Cobalt compass problem and warranty service via BARE Sports

[maddog2]

After doing a 3 point compass calibration on Dec 31st, everything was fine with the compass. It kept its compass bearing throughout the week, so I did 2 dives on Saturday. I rinsed off my gear after the dives and checked the compass again. Everything was good. I checked it again last night (Sunday) and it was still good. This morning I downloaded my dives to my PC. I thought I'd check the compass just to be sure everything was still good. Unfortunately, it's not. My compass is stuck pointing South. The range is from 164 degress to 182 degrees.

I'm not sure whether downloading the dives had anything to do with the compass going askew? There are no strong magnetic fields near the computer where I placed the Cobalt. I checked for that with an analog compass. Also, there are no strong magnetic fields between where the Cobalt was placed last night and my PC.

What shall I do now? I don't want to wait another 2 months for warranty repair work.

 

[RonR]

I'm going to PM you with instructions for doing the six point calibration. This is something we considered having in the user menus as one point, but didn't think would be needed. According to the compass chip manufacturer, this procedure should only need to be done once- that's true most of the time, but not in all cases. I'm sure downloading dives did not have anything to do with it. It's hard to say what it is- one user in Australia found that his compass was knocked off by a strong magnet in the trunk of his car (a speaker) where he transported his gear. We have seen a very few of these chips that just refused to stay calibrated, and needed to be replaced. We should be able to diagnose this without any need to return the Cobalt again.

If you are running the most recent firmware this procedure will show the calibration constants, that can help us to determine what is changing.

Ron