R2Sonic data files

Echoview supports data recorded by R2Sonic multibeam sonars and saved to *.r2s files via HYACK or QINSy software.

Water Column

HYPACK or QINSy software

TruePixTM

HYPACK software

Water Column data

Echoview reads beamformed data without support for phase. You can verify R2Sonic files with Echocheck.

TruePix data

Supported TruePixTM data (highly compressed water column imagery) can be read from *.r2s files logged by Hypack software. Echoview displays a multibeam sector derived from data for two multibeam sectors - a starboard sector and a port sector.

Echoview assumes:

  • The file contains no packets that have been duplicated, dropped, or interleaved between pings. Note, the R2Sonic Operation manual recommends a method to 'fill in' missing packets.
  • The first packet in the file for a given ping number provides the H0 'header' as its first section.
  • Angular position data is assigned to 1024 uniformly distributed beams between [-80, 80] degrees.

Mapping of data values

The file stores angle data to a high precision, and Echoview's mapping to a sparser set of beams is achieved by uniform binning, which leads to a decrease in angular resolution.

The multibeam sector is a result of the following processing:

  • If the port magnitude is non-zero, that magnitude is mapped the port beam of the multibeam sector.
  • Then, if the starboard magnitude is non-zero, that magnitude is mapped to the starboard beam of the multibeam sector.

If the mapped port/starboard beam are the same:

  • If both magnitudes are non-zero, the starboard magnitude is mapped.
  • Else if either of the magnitudes are non-zero, the non-zero magnitude is mapped.

TruePix sample ranges

The TruePix sound speed recorded in the *.r2s file is of higher precision than is recorded under the EV file SoundSpeed. As a result, the sample start and stop ranges are modified by a ratio of the sound speeds.

New range (m) = Original range (m) x (SoundSpeedEVFile(ms-2) / SoundSpeedFile(ms-2))

Please contact support@echoview.com if you are interested in phase data support in future versions of Echoview.

See also

Raw variables derived from R2Sonic data files
Calibration settings for R2Sonic data
Multibeam display note