Petrel temp

[Maule]

Just got my new Petrel wet and I love it. I do have 1 question. My water temp display showed between 86-88 degrees while everyone else's showed water temp at 81-82 degrees. Is this a known issue? Is there a fix? And yes before someone asks I did view it underwater when I kept seeing the high readings so it wasnt air temp.

 

[whaylonsmithers]

Mine's been up and down between 85-90 all month. Though I don't think its the device. Someone just turned up the water temp.

 

[GregSaiz]

Funny, my Petrel always registers a few degrees warmer than everyone else.

 

[Safety Stop]

Any updates from Shearwater on that problem?

 

[Dr. Lecter]

What problem? My Petrel and Predator always match up, and in any event I don't need my computer to tell me the temperature of the water in which I've immersed my body. If it's warm, cold, or in the middle...I already know.

 

[Oldbear]

I emailed them and asked the same question. Their response back was' "they know about the problem but it is not very high up on their things to do list."

Hi Michael,

There are two issues involved in the temperature reading. The first is that the pressure and temperature sensor is in the middle of the case and isn't in the water. It is slow to react because of the mass of the case. On longer dives, it will reach maximum accuracy after about 15 minutes.

But we have noticed that many of the sensors seem to read about 2 degrees too high. We don't have any explanation for that. The sensors are digital and we calculate the temperature according to the specification of the manufacturer.

We have an action item to spend more time evaluating this issue, but high temperature accuracy appears to be low on the priority list for most of our customers.

Bruce

 

[Safety Stop]

Hey Dr. Lecter,when you paided 1K for a new toy, dont you want it to be 100% funcional????

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Yep, and my Petrel and Predator both are. The digital temperature reading does what it's supposed to do - give me a pretty good record of the water temp on a given dive.

If you care about +/- 2 degrees of temperature on a dive computer, where that deviation isn't linked to some other instability in the unit/firmware....I'd hate to see how you react when someone lets you in on the secret of SPGs' accuracy.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

This past weekend I did two dives with my Petrel, a Dive Rite Duo and a Sensus Ultra and one of my buddies had a Predator. The Petrel and the Predator were very similar ... 42-43 F. The Duo read 40-41 F. The Sensus Ultra read between 40.3-40.7. All temperature devices require time to stabilize. Easily 5-10 minutes before they are reporting an accurate temperature.

YMMV but thought I'd share anecdotal information.

 

[Abdullah]

Hey Dr. Lecter,when you paided 1K for a new toy, dont you want it to be 100% funcional????

I dive mine in metric mode and it matches up exactly to my ScubaPro BT, once it stabilizes. Depending how hot the Petrel got on the surface before the dive, it takes 5 - 15 minutes to stabilize, which aligns with the time it takes for the heat sink to stabilize to ambient temperature. Keeping in mind that 1 degree C = 1.8 degrees F, the temperature variation you see may be a function of the voltage resolution on the temperature transmitters' output signal. I don't think this computer was designed to offer real time temperature measurement with NIST traceable accuracy, nor do I think that anyone else offers that level of temperature measurement performance either.