Hummingbird solix questions.

I splurged a little and bought 2 solix 12s on sale and curious how I achieve both linking them together, as well is it worth running a transducer on each side of the boat one shoot left and one shoot right ? Or am I better off running 1 transducer ? New to hummingbird and I’m just curious which way to set it up.
And can any one lead me to the correct y cable to make that happen if that is the better choice. I assume it will be and I will have 2 mega si transducers

If your outboard is flush to the transom you may want to go with the 2 ducer idea, otherwise you may have to tilt the motor up and out of the way when side imaging. If you have a jackplate your motor may be fine and not block. Do you have a hi speed ducer? If not I would invest in one as the main ducer will lose bottom contact at higher speeds, also this way you will be able to install your side ducers up a few inches higher on the transom.

And as always use the coin trick for leveling your ducers to get best picture quality.

Justin Laack wrote:

If your outboard is flush to the transom you may want to go with the 2 ducer idea, otherwise you may have to tilt the motor up and out of the way when side imaging. If you have a jackplate your motor may be fine and not block. Do you have a hi speed ducer? If not I would invest in one as the main ducer will lose bottom contact at higher speeds, also this way you will be able to install your side ducers up a few inches higher on the transom.

And as always use the coin trick for leveling your ducers to get best picture quality.

The high-speed ducer will be ordered and added as well, that was already a thought process I had. And the motor looks like it’ll block the ducer, I’m pretty much planning to run both ducers 1 on each side for side imaging, unless there’s a reason not to

You might need a network hub if you want to link your terrova too. Not 100% sure as I run garmin but i think my buddy had to.

IDK, I have never had problems with the outboard blocking my transducer not sure why you would just by switching to a bird. Running 2 transducers seems like overkill to me, but whatever floats your boat I guess. IMO it would have to be awfully dang close to the motor for it to block it. I have two transducers mounted on the back of my boat. One for the lowrance unit and one for the bird. Neither of which have any issues with the motor.

My SI is slightly blocked by the motor, same with a buddy’s. I don’t have to trim far to unblock it so not a big deal, but for my buddy it’s almost useless on one side. My dad however has no issue on his. Depends on the boat and motor. The thing about the 2 ducer SI I’ve never liked was you lose that water column view, which I think is super helpful locating fish, especially schools of crappie. I’ve only seen pictures so maybe you can adjust the setting and still see the water column.

CaptainMusky wrote:

IDK, I have never had problems with the outboard blocking my transducer not sure why you would just by switching to a bird. Running 2 transducers seems like overkill to me, but whatever floats your boat I guess. IMO it would have to be awfully dang close to the motor for it to block it. I have two transducers mounted on the back of my boat. One for the lowrance unit and one for the bird. Neither of which have any issues with the motor.

It’s not something that is a must have, just want to get the best picture possible. Not sure if I’ll get that with 1 ducer or if linking the 2 makes it better. I never had this set up before, and want the best possible set up I can get, and I have 2 ducers so I wanted to ask the guys that know.

Youbetcha wrote:

You might need a network hub if you want to link your terrova too. Not 100% sure as I run garmin but i think my buddy had to.

If I run the ducers to one graph, can’t I run the terrova to the other ?

I was thinking from the Ethernet point of view. If you network both together it would use up both of the Ethernet ports. It does seem like the new ones have wifi so maybe theres a way to connect to the terrova with that. Im unsure.

Youbetcha wrote:

I was thinking from the Ethernet point of view. If you network both together it would use up both of the Ethernet ports. It does seem like the new ones have wifi so maybe theres a way to connect to the terrova with that. Im unsure.

If I have to add a hub that’s fine. Again this is all new to me on how to connect all the birds in the most sensible way

I do think youll love those units!

When I had bird you can only link 2 units together before needing the hub. So if you want everything together you will need the hub. You can control the terrova with one unit but you can’t link that unit to the other solix. SI seems hit or miss depending on the boat. My last boat no issues my alumacraft now I have to trim up a little but not an issue in my case.

I have two Y-cables for running three transducers. Two SI ‘ducers and one high speed. With the dual SI ‘ducers the image improvement was huge for my boat/motor setup (jon boat). The addition of the high speed ‘ducer didn’t do anything to improve bottom contact for my boat.

Like others have said each head only has one ethernet port, so if you want to network both heads and the trolling motor you need a hub. I’m not sure what the huge benefit of networking heads is TBH.

I’d call Fishelectronics and ask them how to best set this up. They’ll shoot you straight. I’m certain you need the hub if you want the 2 graphs to be synced. If you run them separately, things like waypoints won’t be synced between the two. I’d think you want that.

I know you have the skills to put it all together but they are very good and pretty reasonable. My boat is a bitch to run wires through so I outsourced the graphs.

https://www.thornebros.com/pages/fish-lectronics-1

You also need to think about how you are going to power all of this. I remember from another thread you’ve gone lithium. Are you running a separate battery for these?

I bought a 3rd lithium 12v 100ah just for the screens. And yeah I’d imagine i want to connect the graphs to share way points and what not. I guess I assume this is all via ethernet and no way to do it via Bluetooth?.

If you do get a hub they need to be powered as well and when mine was rigged they ran that to a separate acc switch and I always forget to turn it on to link everything. I don’t know if that’s how it needs to be done or if you can have it powered some other way. Just a thought to help possibly eliminate another step.

Stanley wrote:

If you do get a hub they need to be powered as well and when mine was rigged they ran that to a separate acc switch and I always forget to turn it on to link everything. I don’t know if that’s how it needs to be done or if you can have it powered some other way. Just a thought to help possibly eliminate another step.

I think they run it to a switch to stop it from drawing on the battery when its not in use. I know the minnkota heading sensor also has a small draw so i have mine ran to a cutoff switch with the graphs.

Youbetcha wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Stanley wrote:</div>
If you do get a hub they need to be powered as well and when mine was rigged they ran that to a separate acc switch and I always forget to turn it on to link everything. I don’t know if that’s how it needs to be done or if you can have it powered some other way. Just a thought to help possibly eliminate another step.

I think they run it to a switch to stop it from drawing on the battery when its not in use. I know the minnkota heading sensor also has a small draw so i have mine ran to a cutoff switch with the graphs.

I run all my electronics to a battery disconnect so then nothing can slow drain my battery.

Do the new terrovas link via Bluetooth or is it all through the ethernet ?