Multi beam echo sounder (MBES) capabilities are only supported in Hydromagic version 2025 and newer.
An additional license is required to record and process MBES data.

Recording multi beam data

After loading a multi beam echo sounder plugin and entering horizontal and vertical offsets for the transducer you can start recording. When a multi beam license is present and a multi beam plugin has been loaded, the software will automatically record all incoming data as multi beam raw data files in the "Bathy" folder under the project root folder.

Starting a recording

To start recording incoming data to a raw data file, simply click the record button in the toolbar as shown below. Before starting a recording, make sure that Hydromagic also receives position information and that the depth information is coming in. The swath display can be used to see whether the echo sounder is returning beam information. Please see the chapter Start Recording for more details.

Click the record button to start raw data recording.

When recording has been started successfully the current raw data file name will be displayed in the status bar as shown below. The file name should start with "BAT", when it is prefixed by "RAW" it means that single beam data is being recorded.

The current raw data file is displayed in the status bar.

Display Options

When data is being recorded, it is possible to display the recorded multi beam data directly as an overlay over the background map. You can also choose to only draw the track, covered area or GNSS fix positions.

When recording, multi beam data can be displayed in real-time.
This example shows beam data and GNSS track.

To alter the way this data is displayed, right click the "Bathy" folder and select the "Display Settings..." from the popup menu which appears. The "Multibeam Display Options" window appears which had a couple of check boxes which can be used to enable or disable display options.

Multi beam raw data display options.