MARES Puck date limited?

[rhwestfall]

at least you can manually change the date in Subsurface of each dive after you download it......

There is also some "global" date manipulation I came across in it but didn't play with it..

 

[lowwall]

2006..2020? Are Pucks programed in base-14? With Y2K we at least had a rational excuse.

Programming probably started in 2003. Someone decided 4 bits was enough.

It's hard to imagine they used a 4-bit processor. More likely it's an 8-bit byte, but they neglected to declare it as unsigned?

 

[dmaziuk]

One could pack something else into the other 4 bits. We still do this for booleans often enough.

 

[lowwall]

One could pack something else into the other 4 bits. We still do this for booleans often enough.

Good point. Probably the month.

 

[Dmarco]

I have the same issue here in Western Australia. Received same advice from Mares shop who contacted Mares tech representative. It seems incredible that the early Pucks were “designed” this way no matter the reason! Sigh.....it’s the dive industry! At least here it’s always been lacklustre in terms of professionalism. I recall when I first started diving about 35 years ago scuba gear design was often driven by marketing so it presented differently to the competition and usability was secondary. A fellow diver succinctly put it “when you start diving you buy all the wrong gear!”. Nothing much has changed. Despite this I remain a Mares fan and fell in love with my old MR3 reg which I replaced with an Abyss setup. Also have Quattro Pro fins and Mission 3 console which I use with the out of date Puck. I bought the Mission 3 console from a picture and didn’t realise the compass was a smaller size to most others. I find the compass useless and on examination the magnets are loose and will move it you tap it! No wonder it’s always been wonky! I’ve now ditched the compass and cable tied the full sized compass in boot from my old Aladdin console! Love cable tie engineering. My main computer is a Puck Pro as a replacement for a Sunnto Zoop that quit. The Puck Pro is great and can even be set with the right date and they have even provided for years to come, amazing! The only minor issue is that what I assume is the DeepStop feature is not mentioned in the manual or any others I’ve found on line! It works as per the manual for my old Puck. I contacted Mares Australia about 8 months ago........sigh. Anyway I’ve decided it’s just me!

Cheers and sorry for the rant.
GOD(Grumpy Old Diver)

 

[mk_diver]

Sorry for being late.

Last year I had the same issue with my Puck after battery replacement.
Mares Puck can handle 2021+. The bug: It's not possible to set year to 2021+. Shame on the software developer .

This workaround works very well for me and tooks not more than 5 Minutes:

Set the 31st of December, 23:59 h, of the newest year you can choose. (think it was 2019 or 2020, not sure).
Now you have one minute to celebrate New Year's Eve with your Puck. Year will count up.
Change the date from 1st January to 31st December, 23:59 h. Be careful, don't touch/set the year. Otherwise you have to start from begining.
Again one minute New Year's Eve with your Puck.
Repeat until you reached the actual year and set today's day and month. That's it.

Hope this helps to increase the life cycle of some Pucks. (or other Mares computers with the same bug)

Cheers
M.

 

[rhwestfall]

Can't wait to try that....

 

[beediving]

Sorry for being late.

Last year I had the same issue with my Puck after battery replacement.
Mares Puck can handle 2021+. The bug: It's not possible to set year to 2021+. Shame on the software developer .

This workaround works very well for me and tooks not more than 5 Minutes:

Set the 31st of December, 23:59 h, of the newest year you can choose. (think it was 2019 or 2020, not sure).
Now you have one minute to celebrate New Year's Eve with your Puck. Year will count up.
Change the date from 1st January to 31st December, 23:59 h. Be careful, don't touch/set the year. Otherwise you have to start from begining.
Again one minute New Year's Eve with your Puck.
Repeat until you reached the actual year and set today's day and month. That's it.

Hope this helps to increase the life cycle of some Pucks. (or other Mares computers with the same bug)

Cheers
M.

Thank you so much! It worked!

 

[Newsrus]

Sorry.... didn't see that someone else had already posted this same solution!



There is a slightly cumbersome workaround. Set the date to 31/12/2020 and the time to 11:59pm. Give it a minute and it will then roll over to 1/Jan/2021. Do it again for 2022 and then again for 2023, then set the month,day and time.

 

[DrOzda]

I can confirm this workaround.