Best Dive Log App - Recommendations

[tc]

Excel.

 

[Mike1967]

Excel.

 

[tc]

Dude. Wasn’t that funny.

 

[Mike1967]

Dude. Yeah it was.

 

[rob.mwpropane]

Dude. Wasn’t that funny.

Not even a little?

I think Excel could be fine except for a newer diver. How are you supposed to know what all pertinent information to add in the beginning? I remember filling out dive logs in the beginning of using Subsurface and having to go back and add stuff as I found it while doing the next dive....like "oh yeah, I should probably add what suit I was wearing, duh?"

Building and Excel after you learn the ropes is totally viable though....but for most we're probably used to using something else by that point. And how do you save Excel on your phone? Or get it to upload cross platform on the go? Can you edit from a phone? Can a dc download directly to your Excel? Just curious (honestly). To me that would feel like "reinventing" the wheel a little when it's already been done to death by people with way more experience and dives than me...just my 2 cents

 

[tursiops]

I use Excel as my master log.....Shearwater Cloud and several others are just interim logs, with manual transfer to the Excel sheet.

I built the Excel file many years ago when I had to report on how many dives I had between 60 and 100 ft, etc. I laboriously transferred all my paper log books and a computer files or two into a spreadsheet that tracked things like how many dives were at night, how many were deco dives, how many were at various locations, how many used Nitrox or Trimix, etc. It now has 2720 logged dives on it....but no pool dives. I wish I had kept those, too. It is easy to keep up, even after a liveaboard or Bonaire trip with 4-5 dives a day.

Recently my cave buddy wanted to know how many cave dives we'd had together, because he doesn't keep a log and wanted to apply for Abe Davis or something. Easy, just filter for his name and cave.

I keep a copy on Dropbox. I can get at it and enter/edit with my phone using the Excel mobile app.

All in all, Shearwater Cloud and my Excel file are all I need. Dive Story is a backup....

 

[rob.mwpropane]

I use Excel as my master log.....Shearwater Cloud and several others are just interim logs, with manual transfer to the Excel sheet.

I built the Excel file many years ago when I had to report on how many dives I had between 60 and 100 ft, etc. I laboriously transferred all my paper log books and a computer files or two into a spreadsheet that tracked things like how many dives were at night, how many were deco dives, how many were at various locations, how many used Nitrox or Trimix, etc. It now has 2720 logged dives on it....but no pool dives. I wish I had kept those, too. It is easy to keep up, even after a liveaboard or Bonaire trip with 4-5 dives a day.

Recently my cave buddy wanted to know how many cave dives we'd had together, because he doesn't keep a log and wanted to apply for Abe Davis or something. Easy, just filter for his name and cave.

I keep a copy on Dropbox. I can get at it and enter/edit with my phone using the Excel mobile app.

All in all, Shearwater Cloud and my Excel file are all I need. Dive Story is a backup....

I thought about it after I posted, DB or the like and a mobile app would be the way to go (if using Excel). At this point and looking back, if Subsurface was available when you started, do you still think you would have built the Excel? I get that it had to be done back then as there really was nothing else out there...

 

[Ben_3]

The one that’s fits with the Bluetooth computer if you are using one. I use the Shearwater app.

 

[tursiops]

I thought about it after I posted, DB or the like and a mobile app would be the way to go (if using Excel). At this point and looking back, if Subsurface was available when you started, do you still think you would have built the Excel? I get that it had to be done back then as there really was nothing else out there...

No, at the time (early 1999) any downloads from computers were rare and flaky.
And I wanted stuff logged that is not even in digital logs today, except maybe as metadata that is not always easy to get at.
I bought my first dive computer in mid-1999, an Aeris Savant, partly to avoid having to do all the paper stuff, and after I'd built the (first version of) the spreadsheet. The Aeris log was totally inadequate for what I wanted to log, not to mention the unbelievable IR interface to get the data out. The next computer was an Ocean VersaPro; better, but still inadequate for my purposes....so I kept the spreadsheet going.

So the deal now is dive, download by BT while having lunch or dinner, sync to SW Cloud when available, transfer critical info to my spreadsheet when convenient.

 

[rob.mwpropane]

No, at the time (early 1999) any downloads from computers were rare and flaky.
And I wanted stuff logged that is not even in digital logs today, except maybe as metadata that is not always easy to get at.
I bought my first dive computer in mid-1999, an Aeris Savant, partly to avoid having to do all the paper stuff, and after I'd built the (first version of) the spreadsheet. The Aeris log was totally inadequate for what I wanted to log, not to mention the unbelievable IR interface to get the data out. The next computer was an Ocean VersaPro; better, but still inadequate for my purposes....so I kept the spreadsheet going.

So the deal now is dive, download by BT while having lunch or dinner, sync to SW Cloud when available, transfer critical info to my spreadsheet when convenient.

Thank you. Nice look into what things were like compared to now. I think I take for granite all the different things we have now, but then I hear stuff like that and I'm grateful.

Like listening to how they used to shoot pictures with rolls of film, or dive without computers at all.