NEW LakeMaster MN 2007 chip is out!

[schweady]

This has been mentioned in a few other posts. I thought it might be helpful to pull the discussion of the new chip into one spot. I'll start by quoting some text from the lakemap web site:

"The LakeMaster® ProMap Minnesota card contains 79 High-Definiton maps, plus 665 Lowrance® enhanced lake maps with detailed shoreline and depth contours, and many of these offer other features such as weed symbols, navaids, hazards, and more. Finally, each card is programmed with incredibly accurate background data for 25,000 lakes and ponds; 10,000 of these are named, detailed roads, addresses, and thousands of points-of-interest. These preprogrammed cards turn your Lowrance® or Eagle® handheld GPS or chartplotting unit into a complete mapping system."

Bottom line - 774 total lakes vs. 268 on the previous chip. 79 High-Definition vs. 59 on the previous chip.

I know some have ordered and received them. Was it directly from lakemap? Any upgrade policy? Has anyone found them at retailers already? Any new chip owners care to comment?

[schweady]

Two more satisfied fm-alolics.

Enjoy!

[WildBill33]

Schweady, if you find the time send me the spreadsheet, thanks for helping out your fellow fm-ers.

whitetailhunter13(at)msn(dot)com

[huntingislife]

[Note from Admin] Please read forum policy before posting again. Thank you.

[schweady]

WildBill:

You've got mail.

Enjoy!

[rmrakt]

Schweady....I would be very appreciative if you could forward your efforts my way as well! Thanks for taking the time to do this for everyone!

-Rick rmrakt<at>hotmail<dot><com>

[Ryan Berger]

so what would be a good gps to get to view this chip on,,I bought the Garmin 76CS a couple of years ago because everyone on here was raving about it,, its great just doesn't take these chips,, I would like something comperable to the gps I have.

[Paul Waldowski]

Lowrance H2O

[schweady]

rmrakt:

You've got mail.

Enjoy!

[schweady]

Well, I finally popped for the new 2007 LakeMaster chip. It arrived today and I haven't had a lot of time to fiddle with it, but have made a few observations...

* It has all the roads and point of interest information that the 'old' chip had, and more (somebody had posted a comment earlier leading us to believe that LakeMaster had removed the road mapping to make room on the chip for the new lake contours... nope.)

* MN/Canada border lakes -- the ones that have contours mapped -- include data on both sides of the line (no, not LOW, that's mapped on its own separate chip)

* Some of the low-def lakes (the 'DNR maps') have been updated from their look on the 'old' chip, structure changed/moved a bit, even though they remain low-def and weren't made HotMaps (some of those changes seem to align their structure more closely to that found on the Navionics chip)

* You can still zoom in to 0.02 mi. (some early information indicated it would only be 0.03 mi, with all of the new data... nope) (In comparison, you can only zoom in to 0.2 mi on the Navionics, it's so jam-packed with data on that little card)

* No scientific testing yet, but the refresh rate didn't seem to suffer much over that of the 'old' chip (timed test results to follow at some point, I suppose)

* Disappointingly, Wildlife Management Areas continue to be marked by a simple little evergreen tree symbol, not with colored-in mapped boundaries, like state forests, state parks, national wildlife refuges, etc (WMAs do have set boundaries, don't they?)

Oh, I'm sure there will be more, but it is early. Let me know what you're wondering about it and I'll bore you with more data.

3 chips and only one ExpeditionC to put them in... and I wonder why my wife wonders...

[PierBridge]

Thanks schweady.....Lakeville Gander has them now...

[Sutty]

Does anybody know if it shows the boundary line on Red?

[schweady]

It does, by drawing contour lines only east of and up to the boundary. Waters to the west are blank.

[Sutty]

Thats cool. I have always stayed well away from it in the past but would like to explore the lake more.

[nluchau]

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It does, by only drawing contour lines up to the boundary. Waters to the west are blank.

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E-mail me I have a question. nick.luchau(at)seiccs(dot)com.

Could you send me that spreadsheet too.

Thanks,

Nick

[PierBridge]

Just picked up my New Chip I needed some of the new Pro Maps .

The Chip is definatly slower when viewing maps and countours.

One Big Minus for me so far is I can not view my New LM chip on my PC like I could with my old LM chip.

[schweady]

The new LakeMaster chip contains more data than the old one. As a result, it takes slightly longer to refresh the screen.

I did two side-by-side tests on the two LM chips:

Zoom Test

With the screen centered on an area of a ProMap lake with very 'busy' structure (a very steep slope in Ottertail Lake, showing a screenful of contour lines even at the closest zoom), I began at 0.02 mi and zoomed out to 4000 mi, stopping at each of the 40 zoom levels long enough to allow redrawing of the map's contours, waypoints, etc.

Old chip: 74 seconds, new chip: 83 seconds (12% slower)

I then zoomed back in on the same area of the ProMap lake, stopping again to allow the screen to redraw at each of the 40 levels of zoom.

Old chip: 70 seconds, new chip: 84 seconds (20% slower)

Scroll test

While zoomed in at the 5 mile level, I scrolled the map from east to west across Otter Tail County, stopping each time the leading half of the map went blank to allow it to redraw.

Old chip: 84 seconds, new chip: 88 seconds (5% slower)

I then scrolled back west to east, but this time continually scrolled until I reached my destination.

Old chip: 41 seconds, new chip: 42 seconds (2% slower)

There was a noticable lag in the redrawing rate on the new chip as I scrolled across mapped lakes (especially when crossing Rush Lake, which is a ProMap lake on the new chip but only a DNR map on the old one) meaning that whole screenfuls were blank for a brief time, or screens flashed by showing minor detail, not redrawing their full compliment of data before scrolling by.

What does this actually mean?

Well, if you actually need to quickly zoom in or out all the way from a view of the entire continent to a screen showing an area about 100 feet across, checking your location every step of the way in or out, it will take you an extra 10 seconds or so to do it with the new chip. In reality, while zooming in or out a couple of levels on the map while on the water, you might have to wait an extra one-tenth to one-half of a second before the screen is completely full of data.

And, if you are traveling across OtterTail County anywhere over 2,000 MPH, you will need to put up with the screen blanking out and refreshing a few times during that minute or so with either chip. In reality, most boat or truck top speeds will still allow either of the two chips to perform their screen redraws at perectly acceptable, and imperceptibly different, rates.

Bottom line: for all of the extra lake data crammed onto the new chip, I'll sacrifice a half-second of my life here and there.

Fishing... such a simple sport, eh.

[nluchau]

Wow is all I can say. Awesome research Schweady! Can't wait to test out that lakemaster chip. Thanks again.

Nick

[schweady]

Nick:

It's a great combination. You'll be glad you went H2Oc and LakeMaster!

Oh, and here's one more way the 2 chips are the basically the same:

On both chips, MN/Canadian border water data ends right at the border for lakes without contours. Border lakes that have depth contours drawn show data shore-to-shore. Trouble was, on the 'old' chip that was just one lake - Basswood. On the '07 chip, they added contours to Loon, Little Vermilion, Sand Point and Namakan Lakes and they show those depths on both MN and Canadian side.

On both chips, if you zoom out to 30 miles, major waters and roads show up on both the MN and Canadian sides. Zoom in any farther (20 mi or closer) and Canada goes blank while greater detail shows up in MN.

Well, that's basically the end of my chip comparison research. My 'old' chip has been sold and I boxed it up, ready to head to Fargo.

[PierBridge]

Quote:

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One Big Minus for me so far is I can not view my New LM chip on my PC like I could with my old LM chip.

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I swithched to another Emulator and got it to work...

Thanks schweady.......your sick dude.....

[schweady]

Quote:

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Thanks schweady.......your sick dude.....

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"I resemble that remark!" -- Groucho Marx

[Duffman]

schweady....

It's stuff like this that makes this HSOforum great. Somebody taking the time to compare, experiment, and then write up the results of said comparisons for everybody to see. That's just some great first hand info on the Lakemaster product schweady! Thanks, I've been holding off on getting a chip for my Lowrance, now I'm glad I did and hope Santa's good to me.

[WalleyeWarrior]

hey, schweady. thanks for all your hard work. as you can see, it is greatly appreciated by us all. that being said, i'd love it if i could take a look at your spreadsheet. please send to [email protected]. thanks again.

[schweady]

Okay, so the LM '07 chip might prove to be SLIGHTLY slower in zooming but not so much to affect real life fishing situations. Consider the following comparisons of the LakeMaster 2007 and Navionics Premium North chips:

Zoom levels available

LakeMaster

40 levels of zoom:

0.02 mi, 0.03 mi, 0.04 mi, 0.05 mi, 0.06 mi, 0.08 mi, 0.1 mi, 0.15 mi, 0.2 mi, 0.3 mi, 0.4 mi, 0.6 mi, 0.8 mi, 1 mi, 1.5 mi, 2 mi, 3 mi, 4 mi, 5 mi, 6 mi, 8 mi, 10 mi, 15 mi, 20 mi, 30 mi, 40 mi, 60 mi, 80 mi, 100 mi, 150 mi, 200 mi, 300 mi, 400 mi, 600 mi, 800 mi, 1000 mi, 1500 mi, 2000 mi, 3000 mi, 4000 mi.

Navionics

You can still have all 40 levels of zoom listed above even if you have the Navionics chip inserted by leaving 'Lowrance' in 'Map Data...' > 'Navionics Map Choice,' but of course you don't have any depth contours. Once you choose your navionics map area, such as 'Nwmn61.nv2,' you are limited to the following 20 levels of zoom:

1/8 nm, 1/4 nm, 1/2 nm, 1 nm, 2 nm, 4 nm, 8 nm, 16 nm, 31 nm, 61 nm, 123 nm, 247 nm, 600 mi, 600 mi, 800 mi, 1000 mi, 1500 mi, 2000 mi, 3000 mi, 4000 mi.

The incredible amount of data crammed onto the Navionics chip makes it much slower to refresh when zooming, which is far more handicapping than the slight refresh rate difference between the 'new' and 'old' LakeMaster chips.

Zoom test:

Starting zoomed way in on my probable first ice destination waypoint, I zoomed out 7 steps on each chip, allowing the screen to refress and show contours and waypoints. (For the LakeMaster, I needed to press the zoom key 2 or 3 times for each step since it allows that many more levels of zoom.) So, on the Navionics, it was 1/8 nm, 1/4 nm, 1/2 nm, 1 nm, 2 nm, 4 nm, 8 nm, 16 nm. For the LakeMaster, it was 0.1 mi, 0.3 mi, 0.6 mi, 1 mi, 2 mi, 4 mi, 8 mi, 15 mi. Then I did the same in reverse, zooming in on that first ice waypoint.

Results

Zoom out

LakeMaster: 11.8 seconds, Navionics: 21.3 seconds (81% slower)

Zoom in

LakeMaster: 12.9 seconds, Navionics: 16.8 seconds (30% slower)

If Jeff@Navionics is still out there listening to suggestions, mine would be to make sure the next version of Navionics Premium data was put on the highest speed SD chip available. They're pretty cheap right now, so I wouldn't think it should make a lot of difference in the pricing.

[schweady]

WalleyeWarrior:

You've got mail.

Enjoy!

[Tippman]

What will happen if I put my Lakemaster 06 chip in my computer? (typing this was easier than digging it out and trying it. )