HDS 12 Gen 3 Sonar/Structure freezing?

[Warrenroadie]

Good mornig,

Here's the story. I've been searching BBC Lowrance Sonar posts for the last couple months hoping for a resolution , no luck yet, so I decided to finally post.

Currently running two HDS 12 Gen 3 units. One in console (Total scan transducer) and one at bow (StructureScan HD) connected to backbone ethernet with point one. Currently sharing with one Navionics card in console unit (I have two identical cards). Power is taken from the cranking battery 31 series AGM to both units(Battery is 7-8 months old). Console power is from fuse box at console, bow is fused connection at bow directly to battery. Ran new wiring from cranking battery to bow when I purchased boat 3 years ago. All connections points are clean and made up with marine soldered connectors. Note: I did not have a problem running HDS 10 Gen 1 at bow before upgrading to HDS 12.

Problem: Start up units on the trailer, no issues. Fish for undetermined amount of time 1-2 hours (trolling motor-Ultrex in and out of water several times) Sonar with overlay, Sonar, Structure freezes, stop working. Sometimes it freezes, works for a few minutes freezes, then freezes permanently. Temperature and depth continue to work for while before showing (--) then they will work for a while then quit again. Mapping (Chart) continues to work and never shows any issues. No issues with console unit at all. Changed transducer around 3 different ways from Ultrex unit transducer, to LSS-2 and now using StructureScan HD skimmer transducer. No changes between any of the transducers that I can tell. That is in how long they operate with unit before unit sonar freezes and/or slows down then freezes.
I have soft reset unit many times, then reload settings from sd card or manually change settings and unit works again until I quit fishing. Then on next fishing trip it does the freeze up again. This could be a Friday and Saturday or just from Saturday to Saturday. I have hard reset unit twice with no noticeable results. It pretty much did the same thing again.

This HDS unit was purchased from fishing partner where it was used on the bow of his boat. He updated to Live unit and sold me this one. I had used this unit since new on his boat before purchasing. Unit is approximately 1.5 years old. Unit has been updated with Lowrance updates as they are issued. I did go back one update after I read on BBC that this particular update might be causing some issues with units. No noticeable results from changing updates.

Tried to include all the information I could think of so the Lowrance experts could help me out. Thanks in advance for your help.

Dennis

[WVTERP]

I have had the same problem several times. It all started after I did the final GEN 3 update. Never an issue before that. I figured it is some evil plot from Lowrance to get me to upgrade since there would be no more software updates. :-(

[Warrenroadie]

Have you changed software updates?

[Team Colibri]

Have you done a hard reset on all units? If not, save waypoints and get to it.

[Warrenroadie]

Thanks. I did the hard reset on both units. Reloaded settings, no change in results.

[Team Colibri]

Do a hard reset, do not load settings.

A tip on the way: After changing software (up or down), always do a hard reset. Wait with loading old settings until you see that everything works as it should. If not, you have no clue as to if the issues you might encounter are from the software, or the software combined with (old) settings.

[Warrenroadie]

Thanks! I will try this method this morning.

[Warrenroadie]

No success. Waited on changing settings to sonar and structure scan. Unit locked up in about 1.5 hours

[Team Colibri]

Assuming your module and HDS is on the same software, this is the time to downgrade both to software before 18.2. :(

[Throttles Down]

I had the same issues
had to go back to 7.0-59.1.86
All is good