The stuff on the list of scannables is stuff you’ve been close enough to to render into the game. If it ain’t been rendered it can’t be scanned. If you exit and reopen the game it’ll wipe the list other than a few default things until you’ve gone around and rendered stuff back in again.

The scanner room works best with 4 range upgrades and the hud upgrade. The selected resource will then appear on the hud. I never bothered with the other upgrades. Without upgrades it scans the area fairly quickly so there is no point in using the speed upgrade. The camera’s work, but are just a clunky replacement for the hud upgrade.

It takes time for the scanner room to pick up things. If you let it run long enough, it will eventually pick up everything. Turning it on at different times, it will pick up different areas first.

You can speed up the process a bit by fabricating the speed upgrade.

It scans the surrounding area for certain materials which those materials are shown on the screen, then it will show you as orange dots where those materials are located, you can upgrade your scanner room to either be faster or have a larger range (I recommend range as you can see a lot of the surrounding land with it and sleeping makes it go faster) and then there is a certain item that will show on your screen when equipped where the items are located when your outside your base Also you can build your scanner room anywhere, if you scan for fragments it won’t show a certain fragment it’ll show all fragments in the surrounding area I hope I didn’t spoil a lot I’m not good at telling also idk how to get that spoiler tag thing

I'd argue with anybody how it is the single most useful equippment in the entire thing (scanner excluded)

You can scan a ton of stuff with it and see how close they are. If you dont have a HUD chip, you can use the cameras to see tgeir exact location!

Once you have the HUD chip and see what it can do, I would highly recommend upgrading the scanner room for maximum range. It has saved me a ton of time in finding things I needed.

This. The room (or even multiple scanner rooms) make a lot of sense once you have the HUD chip installed.

The hud chip puts the pings on your hud so u can find resources outside the base, useful for finding resources and tracking the monsters

The cameras I think increase the range a bit but more rooms make that range bigger

It’s probably the most useful tech in the game, in my opinion.

Until you get it, you can search for it, then send the camera out to it, then use that to find it yourself. It is not the most convenient way to find things, but it is useful if you can't find something any other way

More efficient resource gathering. The scanner room has its own fabricator, make the HUD chip and then expand the search radius to max and you can easily find the necessary materials to build the equipment and tools to survive.

The scanner room is OP AF. Get 1 speed and 3 range upgrades with a HUD and you can find every item you ever wanted instantly. How do you not like that? Drones are pointless though. Unless you wanna check out an area you're scared about.

They're super useful for finding resources after you've already collected most of them. They're especially good for finding stalker teeth. I would recommend getting the HUD upgrade though because you can see where everything is while you're swimming.

Fabricate the upgrade to let the scanner room interface with your HUD.

It makes gathering specific resources so easy. Also boost the range.

The cameras already have the HUD integrated in them so you can drive it to a wreck/resource then drive your seamoth to the camera location until you get the HUD for the player character

Fabricate the HUD chip. You will get the point VERY quickly.

To find those invisible stalker teeth.

And to observe how the seafloor deepens at the edge of an underwater cliff.

Don't bother with the cameras, just get the chip that highlights what you're scanning for, you make it in the scanner room fabricator

The cameras are just for scouting, and have no direct influence on what you can scan. The scanning options are based on what you’ve got loaded into your memory, what you’ve seen or been near that the game had to render. The camera drones can help look around, making more things render, but only when actively used. If you close the game and open it back up the list of scanning options will be wiped until you scout around and see things again.

Base scanning range iirc is 300m, and each module increased it by 50m. Camera range before the image fades out to static is unconnected to scanner range.

You can scan for materials arond the room with the main interface (the range upgrade buff this) or drive around the cameras to look without risking your life (you are gonna lose signal if you go to far, again, range upgrade)

Cameras are basically RC beacons, useful for marking cave entrances or other points of interest so you can follow the camera marker. The scanner works separately and scans a radius of 300m, you click on the resource you want to find and it'll highlight it on the holomap in the room, if you get the range upgrade it gets +50 meters range and they stack so you can get up to 500m scan range. One of the scanner room upgrades will make it highlight whatever you're scanning without you having to stay there, this actually goes in one of your gear slots so you can still have 4 range upgrades (the speed upgrade wasn't worthwhile imo)

So... the Scanner room works by choosing a material , ore, whatever and then it will be highlighted in the room's map hologram thingy in the middle.

There is a crafting thingy in the scanner room to upgrade the room. One of the upgrades makes it so that you see these orange dots on your screen and not just in the room. One of the most useful rooms imo.

To choose a different material you have to go to the panel where you selected it and press a button that says cancel/stop (didn't play for 2 months)

You can use the cameras from the scanner room to see the material you selected or you need the Scanner Room HUD Chip upgrade which will display the materials on your HUD.

1. The scanner room detects anything that is within a 300m radius

2. You can select a different item by going back to the panel and pressing the gray "X"

3. The dots show where the items are. If you use the cameras it shows where everything is. You could also craft the Scanner Room HUD Chip to show the items in your HUD

I mean, it can be handy. It depends on you and your skills/time. It is also easy to make and easy to use. For instance, it is a good way to find stalker teeth. Just remember to turn it off when you're done so it won't eat up energy.

To be honest, it was one of the first really useful things I get.

Every base I make has one so I can farm materials easily.

I mean if you need to farm specific materials or items it's great (with the HUD chip of course), but other than that, no.

You can finish game without grabbing single PDA its just lore

It’s good for metal scrap and stalker teeth. Apart from that it’s not really necessary but it’s a nice addition to a base nonetheless

I actually liked the Lost River and built a base there. It's what comes next that really scared me.

Different opinion here. I think the Scanner Room, Scanner Room Range Upgrade
x4, and the Scanner Room HUD Chip are required upgrades at your surface base(s). Gathering resources was hugely frustrating once I needed more than a few of each. These upgrades made it almost painless. Once you get into the Lost River, the Scanner Room it's still useful, but optional since you are mainly looking for large resource nodes or small quantities of late game resources.

There needs to be at least one resource loaded into memory and within range for you to be able to scan it. If you load the game while already near your scanning room and take a look at the list, there will be bugger all there, so you need to swim around and load further areas for the scanner to be able to pick 'em up.

Put a hatch on the hallway you build to extend it out. That way you will be able to quickly swap out the resources you're scanning for and collect different materials you need from the biome in succession.

I had to bud out an extension hallway to fit a scanner room on an early playthrough and did that to make it feel a little more intentional, but it ended up being so practical that now I always do it anyways

Subnautica: you can't put the scanner room there! Also subnautica: good idea, put the scanner room in a place full of agressive leviathans

I built my first scanner room yesterday. It required me to build an extra hallway for some reason.

Cause it's module building if you put it there and tried to connect it to your multipurpose room the pieces would not line up so maybe it's stopping you from having that issue

Welcome to subnautica

It looks too close to the multipurpose room. I’ve had a similar issue and had to move things further apart

Man this game dose that some times I would try and build on flatter land

This is pretty much how I got through the game 😅 I'm a big baby - it helped me acclimate to new areas I was scared of. I put 4 range upgrades in each. The cameras are helpful for exploring the area and seeing what's around without risking your life or vehicles. It was also helpful to be able to track where any leviathans were with the HUD upgrade, especially at night.

I placed them at least 1000m away from bases and other scanners to make sure there was no overlap. As others say, they are very helpful for finding resources.

In terms of power I always put them somewhere I could use solar panels or thermal - so I didn't need to manually add anything to reactors.

I just put one at the special place entrance near LP2 with quadruple scanner range upgrades. Not too far from juvenile squeaky pants (almost within sight).

You can do this if you want, but I personally just have a "mobile" scanner room. I'll prepare the materials to build a scanner room, a hatch, and 2 solar panels, then build them whenever I find a location I want to scan in. And when I'm done, I deconstruct everything to get all my resources back. This then allows me to build again at the next location I want to do some scanning.

I do this. Also set up battery chargers and med kits. A basic base you can use to quickly restock and make basic stuff when you get dead

Why not? It's your 4546b, make it livable for yours needs.