Diveroid - turning your smartphone into a DC and underwater camera

[Incantu75]

Hello SB,

Have you heard about this?
I just came across a video and looked it up online.
I personally would never trust my dive (and my life) to a smartphone app (I dive with a SW Perdix AI) but I can see the marketing appeal for new, freshly certified, vacation-only rec divers who only rent gear (and obviously don't own a DC) and still want to take photos/films during their dive trips.
I can only hope whoever is developing this product knows what they're doing...
Then again I've seen a lot of those rec divers renting their gear without DCs altogether, just following the local DM throughout entire dives, so how hurtful could such a device be to them?

Here's the video and some literature about it:

Diveroid housing turns your smartphone into a dive computer and underwater camera

Diveroid housing turns your smartphone into a dive computer and underwater camera
Published Nov 22, 2019 | Damien Demolder

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A Kickstarter campaign has already gathered over ten times is funding goal for a campaign that aims to produce a smartphone dive camera system that uses your smartphone to take pictures as well as display live data about the dive itself.

Diveroid is an underwater housing kit that comes with a mini dive computer and a app that turn the users smartphone into an underwater camera while using the phones screen to display dive information and maintain a log of the dive. The housing accepts multiple models of smartphone and uses a set of three physical buttons to control the phone. The app connects to the mini dive monitor and the smartphone and displays depth, time and temperature information as well as guiding the diver around precautions such as avoid decompression.

The app takes over the phone’s camera function and offers ultra-wide-angle, wide-angle, zoom and selfie shooting modes, as well as options to record video. A red-filter effect can also be applied in the app to offer real-time preview and recording that compensates for the loss of red at certain depths.

The housing is said to be good for depths of 60m and keeps a track of your dive so it can tell you at what depths each picture was taken. Images can be overlaid with data graphs and the whole dive can be shared as a logbook through the app. When you need to summon a boat the app can send a text message with your exact location.

The campaign page shows the Diveroid kit with accessories attached for lighting the subject
The Diveroid kit is available for $249 via the Kickstarter campaign but will retail from $418 once it is in full production. The first units are expected to ship in February 2020. For more information see the Diveroid Kickstarter campaign page.

 

[JackOfDiamonds]

Personally, I wouldn't take my phone diving with me, too valuable if something happens to it.

I'd just get a go-pro‍.

 

[Incantu75]

Personally, I wouldn't take my phone diving with me, too valuable if something happens to it.

I'd just get a go-pro‍.

Right, I'm totally in agreement with you, but the main feature of this housing is that it incorporates a 'mini dive computer', so I guess the appeal (for new-ish divers) would be to have a DC / camera in one package.

 

[arew+4]

Tracking depth with the pictures is a neat feature, it works on TG series cameras, but only outside the housing. If not too pricy i would consider for an old phone after an upgrade. Not ever going to use it as a primary DC though.

 

[broncobowsher]

With as buggy as phones can be, you trust it to be your dive computer now?

 

[CanadaDan]

Tracking depth with the pictures is a neat feature, it works on TG series cameras, but only outside the housing. If not too pricy i would consider for an old phone after an upgrade. Not ever going to use it as a primary DC though.

A Paralenz camera does just that. Temp and depth can be overlayed permanently or stored as subtitle files to add back in later during editing.

I suppose for people used to seeing the world live through their screen the housing makes sense lol

 

[Addicted2H2O]

Don't think I'd use it as my primary DC, but it seems like a halfway decent product with some good functionality. I can certainly see a market for it, especially with social media today and people wanting to share pics and information about the things they do. Kudos to them for adding a color correction feature for pics/video, too. They'll have to add some sort of guarantee that it's not going to flood and damage your phone, though. But if they can pull it off....could be a useful tool if the quality is there. Color me interested.

 

[BoundForElsewhere]

I think this is from the same people that do the color correction video app. cool stuff.

 

[Incantu75]

I suppose for people used to seeing the world live through their screen the housing makes sense lol

Haha I guess some people prefer staring at a screen rather than what's right in front of them.
Still, I can see one upside to this.
Over the years, I've seen so many divers (not very experienced ones I would assume) lose focus on crucial parameters of their dive - depth, time, tank pressure, their own buddy - because they were absorbed into their own camera and whatever shot they were taking at the moment. One advantage I can see from such a device is that they would have constant monitoring of their depth & dive time while filming.

 

[Jonn]

Before this, there was iGills. Same idea: waterproof phone case with a pressure sensor and a companion app with the deco algorithm and interface. iGills had its own hard buttons, this seems to have some sort of pads that touch the phones touchscreen. I thought it was a great idea but it seems they couldn’t make it go. One serious issue is the specificity of model; there’s so many phones out there and they change every other year, nobody wants to buy an expensive case like this for every new phone.
Anybody used iGills who can say how well it worked?