New diving related (log book) iPhone App

[Crush]

What would people think about having some user defined "gear setups" that you could use as a starting place. Once click would select all the gear in that defined "setup" and then you could customize it from there.

I may not understand you, but if my interpretation is correct, that would be too restrictive.

My current log book is an excel spreadsheet. Weight placement is handled by three blank spaces which are defined by me as "top cam," "bottom cam," and "belt." I just have to enter "8 / 8 / 6" or something like that. The spreadsheet sums the total weight for me.

Thermal protection is a huge part of my spreadsheet/logbook. It is divided into body area, thermal protection used on that part, and was that part cold, good, or too hot. I just click a bunch of boxes to indicate what combination I wore and whether or not the insulation was appropriate:

• feet
  • wet boots
  • 1 pair socks (dry)
  • 2 pair socks (dry)
  • cold / good / too hot
• hands
  • wet gloves (thin)
  • wet gloves (thick)
  • dry gloves (one liner)
  • dry gloves (two liners)
  • cold / good / too hot
• body
  • 3mm top
  • 3mm bottom
  • 7mm top
  • 7mm bottom
  • liner (dry)
  • 100 wt polartec (dry)
  • 200 wt polartec (dry)
  • cold / good / too hot
• head
  • hood
  • cold / good / too hot

If you could include the ability to choose custom gear setup to specify insulation by body part and whether that body part was too hot / good / cold at the given dive conditions I would love it.

 

[Dark Eternal]

It would not add any restrictions, simply give you a template to start with. Let me try to explain better:

When you are entering a new dive and you press the set equipment button, a popup comes up. It has the options of starting with a blank slate just like version 1.0 does where you select every piece of gear you used in the dive. The other option will be to start with a template that you, the user, has defined. All it does is pre-select the gear in that template to start with. From there you can deselect or add more gear in the same list as before. Basically you are just gaining a starting point. For instance, when I cave dive I use almost the exact same gear every time at this point. I could make a cave template and start from there. If I did not use the same backup lights I could deselect the ones that the template selected and add the ones I did take. The user would be able to make and edit their own templates, and there would be no limit to how many there were.

What I am trying to do is make it so you have to tap the screen less without loosing flexibility and adding too much complication. Making subcategories like you mentioned would add taps, not remove them, although it would help in organization. Maybe I can simply group the gear in sections for organization and still have the templates, although this could make upgrading older versions a bit difficult since the gear does not have a section set yet.

As far as weight goes, this is only how you distribute weight. What about sidemounters who put weight on their shoulders, or people with doubles who use a V-weight, or people with ankle weights. While those categories would work for you, they may not work for someone else. I am trying to make the app general enough that it will work for almost anyone. I do not want to make 10 categories dedicated just to weight - that is way overly complicated in my opinion.

This is why I wanted to get this out there and get some feedback. My opinion may not be the opinion of the users, which in the end is what matters. What does everyone think?

Thanks again for the feedback, it has got me thinking about how to improve these areas that I did not even realize were an area that needed work before.

I am well into development of 2.0 and about half of the features added have been user requested ones. There will be several features that as far as I know NO other mobile dive log app offers.

 

[Dark Eternal]

Here are sneak peak pics of a few new 2.0 features.

Here is a show of the personal data field. You can add as many certifications as you like and when touched they bring up a screen with photos of the card (if you provided photos).

This shows support for separate tank pressures for sidemount or independent double tank configurations.

Rebreather support can be turned on or off in a settings page. If it is off the rebreather dive switch does not even appear. Here it is on and the switch for this particular dive is turned on and showing the rebreather fields that appear. The rebreather list is completely customizable just like equipment, activities etc... were before.

This shows the screen that is brought up when you select gear now. Selecting empty setup will act just like before and selecting common setup brings you to the next page where you can select custom templates you make.

Here is the graphically unfinished screen where you select your custom setups/templates. Simply tap the setup and it brings you to the normal gear selection page with the items in that setup pre-selected (you can still unselect them - it is just a starting point)
http://homepage.mac.com/darketernal/DiveBookPro/Beta/IMG_0055.png[/img

This is what making a custom "setup"/template for gear looks like. You select what you want in it.
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/darketernal/DiveBookPro/Beta/IMG_0054.png


There are several other new features I am not quite ready to show yet.

 

[Crush]

I understand the default gear now. Nice.

Any chance that there can be a default thermal protection page, similar to the default equipment page, but each user-defined field will be capable of being selected (as in the default equipment) plus there will be a cold / good / too hot slider beside each user-defined entry so that you can indicate whether your gloves, for instance, were adequate under those conditions? Perhaps the surface temp, temp at depth, and depth can appear at the top of the thermal protection page? Just a though...

 

[Dark Eternal]

I can certainly code that, I will just have to figure out how to upgrade the users database. Any thermal protection you entered into the equipment database would have to be transfered over and the only way I can think of doing that is having the user manually select what items to transfer over which seems messy. Opinions anyone? At major upgrades would you mind having to manually select a few things when running the new version for the 1st time?

 

[Crush]

If you make a separate thermal protection page a setup option which can be enabled or not then you can either manually move over the entries from equipment or not.

 

[Dark Eternal]

I'll play with it a bit and see what I can come up with.

 

[NeptunusRex]

I will say I like the app. It is allot more customizable and in depth than the others I've downloaded. At the price it's certainly going to beat out the others once word gets out. I'm sure it's already in the works but the dive buddy from contacts feature would be nice.

 

[Dark Eternal]

Yeah I can add dive buddy from contacts if people want. I did NOT want to have it make a new contact on your phone from a dive buddy. I know I dive with enough random people that I certainly do not want them all contacts on my phone.

 

[Dark Eternal]

I am going to try and distribute beta testers a build this week. I could use maybe 1 or 2 more testers, so if you are interested let me know.