Computer choice for Euro divers

[drakcheslav]

No problem. I hope this thread helps some other poor soul which doesn't have the pleasure of having a shearwater representative in their vicinity.


Searching for a good DC, i realized something. A lot of people buy stuff they don't need and never use and give their opinion about using them.

It's not that their opinion is not right, it's that it's incomplete.

Most of the suunto core users I've found online are ones that use them in recreational way. So the deco is never used, and a lot of tech divers never would touch one. On the other hand, you have a recreational conputers that cost north of 6-700€.

In English there is not a lot of info about alternatives for Perdix, and while it is a De facto best by virtue of most people use it scenario, it's not accessible to anyone. So the usual "sub 500$/€ buy a used Perdix" is not applicable to everyone.

And buying one, which is a massive chunk of money, and not having a support, is not quite a smart idea.


So, I hope other people use this thread to share their recommendation and ask questions about them. And I hope it doesn't devolve into Shearwater vs. the World thread.

 

[JMBL]

Well, I'm arriving a bit late, but you might find this useful. Here, I relay some personal experience and buddies' experience, from a French point of view :

- my personal choice : a Shearwater Petrel 1. Why ? The year I bought it, I was hesitating between the Petrel 2 and an OSTC (can't remember the which one) but I found a brand new Petrel 1 at a bargain price, having the electronic compass of the Petrel 2 wasn't really a must for me. I was more interested in mixed gas diving, especially trimix. Used it on 261 dives (220h) : air ndl, deep air, nitrox (bottom and deco), trimix, clear/murky water, caving etc and I'm very satisfied with it. So satisfied that I'll ordered another one (Petrel 2 in fact) hardwired to my rebreather. My training'll start next month.

- my buddies :

* regarding the Suunto Eon (core or otherwise) : only one still uses it. The guy dives only air, with short decos. The ones who did trimix with it found it not convenient : didn't like the algorithm, nor the lack of flexibility concerning the deco stop. Everyone of them sold it.

* OSTC and its clone Seawooch : they just swear by it, are very satisfied, and wouldn't change it for all the gold in the kingdom... Still I know many people are grumbling about the reliability of HW computers on the net (for that matter Shearwater has its bunch of complaints too). As far as I'm concerned, I'm not a big fan of the interface, but that's just me.

* Divecomputer EU : that one is a big no no. Looks great on paper, but is utterly unreliable, and customer is non existant. Met a LDS owner who sold it when it was first introduced on the French market : all the units failed very quickly and he had to deal with the disgruntled customers on his own...

 

[drakcheslav]

Awesome. Thanks for your point of view.

I took that in consideration, but in the end shearwater is too inconvenient to service, and if there was a easy way to do it I'd go for it.b

 

[flymolo]

Anecdotally, I've recently switched from shearwater to a divesoft freedom, and I'm very happy with the choice so far.

 

[drakcheslav]

Anecdotally, I've recently switched from shearwater to a divesoft freedom, and I'm very happy with the choice so far.

Sweet, do you mind giving your quick thoughts about the differences, why you switched and such? What do you like more, or dislike?

 

[Sunn]

Anecdotally, I've recently switched from shearwater to a divesoft freedom, and I'm very happy with the choice so far.

could you explain a bit more about the divesoft ?

 

[Subcooled]

Divecomputer.eu - multifunctional dive computer but don't go for it. Although in theory it looks like a good computer and I think it fulfills all your requests (except AI), the product has a lot of problems (some important, some less so)

Then tell us what these problems are.

 

[stepfen]

Then tell us what these problems are.

Have a look here:
Reviews on Triton's Abacus / divecomputer.eu anyone?
To me the most important problem is lack of customer support and care. Their official excuse is (I have this in written from them) that they are a small company hence they can't handle things faster.
Apart from the things you can see in the thread above (cracked screens, parts becoming rusty) here are few more things I have noticed:
- for about 1/3 of my dives (mostly rec) the device somehow decides not to show a SS counter at 6m. Not a big deal. The big deal to me is that I have reported to their ticket system this particular problem directly after I bought my unit (September 2019 or so) as I noticed it from my first dives and I haven't heard from them a single word about it as yet!!!
- there is no way after a dive to see/recall the gas that was used during the dive. The build in logbook shows no such info and nothing relevant is exported to the log software. BTW I use subsurface which is one of the 2 programs they suggest to use.
- Although I keep my unit in fresh water for some time and rinse it thoroughly at the end of each diving day, once the unit dries salt crystals form all around the seam of the case. It means that somehow sea water penetrates the seam. Again not a big deal, but it is indicative of the quality.
- There have been few hardware versions of the unit, and few software versions. My unit was bought after a long wait for the "new" hardware version (I think they call the new version as hw v3) to become available. Nevertheless once I got the unit it was initially reporting that it was the older hardware version (v2!!!). I asked them directly once I got it to tell me what version my unit is - still haven't got a reply!!! Few months later a software update (the only one since September 2019) became available. The update came with 2 different versions. One for hw v2 one for hw v3. My unit was reporting hw v2, but I bought it after the long wait for v3 to become available. Hence I assumed it was v3 and installed the sw version for v3. With the new update my unit now shows that it is the newer hardware version (v3) !!! Go figure!! Again I understand there might be such problems and glitches (although I think for such serious equipment there shouldn't be that many), but keeping quiet from the side of the manufacturer is not right.
- there are also few less important things. For example the number of necessary button presses can be greatly reduced for some tasks (eg dive downloading) by better/smarter cursor handling. Also few digits of the screen are occasionally flickering during operation and things like this.

That's the things that come to my mind now - I am sure I forget few.

Keep in mind that they advertise and price the item as fully functioning - not a beta test. And I wouldn't bother with all these if corrective actions were taken by their side, but I haven't seen anything other than a software update that didn't solve any of these since September 2019.

Latest news update from them was that they have a lot of plans for 2020, but for now they focus on handling the COVID-19 thing. So it seems that at least several more months will pass without much development.

 

[Subcooled]

- there is no way after a dive to see/recall the gas that was used during the dive. The build in logbook shows no such info and nothing relevant is exported to the log software.

They actually built a dive computer that does not record gas switches in the log?

I can tolerate many issues, but not logging the gas used hampers further analysis of dives. Of course we know when we switched gas but important changes in settings during the dive should be logged automatically anyway.

 

[stepfen]

They actually built a dive computer that does not record gas switches in the log?
I can tolerate many issues, but not logging the gas used hampers further analysis of dives. Of course we know when we switched gas but important changes in settings during the dive should be logged automatically anyway.

It took me some time to respond because I wanted to check things out. For the time being I don't do dives with real gas switches so I didn't have such profiles to experiment. Today during my dives I did few "virtual" gas switches (no actual gas switch, but I told my computer that I did switch gasses). Hence now I can confirm that indeed no gas switch events are shown anywhere. Nothing relevant in the computer's logbook and nothing is shown in Subsurface either.

I want to believe/hope that gas switches are actually recorded, but libdivecomputer (the library that is responsible to "translate" the data output from the computer to subsurface) is not recognizing them properly hence ignores them. "Extended data exchange between divecomputer and external e-logbooks" is in their 2020 todo list. I hope gas switch reporting will be part of this and that their todo list will have better luck that the usual new year resolutions.

As a side note, thanks to this discussion I fount an indirect way to detect the actual gas used as well as gas switches but it is far from ideal: the computer can show ppO2 profiles. There gas switches appear as sudden pikes or deeps and hence they can be spotted (assuming gasses with different enough ppO2 and smooth enough profiles). Also with some calculations the actual gas used can also be calculated from the ppO2 graph!!

Learning something new every day...