Echoview News

AFS 2010 Annual Meeting and Oceans Conference 2010

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:02:00 +1000

The AFS Annual Meeting 2010 and the Oceans Conference 2010 are both being held during September. The AFS 2010 Meeting is being held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from the 12th to the 16th of September and the Oceans Conference 2010 is being held in Seattle, Washington from the 20th to the 23rd of September.

Ian Higginbottom from the Echoview team will be attending both of these meetings and will be available to meet with if you would like to discuss Echoview or, more generally, your acoustic data processing needs. Ian's contact details are below.

Email: ian@echoview.com

Phone (office): +61 3 6231 5588

We always love to hear from you in regard to your requirements and future plans. Please continue to send your feedback, suggestions and ideas to Echoview Support. If you have any sales related enquiries please contact our Sales Team.

WittySparks collection of online DIDSON videos

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:47:00 +1000

Wittysparks have an impressive collection of online DIDSON videos. Imaging sonar is gaining more and more exposure. Check it out here.

Version 5 is coming!

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:58:00 +1000

The planning and designing of Echoview version 5 is underway. We are rebuilding the technological architecture of Echoview to give us a solid base for the next five years of development. We aim to bring you the most useful and advanced acoustic visualization and analysis software in the world.

The new work includes:

COM Scripting tutorial for the Echoview website

User interface enhancements - color legend pane on echograms, more options for window docking, streamlined filesets window
Multithreading - background reading of files, phased in performance improvements for operators
Terminology review in Help file and in the Echoview user interface. Streamline and enhance module and licensing information
Continued development of the COM objects

Echoview 5 is currently planned for release in late 2010.

We are interested to hear your opinions on features that would enhance or provide avenues to expand your work if they were added to Echoview.

As always we will be implementing specific requests and other useful general items. We look forward to bringing you yet another value-packed Echoview release.

We would also like to hear from you in regard to your requirements and future plans. Suggestions for specific features and outlines of your future data processing requirements are always welcome, and can benefit the whole community. Please continue to send your suggestions and ideas to support@echoview.com.

New features and other improvements to COM automation in Echoview 4.90

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:12:00 +1000

We have made a number of improvements to Echoview's COM functionality since the initial release of version 4.90, as detailed below.

Optional Parameters:

Using ExportIntegrationByRegions as an example, this method takes two parameters: string FileName and EvRegionClass, as documented in the help file. The FileName parameter must be specified, but the EvRegionClass parameter can either be used to identify regions that match a region class of interest, or you can specify 'Nothing' to export all regions, and is called an optional parameter. Specifying 'Nothing' works in VBScript but the equivalents do not work in MATLAB, Python, R and potentially some other programming languages. To deal with this difficulty we have added new methods without this optional parameter for situations when you wish to export all regions or region classes.

So in addition to ExportIntegrationByRegions, we have now added the new method ExportIntegrationByRegionsAll, which takes only FileName as a parameter. We have added similarly-designed new methods for all other commands that have optional parameters. The complete list of new methods is:

ExportIntegrationByRegionsAll (string FileName)
ExportIntegrationByCellsAll (string FileName)
ExportIntegrationByRegionsByCellsAll (string FileName)
ExportSingleTargetsByRegionsAll (string FileName)
ExportSingleTargetsByCellsAll (string FileName)
ExportSingleTargetsByRegionsByCellsAll (string FileName)
ExportFrequencyDistributionByRegionsAll (string FileName)
ExportFrequencyDistributionByCellsAll(string FileName)
ExportFrequencyDistributionByRegionsByCellsAll (string FileName)
ExportFishTracksByRegionsAll (string FileName)
ExportFishTracksByCellsAll (string FileName)

These new methods will be added to our documentation soon.

New features:

We have also added the following new features to COM:

New method ExportFrequencyDistributionBySingleRegion
New method ExportIntegrationBySingleRegionByCells
The method CreateCurtain now has an optional ping sampling factor parameter

Bug fixes:

The following COM features had problems, but have been fixed in Echoview since the initial release of version 4.90.44. We recommend updating to the latest version if you use COM scripting.

Removing data files from a fileset
Exporting 3D objects
Creating line-relative regions
Exporting multibeam variable data to MATLAB format
Exporting an integration by region by cell for a single region
Exporting data for a single region
Detecting a surface from a line with an intensity source specified
The MaximumHorizontalLink property in SchoolsDetection2D

To download the latest version of Echoview 4.90 containing the above changes, click here. And as always, if you have any questions about COM scripting or any other aspect of Echoview then please don't hesitate to contact Echoview Support!

Travel update for July

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:09:00 +1000

Recently there have been several opportunities for members of our Echoview team to attend training courses and visit our customers overseas.

Our product manager Toby Jarvis has been visiting customers throughout Europe since mid June. The purpose of Toby's trip is to touch base with existing customers and others who may have an interest or a need for Echoview. It has meant that Toby is able to get out and discuss what our customers need in regard to hydroacoustic data-processing, Echoview and general acoustic processing. Toby will be back in the office in mid August.

David Millington from the development team has just returned from the USA where he attended the National Marine Fisheries ME70 workshop. Another member of the development team, Alison Wilcox, will be travelling to Tonsberg in Norway to attend a 6 day fisheries acoustic training course. This course is being held by Simrad and MAREC and runs from the 29th of August until the 3rd of September.

New example script: Pick and export lines in all EV files in a folder

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:05:00 +1000

A new example script has been added to our Automation via Scripting page.

This script, Pick and export lines in all EV files in a folder.vbs, shows you how to pick and export lines from several variables for all EV files in a folder.

If you have any questions about the script, you are invited to join in on the thread on the fisheriesacoustics.com forum.

New example script: Changing variable properties in multiple variables in multiple EV files

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:38:00 +1000

A new example script has been added to our Automation via Scripting page.

This script, Changing variable properties in multiple variables in multiple EV files.vbs, shows you how to change settings in the Variable Properties dialog for a number of variables in a number of different EV files.

If you have any questions about the script, you are invited to join in on the thread on the fisheriesacoustics.com forum.

Happy scripting!

Have you signed up for the Hydroacoustics User Forum yet?

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:05:00 +1000

Did you know that as of 8th June there are now 106 members on the Hydroacoustics User Forum?

Have you signed up yet? Here are some of the benefits:

Network with colleagues around the world in the field of hydroacoustics
Find out about a wide range of topics, from hydroacoustic theory to specific processing techniques for your data
Contribute your knowledge and help to de-mystify the world of hydroacoustic data for the benefit of others

To date there have been 188 posts in 135 separate topics covering a wide range of items of interest to the hydroacoustics community.

Click here to find out more.

Echoview version 4.90 is now available

Wed, 05 May 2010 17:33:00 +1000

The full version of Echoview 4.90 is now available - head here to download our latest and greatest release!

Echoview 4.90 contains many new improvements across a broad range of program features. We are excited to bring it to you in the knowledge that it is almost guaranteed to improve the depth and efficiency of your acoustic data post-processing, regardless of your processing methodology.

Please read the New in Echoview 4.90 page of the help file for full details on the new functionality.

Happy processing!

Plans for Echoview version 5 and beyond

Wed, 05 May 2010 16:48:00 +1000

Since we brought you Echoview 4.00 in September 2006, we’ve been building on implemented technological changes to bring you major new features such as COM automation; region classification; improvements to single beam, multibeam and imaging sonar; improvements to lines and line editing, performance, and calibration; support for new instruments and formats, and user interface and usability changes in many areas. We aim to provide the best new features we can for a wide range of customers, and keep Echoview on a solid technological and scientific foundation.

After four years of working on Echoview 4, we are now planning Echoview Version 5! As with the release of Echoview 4, we intend to focus on the core technological architecture of Echoview to give us a solid base for the next five years of development. We want to keep bringing you the most useful and advanced acoustic visualization and analysis software in the world.

New features to appear in the next release are still under consideration, but some specific features that we are currently planning to focus on include:

•    Fundamental changes to take advantage of modern multi-core hardware. This will result in massive performance improvements, especially for virtual variables, over the next versions of Echoview.
•    Fundamental changes to Echoview’s architecture. Most of these changes are unlikely to be very visible but will result in great improvements in what we can create within Echoview.
•    A review of all technical terms in Echoview. The aim is to bring consistency to terminology and updates to match any recent changes in the acoustic community.
•    User interface changes. To ensure you get clear and accurate access to your data, and let you perform data analysis and manipulation easily and simply.

Echoview 5 is currently planned to be released in late 2010.

We are interested to hear your opinions on features, if added to Echoview, which would enhance your work or provide avenues to expand your work.

As always we will be implementing a range of specific requests and other useful items with general appeal. We look forward to bringing you yet another value-packed Echoview release.

We also seek feedback about your requirements and future plans. Suggestions for specific features and outlines of your future data processing priorities are always welcome, and can benefit the whole community. Please continue to send your suggestions and ideas to Echoview support.