Cobalt V1 issues

[douahe]

Hello,


I have been in Roatan for the last week doing some diving and now have had the same problem three separate times with my Cobalt. It has the newest version of firmware installed.

The first time I took it in the water after our flight down, the battery was not giving any percentage. Instead it displayed a "--%". This was both on the main screen, and if you went into "settings" "system information". At the same time this was happening, if I was on the dive screen underwater, and pushed the right arrow button to turn on the compass, the font sizes, screen orientation etc changed, but there was no actual compass displayed. However, if I selected the right arrow again to set a new reading, that submenu would pop up with the option to select a new heading, 180 degrees etc... However setting a new heading did not bring up the full compass display. I also noticed that the NDL counter was not consistent. At the same depth, it would fluctuate from 20 minutes, to 144 minutes int he space of a few seconds. This was at the relatively shallow depth of 45'. About 3/4 through that dive, the compass screen came back, and it appeared to be functioning normally again. However this has happened twice more through the week. Today on our last dive of the week before heading home, it did the same thing during the SI between dives. This time however it never did start working properly again.

I would appreciate any suggestions/feedback that might help fix this problem.

Thank you!

Helgi

 

[RonR]

In the Cobalt 1 there is a chip that translates between both the compass and the fuel gauge and the processor. If you don’t see the display for either of those, it means that chip is having trouble with the communications with one or the other of those devices. It’s most likely that the fuel gauge on the Cobalt is not providing consistent output, and that is also hanging up communications with the compass, as they are on the same buss. Putting the Cobalt to sleep and waking it may alter the timing enough to restore communications, but if this is happening consistently it is probably a problematic fuel gauge chip. That would be a warranty/ repair issue, and I would contact Atomic.


This kind of communications translation is something that is not needed with the processor in the Cobalt 2, it’s one of the differences between the generations.

The NDL comment is puzzling. While it wouldn't be unusual to see NDL's bounce around some at shallow depths as calculations update, that seems excessive. We would have to look at the profile to check, though. If you have the most recent firmware your NDL's are stored in the log with each dive segment, so you can see what they were by scrolling through the dive in the profile screen.

Ron

 

[douahe]

Thank you for your quick response Ron. I will take the computer into the shop when I get back to Seattle. Hopefully this can get fixed without too much fuss.

Helgi