hsinhai
Contributor
and I believe supported by Subsurface / libdivecomputerGeo 4.0 has Bluetooth, so no cable needed.
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and I believe supported by Subsurface / libdivecomputerGeo 4.0 has Bluetooth, so no cable needed.
Geo 4.0 has Bluetooth, so no cable needed.
That would make sense, but in order to connect it to a PC I was told by one of the online retailers that a cable is needed. It may be possible to download the dive logs to a smart phone and then copy the files from the phone to the computer and then use one of the dive log programs to either read them or convert them, but that seems awfully complicated especially in this day and age. Now, if BlueTooth had just been invented....
That would make sense, but in order to connect it to a PC I was told by one of the online retailers that a cable is needed. It may be possible to download the dive logs to a smart phone and then copy the files from the phone to the computer and then use one of the dive log programs to either read them or convert them, but that seems awfully complicated especially in this day and age. Now, if BlueTooth had just been invented....
You can probably pair with a BlueTooth card in your PC, if you have one, but you'll also need and application that knows how to decipher their data packets. The cable is for charging and firmware updates ("recommended") and they may or may not have implemented log downloads over it.
The product video shows that settings, firmware updates, and logs can be accessed via a mobile app. That's pretty cool.
Generally Bluetooth and especially BLE (which is what almost all dive computers use in order to be able to support iOS devices) is far better supported on mobile platforms. This is a statement about OS support - the code in Subsurface and Subsurface-mobile for BT/BLE downloads is 100% identical. In other words, yes, you are more likely to have issues on your Windows desktop than you are on your Android phone.Subsurface supports Bluetooth downloads from the desktop, but from what I've read, as of June 2019, downloads aren't as robust as mobile versions of the program. This may have changed since and hopefully someone will chime in to say they've actually used it with the Geo 4.0. As for adding Bluetooth to a desktop, there are cheap Bluetooth dongles (~$10) that connect to a USB port.
Subsurface supports Bluetooth downloads from the desktop, but from what I've read, as of June 2019, downloads aren't as robust as mobile versions of the program. This may have changed since and hopefully someone will chime in to say they've actually used it with the Geo 4.0. As for adding Bluetooth to a desktop, there are cheap Bluetooth dongles (~$10) that connect to a USB port.
Yeah, careful. There are a TON of 'USB Bluetooth LE' dongles out there that actually ONLY support a couple of audio profiles and do not support data transfer AT ALL. As a rule of thumb, anything in the sub $10 range is likely to fall into that group. So read very carefully in the description whether this is just an audio interface or a full BT/BLE device.I have one of those BlueTooth dongles and it works great with headphones but I have not tried it for data transfer and it might take some figuring to determine the correct procedure. When I connect my headphones it's done "blind" IOW there is nothing anywhere with a list of devices to click on--it simple connects to the headphones that are on and within range. It has a Transmit/Receive button and the LED changes color depending upon how it's set. It might actually be very easy, or it may not work at all I think I'll set it on Receive and see if my file manager sees my phone...