I thought I would bring up fish finders again for the new year. I am thinking of upgrading my old Max 15. Looking at another PiranhaMax 4.3 with di or the Garmin Striker 4.

Thanks in advance

I was looking for opinions. I am leaning towards the Garmin striker 4.

I have the Garmin Striker 4X and really like the unit. Let me know if you have specific questions.

The Piranhamax has its devotees as well.

moustachesteve: "I have the Garmin Striker 4X and really like the unit. Let me know if you have specific questions.


The Piranhamax has its devotees as well."

Good to know. Can you turn the gps off to save battery power? I am assuming you can, but I do not like to assume.

Thanks

I'm actually not sure if you can turn it off entirely, but I've never had battery issues as these units don't use much power. To save on battery I'd start by adjusting the backlight brightness and tweaking the color mode. I think that CHIRP probably uses more power as well, so you could toggle your frequency to turn that off in a pinch.

moustachesteve: "I'm actually not sure if you can turn it off entirely, but I've never had battery issues as these units don't use much power. To save on battery I'd start by adjusting the backlight brightness and tweaking the color mode. I think that CHIRP probably uses more power as well, so you could toggle your frequency to turn that off in a pinch."

thanks
Here is another question. Have you ever had problems with the gps getting a signal. The plus allows you to map a lake, but only works with the gps. I was thinking that would be a nice feature.

jrlatt: "

moustachesteve: "I have the Garmin Striker 4X and really like the unit. Let me know if you have specific questions.



The Piranhamax has its devotees as well."

Good to know. Can you turn the gps off to save battery power? I am assuming you can, but I do not like to assume.


Thanks"

You cannot turn off the GPS feature. In my testing, the Striker 4 draws fairly low power, around 0.3A. They list 0.25A on their website but based on the capacity of the battery I used, I didn't quite get the runtime I expected. It was around 26 hours on a 10Ah Nocqua Li-ion battery.

The striker is great but if you want a true gps finder, you might want to really look at your options because the striker does not allow you to have your track/waypoints etc super-imposed on a base map. Still priced very well and not much competition at the price range and the base map thing may not matter to some but good to know beforehand.

Moonman.

Thanks for your help.

sorry double post

Concur with the posts suggesting the Striker 4. I paired it with a Dakota Lithium 10aH battery last summer and the Striker 4 was reading the same voltage at the end of the trip after having used it 8hrs./day for 6 days. I enclosed the battery inside of an Outdoors Products plastic case and strapped it to the rear thwart of the canoe with the Striker 4 mounted with a Ram right beside it. The battery weighs about 3 lbs. with case and does take up a little room in the pack but for longer trips I would rather skimp somewhere else to save weight and space than worry if the battery will last the trip.

Any chance you have a pic of this setup i am looking at doing something almost identical to this.

Comparing DAKOTA batteries to two HOBBYKING. Both are 3 cells in series but they are different battery chemistries. Therefore different voltages.
--------------------------Dakota -------------2 KobbyKing
Weight----------------44 Oz-----------------30.4 Oz.
Capacity--------------10 Ah-----------------10 Ah
Voltage 10% 90%---9.6V to 9V-------12.15V to 9.8V
Cost---------------------$99-------------------$52 ++ $3.02
BMS---------------------Yes--------------------No

How to get a Battery Management System (BMS) for the hobbyking battery. You buy a LOW VOLTAGE ALARM for $3.02 and use it. When the alarm goes off you need to disconnect the battery or you will destroy it.

If you want to run 2 hobbyking batteries in parallel use a PARALLEL WIRING HARNESS.
I would prefer to use one battery until it is used up then use the other rather than parallel them. Just in case I left the detector on all night.
Both batteries require special chargers. I use a older version of this
Charger
It is somewhat complicated to set up but remember several battery setups so they are easy to recall.

Sorry I didn't have a pic of these mounted to the rear thwart but it should give you a decent idea. I mounted the Scotty #241L-BK mounting bracket on a small block of wood with bolts that drop down and attach to my wooden thwart with a piece of flat aluminum bar stock and 2 wing nuts. You will need to incorporate a different option if you have a round aluminum thwart but that is easy to do as well.

Subscribing....

MagicPaddler: "Comparing DAKOTA batteries to two HOBBYKING. Both are 3 cells in series but they are different battery chemistries. Therefore different voltages.
--------------------------Dakota -------------2 KobbyKing
Weight----------------44 Oz-----------------30.4 Oz.
Capacity--------------10 Ah-----------------10 Ah
Voltage 10% 90%---9.6V to 9V-------12.15V to 9.8V
Cost---------------------$99-------------------$52 ++ $3.02
BMS---------------------Yes--------------------No

So are you saying that the Dakota batteries do not put out their rated 12 volts even at a 10% discharge?

mgraber: "

MagicPaddler: "Comparing DAKOTA batteries to two HOBBYKING. Both are 3 cells in series but they are different battery chemistries. Therefore different voltages.
--------------------------Dakota -------------2 KobbyKing
Weight----------------44 Oz-----------------30.4 Oz.
Capacity--------------10 Ah-----------------10 Ah
Voltage 10% 90%---9.6V to 9V-------12.15V to 9.8V
Cost---------------------$99-------------------$52 ++ $3.02
BMS---------------------Yes--------------------No

So are you saying that the Dakota batteries do not put out their rated 12 volts even at a 10% discharge? "

Mgraber
The one word answer to your question is yes but the real question is will the fish detector run on the voltage it puts out. Again the one word answer is yes. I have seen power sources from 8 volts to 16 volts labeled 12 volts. Most fish detector manuals list the required voltage to be between 10 and 18 volts. All the ones I have tested run fine on 9 volts.

I also use the Garmin Striker 4X and really like it.

MagicPaddler I am considering upgrading my battery setup and really like yours. I currently have the wilderness systems battery and it works fine but doesn't seem to be quite enough power for a week long trip.

The charger you listed is on backorder. Do you happen to have any experience with any of the other chargers?

I picked up a new (discontinued) Lowrance Hook 3x this offseason and am making a 10xAA battery pack for it in a Pelican 1010 case like many people on this site have posted about. I picked the Hook 3x because it had basically the lowest power consumption I could find without buying a used B&W unit.

I could only find power consumption specs for the DSI version, which @ .075A is still much lower than any of the current models like the Striker 4 or Hook 4x. The non-DSI version's transmit power is 100W RMS vs 500W RMS for the DSI so I'm assuming the power draw will be even less than .075A but haven't had a chance to test it myself yet. Using IKEA Ladda 2450 batteries @ 75mAh would still be 32 hours on one set of batteries so by bringing a 2nd set I should have more than enough juice for a week trip or longer.

IndyCanoe
No I do not have any experience with other chargers for this type of battery. To do a balanced charge you need the JST-XH connector on the charger. While on a trip I disconnect the voltage alarm and fish finder at night. The alarm unit has more pins than the battery and you plug it in so the black wire is on the negative pin of the alarm unit. I put a piece of tape across the end of the alarm so only those pins are visible.
I think THIS one is the same charger except it is DC power only (you can’t plug it in the wall). It does not come with a cigarette lighter plug. You can either buy cigarette lighter separately or rise the hood and connect it up with the provided cable.
PS
I bought something like THIS and cut the banana connectors off and wired it to my detector to make connection and disconnecting easy.

What about the Striker Plus 4? The cost is a little higher, but it looks like it has some additional features. Is it practical to use in the BWCA? Not sure if battery life is worse with the additional features. the difference is cost is not significant.

The striker 4 plus has a 230 ma power draw. It would be a great finder but more than twice the power consumption of black and white models. I don’t know any new b&w models offered for sale but it does appear you can still purchase discontinued models directly from Garmin. Still it all depends on your power source, how often and how many hours per day you use it and of course how many days your typical trip is. However the striker would also be a great unit when you are not camping and you don’t have to worry about weight, capacity, and bulk of your power source.

Moonman.

In general I like the Garmin units, well Garmin in anything. I've run larger units on my SOT kayaks and boats over the last 10 plus years and have been very happy with them.
For the battery, has anyone taken a small, light, portable solar charger to help stretch the battery longer?