Question Less Tedious Ways To Log Dives?

[tursiops]

A scribe you say! I like it. Now I'm thinking more of a sidekick to follow behind the OP and sing songs recounting prior dives.

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You are on it!

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Shearwater app and Bluetooth connection to your phone. Dives are logged and if you want to add details then you have that option. Dive logs are meh. Mine are logged ONLY because my computer does it for me.

This!

Logging dives using Shearwater cloud is a couple of button clicks, 30 secs or so to download via bluetooth and then enter the location, site and sometimes buddy fields. Boom. Done. The fields even auto-populate from past entries as I start to type them so that I don't ever need to fully type any location, site or buddy more than once.

Just get a decent dive computer and your ADHD won't be an issue.

 

[mcohen1021]

it tracks location and each dive displays with a map

That is freaking awesome

 

[Ana]

I find it soul numbingly boring to log dives with pen & paper or even most digital apps ...

I agree with the first line of your post.

For some people the act of logging the dive is as much fun as the dive itself, I'm not one of them.
If you aren't into it, the format won't make a huge difference. I've worn out computers with several hundred dives, without ever downloading any of the dives.
After the dive is done, I only care about the next dive coming up.

 

[scrane]

I agree with the first line of your post.

For some people the act of logging the dive is as much fun as the dive itself, I'm not one of them.
If you aren't into it, the format won't make a huge difference. I've worn out computers with several hundred dives, without ever downloading any of the dives.
After the dive is done, I only care about the next dive coming up.

I'm the same way. I like the fact that my Perdix logs my dives to show an Operator if he needs to see some dive history. So far I've never been asked.
Lots of Operators list the weeks dives on a whiteboard. I'll sometimes take a photo to remind myself of interesting sites.

 

[Belzelbub]

These are my ideas so far to automate logging dives, and maybe even make it fun.

I guess if you want to do all that, go for it. Sounds a lot like reinventing the wheel.

You want mindnumpingly boring? Try watching an entire dive shot from a gopro.

Precisely. Regardless of how long the dive is, I like to keep the videos from those dives down to a few minutes in length. Often I’ll cut two dives down into one video. Unless there was a lot of interesting stuff going on, the entire video might be a total of 5 minutes.

I really don’t see the problem with updating a couple things. I dive with a Shearwater Perdix AI and a Garmin Descent MK2s. As soon as the Garmin reconnects with my phone, the dive log including location information is transferred with no effort on my part. I download the SW log to Subsurface on my phone. That takes a bit more effort. I need to press a couple buttons on the DC, and a couple taps on the phone and it’s there. I then update weights, and a couple other parameters. Unless there was something truly unusual, the notes section is blank.

When I’m home, I’ll import the Garmin log to Subsurface. This links both profiles, adds GPS, heart rate, etc. Then I get to work on editing the footage. That’s the real work. Subsurface will allow me to save the video url or photos to the dive log if I feel like it.


Edit to add: I definitely understand the boring aspect of traditional paper logs. Not only is it boring, I found them to be useless as well. To me, the value of the log is in cataloging information for later retrieval. Thumbing through a paper log to look for a particular dive is not going to work. At least with an electronic log, I can search for keywords, locations, temperature, etc. That’s pretty useful if I can’t remember the weight I used in freshwater with an AL80 as that’s not my usual setup.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I understand that most modern dive computers log the coordinates, depths and duration of the dive: but what if you want to add more detail for your own memories as well as posterity and sharing with friends?

As someone suggested, voice-to-text is probably the best option for this. Just use standard logging software that has a section for adding text notes.

The thing about logging dives is that as an individual racks up the dives over the years, what information they want to keep track of may change, and may not be the same for another individual. For some dives, sure, I might want to record the maximum depth or time or whatever, but for other dives I might not. Sometimes I record what exposure protection I wore, but other times it would be obvious to me based on where I dived. After years of recreational diving, I often don't care what the exact depth and time were; I know they were in a certain range because my dives are always in that range. I don't need to accumulate a database of the numbers for each of a thousand dives that are all in the range of 0-130 feet and 45-60 minutes, or see a graph of how my depth changed over the dive. Really, at this point in my dive experience, if I'm doing a week of diving at a tropical resort or on a liveaboard, I mostly just log the fact that I did the dive (the name of the site) and any unusual things I saw on the dive or that happened on the dive. I tend to write more about the people I dived with or met on my trip, and whether I liked the logistics, lodging, etc., than the dives themselves, and that is an example of just how individual this logging stuff can be. Nowadays I write this in a spiral-bound book, though it would obviously lend itself to electronic format if I felt like taking a computer with me on these trips.

 

[doctormike]

1) I love logging my dives. The actual data recording stuff that comes in handy in the future (gear and weighting) is pretty quick (with MacDive anyway). And the core of my log - my notes - is where I get to describe what was cool, difficult, interesting or unique about each dive. About errors that I need to remember. About new techniques - what worked, what didn't. It's an essay, a journal.

2) I can't think of a scenario where I would willingly watch any video captured by a camera wasn't handheld. Well, maybe if you found the Loch Ness monster or something. And then just a few seconds.

3) Logging is for you! So if the OP likes the idea of building and using this system, they should absolutely go for it... it sounds like they would take a lot of pride in getting all of those interacting systems to work together. Have fun!

 

[azstinger11]

Primarily I use logging for weighting (so what I was diving, where, how much lead).

But lately been trying to use some of the stuff from Gareth Lock and record what went well and what didn't at a high level. Just to see if I notice any trends.

 

[tursiops]

Primarily I use logging for weighting (so what I was diving, where, how much lead).

But lately been trying to use some of the stuff from Gareth Lock and record what went well and what didn't at a high level. Just to see if I notice any trends.

Probably not going to get that info off a GoPro video....