How many of you have had a dive computer fail?

[undrwater]

Failures (all during the dive):
Suunto [Mosquito l Vyper l Vytec l Gekko]
All of these had sensor failures. Fortunately I didn't pay for all of them.

Working without error:
Suunto D9 (i replace batteries myself)
Shearwater Petrel (still quite new to me)

 

[MB NZ]

Two failures/errors after 15 years diving/700+ dives.

1. Aladin Pro Ultra - set to 21%, around 5 minutes in to the dive, the settings spontaneously changed to 28%. Very bizarrely, exactly the same thing happened to my buddy who was using the same computer. It was a one off event that I cannot explain.

2. Suunto Vytec - the depth sensor had been malfunctioning to varying degrees over several dives, then it lost it totally.

As a solo diver, I always dive with two computers and if it's a big dive, a bottom timer as well.

 

[fred14]

We own in our "diver family" (3 divers) 3 Suuntos, 1 Favor (really old), 1 Gecko and 1 Vyper. None of them ever failed. But we did have 2 Cressi Archimede, both of them failing sooner or later. The first one did not want to go into diving mode after descending, the 2nd computer suddenly went blank during the dive (battery was ok).

 

[mruseless]

I had an Aeris Epic fail on a dive, battery compartment flooded so probably my fault. I was on a liveaboard trip in Palau, but luckily I always dive with 2 computers on liveaboard trips so no worries. I also run tables based on average depth just in case. I've also had a transmitter fail due to battery and recently a Suunto transmitter failed for unknown reasons. After several dives where it repeatedly lost connection, I removed it and haven't used a transmitter since.

 

[Six Feet Under]

My DG03 started calling for a deco stop as soon as I hit 103 feet yesterday... I'd been down there literally less than two minutes (had a digital watch as a back-up bottom timer, and my NDL, safety stop, etc. written on a slate. First dive of the day, haven't been in at least three weeks, have no idea what its problem was, but I've primarily used it as depth gauge in the past and have never been deeper than 50 feet until yesterday.

 

[antattack]

My Cochrane Nemesis+ was an aptly named air integrated, wireless computer. It frequently lost connection during a dive and then would mysteriously come back moments later. I still have it, but am unwilling to sell it to an innocent victim. The internal NVRAM battery went dead on the computer and Cochrane no longer supports this computer. It's just as well. Great technology poorly implemented.

I also flooded the battery compartment of my Suunto Cobra II. Too bad, it was a simple and reliable air integrated computer.

My Atomic Cobalt has never actually died, but the magnets in the control interface became unreliable about three months ago, after two years of use and about 100 dives. I guess it's a failure because I could not access the integrated compass, and I was counting on that function. Atomic has since cheerfully fixed that problem for me. Than you Atomic!

 

[CamG]

Failures:
Suunto , Mosquito
Nitek , Duo

Not failed;
ShearWater Predator

It was a deco dive that both failed at the same time.
It was a the reason I bought the
Shearwater Predator which even though battery has gotten weak not failed!
Sorry if you are doing deco without a bullet proof computer you better have a good dive watch and depth gauge!

CamG

 

[PacificXplorer]

My DG03 started calling for a deco stop as soon as I hit 103 feet yesterday... I'd been down there literally less than two minutes (had a digital watch as a back-up bottom timer, and my NDL, safety stop, etc. written on a slate. First dive of the day, haven't been in at least three weeks, have no idea what its problem was, but I've primarily used it as depth gauge in the past and have never been deeper than 50 feet until yesterday.

I've made over a 100 dives with the DG03, which has given me an opportunity to compare it against other computers and tables. I have found that it can be quite conservative on deeper dives, and that it may be necessary to modify the default settings using a computer in order to get more realistic numbers. Even after modifying my DG03's programming, it was still pretty conservative. Basically I adjusted it so that it was the same level of conservatism as my Petrel is on the medium conservatism setting. Of course, this was necessary in order to have a functional backup computer as well. My primary dive buddy modified his computers to do the same, so now our numbers pretty much all match. The AI adds a bit more reliability in terms of the numbers, but this is a trade-off as it is also a potential failure point (thus up to the individual diver which pair of benefit and risk they prefer to have).

 

[darushin]

I've been doing tons of diving related reading and have got a question about PDC failure. I know and practice the "one is none, two is one" philosophy in other aspects of life and believe in redundancy and will be doing that more in diving as I delve into it more. I hear everyone saying/asking, what if your PDC failed? So my question is how many of you have had a dive comp failure while diving? I don't consider a dead battery or flooding due to an improperly reinstalled o-ring a failure for my purposes, just a genuine, non user induced equipment failure. Especially of tech computers.

ETA
If you have had a failure and don't mind, please elaborate.
If you haven't had one would you like DM Tom did say how long you've been using your comp and maybe the model, if you don't mind?

I have never had a failure on a technical (ie deco/overhead) dive, but I have had a Aeries Datamask fail on me on a recreational dive at 100 ft. The computer completely shutdown and all info from it was lost. Since it was a recreational dive, i didn't have a backup so I was more or less flying blind as they say. Wasn't much of a panic really, I remember taking my time to casually swim back to the ascent line and go up and do the safety stop using the 3 minute countdown of my buddy as a guide. Was never worried because I knew approximately how much gas I had when it went dark and a good idea of the NDL time I had.

 

[rsdiver1]

My Scubapro Smartcom failed after only 50 dives, and when I sent to Scuba pro to make good they basically said FU, we'll give you 35% off retail on a Galileo. Obviously, the last Scubapro failed so I'm sure as hell not going to buy another one from them; there are just too many other good alternatives to take this kind of risk.