New Apple Watch is a dive computer

[mattfish]

I got the Apple Watch Ultra because I was ready to replace my older Apple Watch, and this offered dive capabilities as a bonus. I took the watch diving in Roatan at depths up to 88 feet, and it operated perfectly. At the time the Oceanic+ app was not out yet, so I couldn't test that, but the Depth app prooved accurate for depth, time, and temp.

I now have the Oceanic+ app and have played with it a little on land. (I'll be taking in on some spring dives between xmas and new year). One big thing I think they left out was recording your air. I emailed them about that and they said it's something they are working on for a future update, and to record my start and end air pressures in the "notes" section. I think the logbook part of the app is junk right now, and needs attention. Fortunately I use MacDive for my "real" log where I sync my Teric. I don't expect them to match the features of MacDive, but basic stuff that you'd even find in a paper logbook should have been there on day one.

To be clear, I love the Apple Watch Ultra, and I think the hardware is great. I want to see better dive computer apps though.

 

[Skunky]

I’ve got quite a few dives on my aw ultra. i like it. i’ll give a better write up one day but one thing i think is bad about the oceanic aw app is that if you don’t hit “i am fit and ready to dive” when you start your dive, it will not record your dive. i purposely did not hit “i am ready to dive” for a whole day of diving and it never recorded any of the dives that day. i then did one where i was down 30ft and hit “i am ready to dive and the dive log says i started my dive at 30ft of depth. i find that quite dangerous.

oh, if you raise your apple watch arm quickly the app counts that as a fast ascent rate.

 

[ThatDogDontHunt]

I’ve got quite a few dives on my aw ultra. i like it. i’ll give a better write up one day but one thing i think is bad about the oceanic aw app is that if you don’t hit “i am fit and ready to dive” when you start your dive, it will not record your dive. i purposely did not hit “i am ready to dive” for a whole day of diving and it never recorded any of the dives that day. i then did one where i was down 30ft and hit “i am ready to dive and the dive log says i started my dive at 30ft of depth. i find that quite dangerous.

oh, if you raise your apple watch arm quickly the app counts that as a fast ascent rate.


View attachment 759268
View attachment 759269

I think this is the first report of this "I am ready" feature? I could be wrong? Any other users have feedback?

This appears to be as stupid as my ancient single button puck that required a button press just before hitting the water. Pressing at depth was useless. I got rid of that dive computer primarily because of that feature. You could press ahead of time, but it had an undocumented timeout. If you pressed too soon, it times out and would not register your dive. After several trips from 15 feet down back to the surface to press the button I got fed up...

 

[KenGordon]

I took mine on a dive along with a Perdix and a HelO2.
The display is very nice, especially viewed off centre. Directly on it is similarly functional to the Perdis, but at an angle it is much better due to the lack of an extra layer of glass in front.

Oceanic+ is quite finicky about stops, I was following the Perdix and changed to 80% for a bit of deco at 9. Having moved up with the Perdix, Oceanic+ wanted another minute and got upset, lots of vibrating and so forth. Eventually it decided to count down the stop at 6 (and then 3) and it was fine getting to the surface. By the time I did a full 5 minute safety stop on the Perdix, Oceanic+ cleared and was into its own safety stop which I skipped. I had it set to 50/85 to match the Perdix. In Planning it game me a surprisingly short NDL, but I’ll need to double check to be sure.

Oh, and the 24m/minute ascent rate I think is rather bogus.

 

[Belzelbub]

i then did one where i was down 30ft and hit “i am ready to dive and the dive log says i started my dive at 30ft of depth. i find that quite dangerous.

At the very least, that’s weird. If it doesn’t start actually tracking a dive until you hit that point, it does sound dangerous. If it does actually track, but just doesn start saving to the log, then not dangerous, but probably annoying.

I can set my Garmin to pool mode. If I do, it will track dives as normal, it just won’t save to the log.

oh, if you raise your apple watch arm quickly the app counts that as a fast ascent rate.

Yeah, I noticed that on my Garmin as well. Not just raising my arm though, I just noticed the Garmin is a lot more sensitive on ascent than my Perdix. The first several dives had it buzzing, and the log showed some ascent rate violations. Perdix log had no violations. Took a bit to get used to it, but was able to slow my ascents a bit, and the alarms don’t happen quite so much.

View attachment 759282

Looks like it locked you out for 48 hours for a stop it thinks you missed.

The different deco obligations is odd behavior if the GF settings were indeed the same. Almost sounds like there may be additional conservatism applied on top of the GF. So 50/85 might not really be 50/85.

 

[mattfish]

The beginning of the dive tutorial shows the pre-dive screens. In order to get past them, you need to tap the action button to acknowledge you are ready to dive. Like @Belzelbub said, I hope it's tracking your profile even if its not logging it if you miss that button tap.

 

[tridacna]

Looks like an Oceanic issue. Does this occur when you do a dive without the Oceanic app?

 

[scubadada]

...The different deco obligations is odd behavior if the GF settings were indeed the same. Almost sounds like there may be additional conservatism applied on top of the GF. So 50/85 might not really be 50/85.

Could someone run a quick check by running the dive planner for a clean 1st dive? 60-130 feet with air or 32% at a known GF high would do.

 

[mattfish]

Could someone run a quick check by running the dive planner for a clean 1st dive? 60-130 feet with air or 32% at a known GF high would do.

GF set to 40/85 to match the "Med" settings on my Teric:

EAN32:
MOD 111 ft.
60 ft = 75 min
70 ft = 51 min
80 ft = 35 min
90 ft = 26 min
100 ft = 19 min
110 ft = 15 min

And it won't let you go past 111 ft.

 

[scubadada]

GF set to 40/85 to match the "Med" settings on my Teric:

EAN32:
MOD 111 ft.
60 ft = 75 min
70 ft = 51 min
80 ft = 35 min
90 ft = 26 min
100 ft = 19 min
110 ft = 15 min

And it won't let you go past 111 ft.

Close to, but not exactly, the NDLs off my Teric when run at 1011 mbar and a GF high of 85. Questions regarding implementation of Buhlmann ZH-L16C with GF has come up in discussion before.

60 ft = 73 min
70 ft = 51 min
80 ft = 37 min
90 ft = 27 min
100 ft = 22 min
110 ft = 18 min
120 ft = 14 min
130 ft = 13 min

Most NDL planners will let you go to a pO2 of 1.6