Best new toys at DEMA

[Will]

At the booth, I was told the depth rating for those scooters were 130 ft. and 165 ft.

Well, maybe that is the physical limit that they found. Literature says 100 and 130 with the 130 "dumbed down" from 160 due to recreational limits. Either way - I plan on finding out

 

[Hickdive]

If this is the little scooter in question then it seems, to me, to struggle to pull a snorkeller, rather slowly;

YouTube - Bladefish - in action underwater

 

[PhilEllis]

If this is the little scooter in question then it seems, to me, to struggle to pull a snorkeller, rather slowly;

YouTube - Bladefish - in action underwater

Actually, this thing will pull a fully-equipped diver around at a pretty good clip. Under 10 pounds and fits in a small suitcase. This thing is going to be quite a change from the typical inexpensive recreational scooters. I think it will be a hit.

Phil Ellis
www.divesports.com

 

[danvolker]

In this sense, a "hack" is a cheesy way to accomplish an engineering task (underwater GPS) without actually accomplishing the task. Like handling Y2K bugs by setting the clock back.

If they had a real U/W GPS, that would be impressive. This is just a regular GPS with a remote component.

Terry

Here in Palm beach, fl, we have to use a dive flag or buouy, due to the currents. The boat follows the float. The gps reciever could be on a torpedo buoy essentially right over your head, 60 to 90 feet above you. Torpedo buoys can have almost zero drag, so very little scope is required...at least, when you were trying to get accurate gps readings, you would run with very little scope.

We have many huge areas in laces like the crown of Juno Ledge that are enormous, with many sites within it that would be great to map out. I could think of many applications for this.....
And right now, divers here are about to be forced to fight with the Town of Palm Beach, as they are trying to get permission to do more beach renourishment ( horrible for our reefs)...Recently, divers have found quite a few large strands of Staghorn coral, this being a coral on the endangered list.....one strategy we have now, is to identify as many strands of staghorn coral as possible, and this will mean gps numbers. I might buy one of these gps units just for this

Regards,
Dan V

 

[Web Monkey]

Here in Palm beach, fl, we have to use a dive flag or buouy, due to the currents. The boat follows the float. The gps reciever could be on a torpedo buoy essentially right over your head, 60 to 90 feet above you. Torpedo buoys can have almost zero drag, so very little scope is required...at least, when you were trying to get accurate gps readings, you would run with very little scope.

We have many huge areas in laces like the crown of Juno Ledge that are enormous, with many sites within it that would be great to map out. I could think of many applications for this.....
And right now, divers here are about to be forced to fight with the Town of Palm Beach, as they are trying to get permission to do more beach renourishment ( horrible for our reefs)...Recently, divers have found quite a few large strands of Staghorn coral, this being a coral on the endangered list.....one strategy we have now, is to identify as many strands of staghorn coral as possible, and this will mean gps numbers. I might buy one of these gps units just for this

Regards,
Dan V

If it works for your purpose, that's great!

I was simply mentioning that I wasn't impressed with the technology and that the advertising is a little unclear as to exactly what it does and how it does it.

Terry

 

[DiveNav]

....Having said that, you don't necessarily have to drag it around with you. If you are not going out of range of the transmitter (the manufacturer says one mile), you can leave it on a boat. It appears the unit traces the direction it is from the transmitter and calculates where you are....

their NEW idea is quite old indeed ....

..... That's the same thing the Navy does with submarines...

not exactly ..... Submarines also use high end (and very expensive) INERTIAL NAVIGATION UNITS & MAP MATCHING (GPS + GYRO + ACCELEROMETERS + MAGNETOMETERS + MAP). They come close to the surface once in a while, deploy GPS, get fix, update Kalmann filters in the navigation loop ... and then they go for another month.

As mentioned in other threads, I stick to the Inertial Navigation approach also for recreational divers.
Technology is (almost) here to enable low cost UW navigation systems that do not depend on a buoy at the surface.

I bet no more than 5 years.

Alberto

 

[DiveNav]

I fully disagree. I don't see this as something for individual divers, but as something for charters to use. They can now track their divers if they lose the dive flag/group. The divers can also see where their group is and try to locate them more easily without having to bop to the surface. BTW, it also indicates the position of the boat to the diver, which makes heading home all that much simpler. Not everything new is cheesy.

the UDI product does EXACTLY that - right now.
and shipping in volume since quite sometime

 

[DiveNav]

That's fine, but that would make it "not" and underwater GPS, That would make it a "boat finder" (or "diver finder").

It's promoted as an underwater GPS, and even shown that way on their website...

Marketing Exercise ?

 

[W8less]

Has anyone taken the Bladefish 5000 for a ride in full gear yet? Critique? It says rated to 50m/165' @3.5 mph HMMM! Is this one of those if it's too good to be true deals, my momma told me about.
Amazon sells it as a frontman for diversbestbuy.com. I called diversbest buy and was told that it recently passed leak tests to 20 - 30m. ?? Huh?? The unit is being sold for $800.00 and there is a NO RETURN policy.

I guess the first buyers are the "shakedown cruise"

 

[fppf]

I question anything that is used in a marine environment rated in "MPH" and not "Knots"
And 3 knots in the water is SMOKING fast!

Even the largest Dive X scooter does about 2.5 knots or about 250 feet per minute.

I smell BS