Creating a dive computer with Location and Communications

[Manjula Ellepola]

HI Scuba Board

This is my first post here. I am the CTO of DSPComm (www.dspcomm.com).

We are specialists in underwater wireless communication products and have been active for over 15 years in various industries.

We want to see the interest level of divers for a dive computer product that incorporates location/navigation as well as underwater messaging.

If a forearm worn device is available the size of a standard iphone but thicker incorporating the above functions with a battery life of 12 hours and communication range of 1km, would this be of interest to divers?

Would you consider such a device making your dive more enjoyable and safer? Would this be of interest to normal scuba diving or more to specialist divers?

Any comments and feedback would be appreciated.



Best regards
Manjula

 

[LandonL]

Depends on the price...

 

[Compressor]

Please provide more details. Currently the market is flooded with many dive computers some of them which are top notch. What will be the niche?

 

[LandonL]

What will be the niche?

I am guessing it would be the addition of underwater navigation/GPS and text messaging, but I would be willing to wager the cost of this dive computer would be well above what most people would be willing to pay for such a device.

 

[Manjula Ellepola]

we would target the price from USD1,000 may be up to USD1,500 depending on the uptake. It could go sub USD1,000 if really popular..
My real question is would you find such a device useful? Would it make your diving a better experience?

 

[Manjula Ellepola]

Yes as Landoni above says it is the addition of navigation and messaging.

 

[LandonL]

we would target the price from USD1,000 may be up to USD1,500 depending on the uptake. It could go sub USD1,000 if really popular..
My real question is would you find such a device useful? Would it make your diving a better experience?

I am sure a lot of recreational divers would find it useful, but at $1000 you are only going to sell to a limited number of divers who have a lot of disposable income, think somewhere in the order of maybe a few hundred units, if you are lucky.

At $1500.... I think you can probably measure your sales in the double digits.


You would be a new entry into the market, with no experience building dive computers and implementing decompression algorithms, so people might have reservations about your ability to do it.

The current market leading computer sells for $880.. you want to compete?.... make a product that adds more features at a lower price.

Define how many units you would need to sell for it be 'really popular'?

 

[RayfromTX]

we would target the price from USD1,000 may be up to USD1,500 depending on the uptake. It could go sub USD1,000 if really popular..
My real question is would you find such a device useful? Would it make your diving a better experience?

Yes

But

The real answer is far more involved than a simple answer to a simple question. There are technical and even philiosophical barriers beyond the cost/demand issues. All of the challenges would create lengthy discussions but it sounds like you are asking for a simple answer. so......

Yes

Maybe

 

[stiebs]

My real question is would you find such a device useful? Would it make your diving a better experience?

What is your intent on the functionality of the navigation and communication?

Based on your existing product line up, I assume the communication component would be some sort of digital acoustic transmission. The usefulness of such a device would depend greatly upon its usability. If it featured a handful of preconfigured messages that could be transmitted by pressing a small selection of programmable buttons, divers already have a fairly universal sign language to achieve this.

If it incorporated a smart full text entry, there may be some benefit to communicate a message that cannot be easily done via hand signals - but its usefulness comes down to the usability and practicality of the input mechanism.

What is your vision for location / navigation capability? As you are no doubt aware, GPS is good to tag your surface location, but useless once you're only a couple of centimeters underwater. There is another thread on this forum discussing another underwater navigation device, and the technical feasibility of such a device.

 

[Manjula Ellepola]

Thanks for the feedback so far. The navigation function would be distance and direction to target. The following I saw on youtube:

A group goes down to dive. Suddenly one diver notices that he is out of air. The others are slightly in front of him. He tries to alert them by banging his camera. The group in front does not hear him and continues on. He takes the decision to do an emergency ascent. He surfaces about 500m from a boat. He now tries to get attention of the boat with no luck. He is lucky about 15mins later another boat finds him. This could have easily ended up in tragedy.

In this instance, hand signals were useless. With a comms system he could have easily alerted the other divers as well as the boat. They could have found him within minutes with the location system. How much would you value a device that could potentially diffuse a very stressful and possibly dangerous situation? It seems to me that scuba divers rely to a great extent on proper training and hope that the team will do the right thing. But things could go wrong and get out of hand very quickly.

I would like your thoughts on the above. Is this a very isolated incident or such things routinely happen but ends well in most instances? Your answers are valued for our decision to come up with such a product.