Simrad SY50 Omni Sonar Explained

Viam’s AI can dial in the angle and range of Simrad’s omni sonar and help identify targets. Eric Powell/Adobe Firefly

I’ve been a boater for almost 50 years, but I’m not an angler. When I started writing this column in 2010, I lacked hands-on experience with fish finders and sonars. I researched the technology, interviewed experts and arranged for on-water demonstrations with manufacturers to accelerate my learning curve. I often wished technology could simplify the art of identifying fish species based on the bloblike sonar returns.

That wish is finally becoming a reality. Viam, an AI company, recently partnered with Kongsberg Discovery, bringing AI enhancements to Kongsberg’s Simrad SY50 omnidirectional sonar.

When it comes to finding and tracking fish in the water column, omnidirectional sonars provide a massive amount of underkeel awareness. Standard fish finders typically use a single, dual-frequency piezoceramic element housed in a transducer to transmit acoustic energy downward and then listen for returning echoes. By contrast, omnidirectional sonars—or “omnis”—employ hundreds of sonar elements that transmit and receive sonar energy in a 360-degree pattern around their transducers.

If this sounds like the difference between shining a flashlight in a dark room versus turning on the floodlights, you’re on the right track.

Kongsberg’s Simrad SY50 is a sophisticated instrument, but operating the sonar and reading its onscreen imagery in real time can be demanding. Viam’s AI enhancements are designed to help SY50 owners and operators save time and fuel, and to reduce unintended bycatch.

This partnership marks the first time Kongsberg has used AI in the sport-fishing market, and the first time a third-party developer has created AI capabilities for recreational fishing. The Kongsberg Group, established in 1814, has long built high-end sonars. Kongsberg Discovery, which is Kongsberg’s sensor division, released the SY50 for the sport-fishing market in late 2021.

Unlike regular fish-finding sonars that use in-hull, through-hull or transom-hung transducers, the SY50 has a cylindrical-shaped transducer fitted onto the business end of a telescoping transducer shaft. That shaft resides inside a vertically mounted hull trunk. A hoist motor can lower the transducer 1.3 to 1.97 feet below the hull to reach acoustically quieter water. Each SY50 installation also includes at least one display, a processor and a power-supply box.

The SY50 transducer has 256 piezoceramic elements arranged as a series of vertically stacked rings. They operate on user-selectable frequencies ranging from 54 to 60 kilohertz. The system delivers a range of up to 6,562 feet, and operators can electronically tilt the sonar’s beams from plus-10 to minus-60 degrees, in 1-degree increments, to track fish.

While some SY50s have been installed aboard vessels exceeding 150 feet in length, Martin Tollefsen, Kongsberg’s fish-finder product manager, says most SY50s are used aboard commercial vessels and sport-fishing yachts with 50 to 70 feet of waterline.

All of that experience is now being paired with AI work done by Viam. Eliot Horowitz founded Viam (Latin for “the way”) in 2020 with the goal of bringing AI, automation, robotics and other capabilities to the marine sector. “We’ve done a lot of work in the marine space, particularly, and have always been interested in ways that AI can have an impact on seafaring technology,” Horowitz says.

In his free time, Horowitz is an avid sport fisherman who fishes with an SY50. This experience, coupled with his professional background, helped him realize that Viam’s AI could enhance the SY50’s user experience.

Viam connected with Kongsberg in late 2024, and the companies formed a collaborative partnership. Viam is developing AI enhancements that will reside aboard SY50 hardware and will play nicely with Kongsberg’s Winson operating system. The plan is for Viam AI enhancements to be released in an upcoming Kongsberg software update.

“Sonars for fish finding are a natural point of integration for us because they collect a ton of complex data that’s hard to make sense of—and make decisions against—in real time,” Horowitz says. “Viam transforms the power of that data, using AI to drive insights that fleets and captains can use to make smarter decisions.”

Some omni-equipped vessels have dedicated crewmembers who operate the sonar, such as during sport-fishing tournaments, but not always. Captains, Tollefsen rightly says, have a lot to keep track of on the boat. The idea is to incorporate AI in a way that helps the captain make better use of the sonar’s capabilities.

To that end, Tollefsen says, Kongsberg has worked to minimize the number of interactions an operator must have with an SY50 to get good results. Horowitz says Viam’s AI enhancements further simplify operations and bolster results.

“The software will help tune for range and proper angle to get the optimal data on the display,” Horowitz says. “Beyond that, the software will use AI to sharpen and clarify the image. And finally, it will indicate specifically how to identify which marks are likely to be actual fish.”

These insights, he says, can help anglers determine where and how they fish.

“It’s about catching more fish, being more accurate and efficient, burning less fuel, reducing bycatch, and having much greater insight into what’s going on in the ocean around you,” Horowitz says.

Both companies also sound bullish about future projects. “While Viam is highly flexible and modular, and can run on any smart machine or device, we worked closely with the Kongsberg Discovery team to create a solution that best reflects their specific needs and this use case,” Horowitz says. “We see a huge opportunity to scale our partnership across different areas, and help bring AI and data to more of their customers in meaningful ways.”

Tollefsen says Kongsberg is using the collaboration with Viam on the SY50 as a sea trial. Kongsberg builds a range of sonars, with the SY50 being the smallest and most compact model. Tollefsen says the company looks forward to bringing AI “to our other sonars and other underwater acoustic equipment to aid commercial fishing.”

Odds are excellent that Viam and other developers will eventually leverage AI to improve the user experience for other fish finders and sonars too. I wish this level of AI had existed 15 years ago. It could have spared me, and a lot of other boaters, from struggling to decipher onscreen blobs.

To Name a Few

In 2005, the Kongsberg Group sold its yachting division to Altor, but retained the Simrad name to market commercial-fishing products. Altor continued manufacturing recreational-marine electronics under the Simrad Yachting label. In 2021, Brunswick Corporation bought Navico (B&G, Lowrance, Simrad Yachting and C-Map) and now builds and markets Simrad Yachting-branded equipment.

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