust the interference and smoothing settings incrementally to remove undesirable noise from the display. Surface Noise Hides surface noise to help reduce clutter. Wider beam widths (lower frequencies) can show more targets, but can generate more surface noise. TVG Adjusts the time varying gain, which can reduce noise. This control is best used for situations when you want to control and suppress clutter or noise near the water surface. It also allows for the display of targets near the surface that are otherwise hidden or masked by surface noise.
Cool test.I would be curious on getting rid of that switch/or putting maybe a better switch/circuit breaker deal in there. Also maybe getting rid of the bus bar and going straight to the box. Just seams like extra stuff for the power to run through and get interference. Another test would maybe see how it looks in water 10-12’ as 6’ and less seems to have a ton of clutter most of the time. Are you worried about your SHO with a lithium? Heard they weren’t recommended for them. Curious cause I repowered with a SHO and am in the market for a new starting battery.
@@derekhudnall3227call Nathan at sea clear he can explain how the grounds & power on a block like that can cause the interference...once I got rid of mine everything cleared up...
You hear so much nonsense from sonar “experts”. If you have a good wiring harness running up front, you will not see issues one battery, you do not need dedicated batteries. And garmin themselves have said that higher voltage batteries don’t improve performance. Most issues are sonar interference and badly adjusted settings.
So next level is put the ducer in an aquarium with hydrophone for measuring the sound levels. The only way you get a clearer image is from a stronger "tick" so you get a stronger return. The frequencies themselves will not change and the CPU could get 12v/16v but the software will render nothing diff, it would have to be diff data going in. I am on lead acid so the unit starts about 12.6v but even at 11.2v I let it get to once it looked no diff to me. I bet you would be the only one to do it. I just got my LVS34 and box and it has been eye opening.
I believe you need a 16 v. Not sure but believe it will get you the best pic. It’s updated myself. Get you 8612 too. Much better. Keep in mind your black box needs to be on it too.
@@ZZ430T56 If not needed, why is there a connection point? Why does the manual say install one ? Maybe the engineers are a bit smarter than you. Just sayin.
Gain down to 65 and noise reject on med or high. I went with 2 , 12 volt 50amp hr batterys and a small charger all mounted up where your black box is. 24volt to everything and short cables up there. Clear as a bell 🔔 my problems are solved.
Update 4-13-24 Time test today in my first tournament, started voltage 26.8volts, after 8.5 hours of running both units and black box 26.5volts. Recharge time was 12 minutes with a 5amp hr. charger per battery. More than satisfied!
Ur normal gain is set good Run both color gains on 85% & TVG on high noise reject on high & ghost reject on high & c what it looks like mine is map crystal clear and can see fish & my bait out to 80 plus feet
I like my screen so Hot that you see the bubble from minnows farting. Its so cluttered that it won't compare to anything you see online. However, it's virtually a camera underwater & all I need to see is my target & my bait so I make it work. This was a well needed video because I know thousands of people want to know the same thing. I'm running 2 12volt Lithium batteries in parallel for 2 LiveScopes. I see some of these screens so clear & wonder at times but if you need a clear screen vs cluttered but they both show you targets then you just can't fish anyway and you still won't be catching State Limits often. 🤣🤣 I'm 1 of those 158 Thumbs up. 👍
I rigged & wired my kayak myself. I have 8awg marine grade wire fromy battery box in back. The run down inside haul of my kayak, up front under my front hatch to my black box & nmea2000 backbone. I have 10" echomap ultra, lvs34 system, steady cast heading sensor. All power by a single amped outdoors 32ah 14.8v lithium battery. On full charge my battery reads 16.2v I have same voltage at all my devices. So it's "clean power" as people call it. My screen has always been crystal clear! I play with some settings but I don't change a lot. It always looks great! That battery will run everything for around 14 hours. But if I havey regular gt56 transducer off it will run lvs34 for way longer. I only keep my 3n1 transducer turned on if I'm side or down scanning. The rest of the time which is most of it I. Just using the lvs34 or both transducers are off & I'm fishing waypoints or visual cover. Idk if higher voltage makes the screen clearer? But correct size wire for length of run & all your connections do!!!! Have the least amount of connections as possible
thank you sir! You are the only one with a video that tested out this……. dedicated batteries don’t make a drastic difference as oppose to your connection/wiring job and settings that will maximize the units
Thank you for taking the time and doing a real 'apples with apples' test.
As a installer I do not ever say volts make that much difference, but the difference comes into length of run time and how long the battery can retain the higher voltage. With higher voltage there is less amp draw which makes battery last longer. The 215ah is a beast so worrying about amp draw is not a issue but if someone has let’s say a 80ah then the higher voltage with less amp draw is more important. Hopefully that makes sense.
My boat has the ability to switch between 12v and 16v on water. What I’ve noticed is with the 16v I can turn down the gain to clean up the screen and then turn up color gain so images pop more. I’ve tried this many times and 16v came out better. As you know LS has to be adjusted for each situation even more power. I am an amateur no ties to Garmin.
How do you get 16 volts?
Powerhouse
I asked a Garmin rep about this issue.....he said there is an internal voltage regulator in the black box that supplies a steady 12 volts regardless of the input voltage which has an acceptable range from around 10 to 16 volts.
For whatever reason the MYTH that dedicated batteries, voltage, or massively oversized wire has some kind of impact on clarity of a LiveScope ( or any electronics for that matter) has taken hold in some people’s brains.
As long as the wiring in your boat can deliver the required voltage demanded by the unit, it will work exactly as designed. In many boats this MAY REQUIRE a wiring upgrade (10awg or in extreme cases of LONG RUNS even 8awg). However it has no impact by on image quality at all.
Ask any electrical engineer or even Garmin themselves.
It’s like saying putting a super heavy duty extension cord on your TV makes the picture better.
As long as your wiring can deliver the necessary voltage and current the unit will work- period.
Electrical engineer here. This is correct.
Thanks for clearing this up. I'll be honest. I've been running these Garmin units for 3 yrs now. Id have to say that you should turn that gain down to 62 or so.i have to constantly play with my gain. Even in the same lake. Different depths changes the clarity on the graph. These garmins have a sweet spot. They are defintly finniky. But I've found a lower gain setting gives me better clarity.
Depends what update you have. 69-70 is the standard gain for most.
Good job dude. That proves it in my mind.
Yours honestly looks pretty good. you can adjust some settings and clear it up some. What you are seeing is particles in the water That water is dirty. Also you are pretty shallow so the returns are more intense. If you were in deeper clear water it' would be pretty clean. I dont see anything wrong with it tbh.
Interesting test. I fish mainly out of a Hobie PA12 kayak and not a boat. I used forward facing sonar while using this platform and experienced a big difference between a 12v and a 16v lithium batteries with screen clarity. Interesting note is that i can not geound the black box to anything, because the kayak is plastic. I upgraded to an Amped Outdoors 32aH 16v battery and noticed a rather large difference in clarity with live sonar and also side/down/traditional imaging. IDK Just my experience.
This is like when rods went from power based to technique based. You need a rod for jigs, Texas rigs, etc etc when they are all just medium heavy fast. Now you need an “electronics battery”. It’s all marketing.
great video
I know you said there wasn’t much difference when you switched to the stand alone but it looked cleaner to me. So I rewound and looked again and it’s for sure clearer. Not sure if it’s worth the extra effort but it did look clearer to me
Hard to tell, but you may be right
I didn't see a main fuse or circuit breaker protecting the 8 AWG wire going to the bus bars. If you don't have one I'd highly recommend installing one as close to the battery as possible. In your case the ABYC E-11 electrical safety standard for boats, requires overcurrent protection to be located within 7" of wire length of the battery.
Using a single LVS34 doesn’t use much power but how much draw would 2 of the new LVS62 pull that some of the pros are using. Crazy that guys are running 3-4-5 FFS on a single boat. That battery will be my next one for sure though. Keeps it clean and light in the rear. Great video
Thank you for spending the time testing this theory… 😉👍
there is a ground on the black box it’s self you connect it to a ground spot on the boat not a battery according to garmin. It’s supposed to get rid of interference haven’t tried it myself but it’s an option.
that's only for saltwater boats, since saltwater is a good conductor of electricity
I may try that, thanks
Try not hooking it up at all and see what happens. Lots of guys use this tech while fishing from a kayak with good screens.
What fuse connections are you using? Alot of the issues come at the fuse. All my issues were solved once I got rid of the fuse blocks & went to the "seaclear" power harness & fuses...I have All on 1 31agm battery..
No fuses, I ran clean power to the box and my unit.
First off, I don't know where you are from, but in Southern states the flowers and trees are blooming and the pollen in the water can really cloud the screen. TVG on low will help a lot especially near the transducer and possible "rays" coming off. Never put noice reject on high as it will cause lag in bait and fish movement. Try playing with Color gain and Color limit to clear some fuzz. 69-70 is the "standard" gain that most use. Of course all water is different. Dereks's water looked pretty stained which also causes fuzz. As far as voltage to the unit, it has been tested and proven many times that higher voltage does not affect image quality. The Black box will regulate the input voltage down.
I run the 8616xvs units on my bass boat. One at the front and one at the console. Both have there own dedicated wiring and disconnect switch from each unit to the battery. I run 20v dewalt 10ah batteries using the sea lite connection to the black box for live scope with a disconnect switch to turn it off when needed. Im no live scoping pro but this is one way Garmin themselves told me to try for the best results with live scope. I don’t seem to show as much interference. But I don’t think my gain is at 72 either. It’s probably more around 60-65 if i had to guess. I’ll have to look the next time i go out to use it.
Good info! Thank you! The lower the gain the clearer, yes. But you lose distance as far as I can tell. It’s a chore for sure
I've got mine isolated to a 23ah dakota lithium battery, wired with 10 gauge wire. The battery some days won't quite hold for 8 hrs, running a 10" monitor and the black box. Contemplating rewiring with 8 or 6 gauge, cheaper than a bigger battery. My question is, did it clear up any at all with designated wiring? God bless and have a great day.
Replacing 10awg wire with 8 or 6awg wire isn't going to give you very much more runtime out of a 23Ah battery. Depending on how long the wire is you'll gain maybe 5 to 10 minutes runtime.
@@tommckelvey3609 I appreciate you responding back. I've got a 94 ranger 487, so I'm looking at about 20 ft of wire. That was sorta the answer that I was expecting. I appreciate ya. God bless and have a great day.
Curious…did you screen shot each test point, and compare side by side on your PC? I’m extremely curious to see the comparisons side by side or even and overlay. Thoughts?
I didn’t screen shot. All the tests were about 5 minutes apart. It’s difficult to tell on a video. But from real time observation there wasn’t enough difference
With the switch between the unit and the box even when switched off can’t the box still pull power from the battery?
No, the switch I installed only cuts power to the box itself.
One wasn’t sure since it was in front of the boat past the buss bar
So Derek, I"m a deer hunter, what is your opinion of me using a thermal drone from about 500 elevation where the deer cannot hear it, put it up over my farm and map the location of every deer its location, the direction its head is pointed and wind direction of the location where the deer is feeding or bedding. Then me using my phone and lap top to map locations and just sneak up on them in their bed and kill my limit of super huge bucks every season.
Only way to clean it up is turn gain down noise reject on high u do lose a little detail but it cleans it up pretty good try noise reject on high next time and turn gain down to 65%
My noise reject on high & tvg off or low...
Never want noise reject on high as you will get a delay in the moving images.
@@ZZ430T56 Sonar Noise Rejection Settings
Interference
Adjusts the sensitivity to reduce the effects of interference from nearby sources of noise.
The lowest interference setting that achieves the desired improvement should be used to remove interference from the screen. Correcting installation issues that cause noise is the best way to eliminate interference.
Color Limit
Hides part of the color palette to help eliminate fields of weak clutter.
By setting the color limit to the color of the undesired returns, you can eliminate the display of undesired returns on the screen.
Smoothing
Removes noise that is not part of a normal sonar return, and adjusts the appearance of returns, such as the bottom.
When smoothing is set to high, more of the low-level noise remains than when using the interference control, but the noise is more subdued because of averaging. Smoothing can remove speckle from the bottom. Smoothing and interference work well together to eliminate low-level noise. You can adjust the interference and smoothing settings incrementally to remove undesirable noise from the display.
Surface Noise
Hides surface noise to help reduce clutter. Wider beam widths (lower frequencies) can show more targets, but can generate more surface noise.
TVG
Adjusts the time varying gain, which can reduce noise.
This control is best used for situations when you want to control and suppress clutter or noise near the water surface. It also allows for the display of targets near the surface that are otherwise hidden or masked by surface noise.
@@ZZ430T56 I disagree, the clearer picture is what's important to me...Only use tvg in shallow water..
Cool test.I would be curious on getting rid of that switch/or putting maybe a better switch/circuit breaker deal in there. Also maybe getting rid of the bus bar and going straight to the box. Just seams like extra stuff for the power to run through and get interference.
Another test would maybe see how it looks in water 10-12’ as 6’ and less seems to have a ton of clutter most of the time.
Are you worried about your SHO with a lithium? Heard they weren’t recommended for them. Curious cause I repowered with a SHO and am in the market for a new starting battery.
All valid points, but none of them create interference. Maybe drop in voltage, but a 16v made no difference. Not disagreeing with you though
@@derekhudnall3227call Nathan at sea clear he can explain how the grounds & power on a block like that can cause the interference...once I got rid of mine everything cleared up...
You hear so much nonsense from sonar “experts”. If you have a good wiring harness running up front, you will not see issues one battery, you do not need dedicated batteries. And garmin themselves have said that higher voltage batteries don’t improve performance. Most issues are sonar interference and badly adjusted settings.
Does there need to be a switch between the buss bar and the battery?
Yes, to kill power to the box when it’s not in use. Not hurting anything
So you have 2 switches on your front and one before the battery?
Yes! and fuse near the battery
The 13v battery by itself was the clearest
So next level is put the ducer in an aquarium with hydrophone for measuring the sound levels. The only way you get a clearer image is from a stronger "tick" so you get a stronger return. The frequencies themselves will not change and the CPU could get 12v/16v but the software will render nothing diff, it would have to be diff data going in. I am on lead acid so the unit starts about 12.6v but even at 11.2v I let it get to once it looked no diff to me.
I bet you would be the only one to do it. I just got my LVS34 and box and it has been eye opening.
Ever thought about trying a 24V?
Run the box on 24v. I run them on 2 12v micro batteries in Series.
It needs to be done and open deep water 6 ft is too shallow to tell there's so much more sediment in shallow water
I believe you need a 16 v. Not sure but believe it will get you the best pic. It’s updated myself. Get you 8612 too. Much better. Keep in mind your black box needs to be on it too.
it wont change the product sorry
I’m not a scoper, but I have a live scope, therefore I am a scoper!
Good video
Where is your black box water ground?
You don't need it. Could try it if you have trolling motor interference which he does not have.
@@ZZ430T56 If not needed, why is there a connection point? Why does the manual say install one ? Maybe the engineers are a bit smarter than you. Just sayin.
@@itselectric3906 I never heard of or saw anybody use it. Same with the ferrite rings they give you.
@@ZZ430T56 Well for the record you have now lol. I use both. 😀
@@itselectric3906 It's all good man. Peace
Gain down to 65 and noise reject on med or high. I went with 2 , 12 volt 50amp hr batterys and a small charger all mounted up where your black box is. 24volt to everything and short cables up there. Clear as a bell 🔔 my problems are solved.
Update 4-13-24
Time test today in my first tournament, started voltage 26.8volts, after 8.5 hours of running both units and black box 26.5volts. Recharge time was 12 minutes with a 5amp hr. charger per battery. More than satisfied!
Ur normal gain is set good Run both color gains on 85% & TVG on high noise reject on high & ghost reject on high & c what it looks like mine is map crystal clear and can see fish & my bait out to 80 plus feet
with higher voltage you need to turn down the gain!
Nah. I never had any issues running at 18v & even at 24V. all have been around 64-68 depending on the lake. Try again sir.
If the transducer is not clean it won't matter the power applied.
The 16v is definitely brighter and clearer
gain is to high
How about you apply 0 voltage to your livescope and fish like a real fisherman