Petrel upgrades?

[Father]

I'm curious if anyone is willing to illuminate why this subject stirs such passion. People can be stupid, but wireless AI does not appear to be inherently so.

I don't know of anyone who uses an air integrated computer to tell them when to breathe, so I'm really not sure where those remarks are coming from.

Some of the people I dive with are beyond competent and don't need to be told when/how to breathe either. Some of them have a mind boggling consumption rate (>2 hours on a single 63cf tank). They all have a regular SPG in addition to wireless. I don't know if the wireless is more just for their logging or what. They definitely would NOT be lost without it. It's a redundancy that also puts it on their wrist with everything else they need to read. Could they just as easily reach to their side and look at their glass? Sure.

In my eyes and mind the people I dive with are, for all intents and purposes, tech divers. But where we dive we're restricted to certain things by local rules that keep them from spreading their tech wings full span.

I'm not a tech diver so I can't speak with any authority on what is and isn't needed. I supposed AI is a point of failure, but everything can potentially fail. It's all made by people and used by people who make errors. As far as I understand, tech diving includes a lot of redundancy. AI + an SPG is just that. So why it has no place in tech, I'm not sure.

 

[Dhboner]

...because in technical diving, in addition to your backgas, you may need to manage any number of stages containing various mixes of deco gasses. AI is just not something that either works or is needed in technical diving. If you like it (and apparently you do) their are dozens of options for you to choose from. Shearwater has carved out a reputation (well deserved) as a computer for divers undertaking technical dives and recreational divers who are moving towards more technical, possibly mixed gas, dives.

 

[undrwater]

Thanks Dhboner. As a thought exercise, imagine Shearwater implements AI on the petrel, but NOTHING ELSE is changed. Does the Petrel lose its value? If so, why?

I'm also still curious why people for whom I have a great deal of respect become irrational when the subject is brought up.

 

[Dhboner]

Thanks Dhboner. As a thought exercise, imagine Shearwater implements AI on the petrel, but NOTHING ELSE is changed. Does the Petrel lose its value? If so, why?

I'm also still curious why people for whom I have a great deal of respect become irrational when the subject is brought up.

It doesn't lose it's value...it panders to an audience it never intended to reach.

 

[Ken T]

I had the Hollis DG03 with transmitter - I still had a regular SPG for when the transmitter crapped out.
It crapped out I think four times.

I now have a shearwater petrel - I note my start gas pressure and my end gas pressure and calculate my SAC rate and average them out with similar dives.

I did not find that the feature of having the computer display my estimated remaining gas supply was of great use - it being of course dependant on my diving workload and depth at that moment in time.

In fact it would occasionally cause my dive buddy some anxiety when she looked at her computer showing her say, 8 minutes, forgetting the fact that when we ascended to our 3 minute stop, that the time shown would increase greatly.



Shearwater may or may not decide for business reasons to start looking into a transmitter.

At the end of the day – the transmitter is piece of kit that some people want and some do not, but is ultimately unnecessary.

I suppose some higher level divers are disparaging of the transmitter because it is sometimes seen as a crutch for newer or nervous/insecure divers.

That is the assumption is that the computer is guiding the dive and not the diver’s brain and pre-planning.

A tec diver I know will not use one on a tec dive, but has been using one on warm water vacation dives.
I do not know what benefit he gets from it, other than having the info on his wrist instead of looking at his SPG.

Ken

 

[kelemvor]

Shearwater may or may not decide for business reasons to start looking into a transmitter.

At the end of the day – the transmitter is piece of kit that some people want and some do not, but is ultimately unnecessary.

Totally true, but the same can be said for computers in their entirety. Which is why my opinion is that options are better than no options. Maybe someday shearwater will make an additional model that has things like alarms and AI so they can keep folks on either side of the fence happy.

 

[tbone1004]

it has nothing to do with failure point, it's one O-ring that really has the potential to fail, and it is there regardless of being a plug or a transmitter.

The "recreational divers" they are talking about are OC tech divers, not recreational like is commonly thought, they are all non-ccr divers. The fischer connector actually is just a port drilled into the side, the guts are the same on both models, software is all the same, and not all CCR units have fischer outputs to support them, they offer that for units that don't have deco software built in. I.e. you have a Meg and don't want to send it back for a hardwired petrel, so you can put a fischer output on there and run it. It's actually a horrid system, but is what it is.

Bluetooth doesn't work well underwater and would be a horrible system to implement. Doesn't matter if 60% of the units going out were for recreational divers, they would still never implement AI. It would cost them too much money to develop the transmitters. Combine that with the fact that last diver they care about is single tank divers *sorry boys, they're a CCR company that happens to sell a lot of units to technical guys, single tank divers don't even show up on the radar*, they also have to factor in the sidemount boys, and I have never seen someone with AI in sidemount. It would be a righteous PITA to set up the computer and the transmitters would be all sorts of in the way *for half the divers they couldn't mount them due to dimensions* and it's just not going to happen. I'm sorry, even if all they had to do was take another companies transmitter and write a program they still wouldn't do it. It has absolutely 0 merit for them, and the amount of people with wireless AI that would buy a Petrel is so inconsequential it just doesn't warrant the cost of development.

Also computers are very very important to CCR divers and cave divers. In ocean diving they are nice to have but you're basically doing square profiles anyway so the tables work. Most tables do not have the ability to factor in constant PO2, and nothing but a computer has the ability to continually track your dive profile and adjust your decompression accordingly. Many hours by many divers would be lost to unnecessary decompression without dive computers so while they're not technically necessary, they save a lot of hours of deco time, especially in a lot of caves where you are at say 30 feet most of the dive, but there is one dip where you have to slip down to 50-60 feet. Well diving tables you're now stuck to max depth, but with a computer it can compensate

 

[dmoore19]

Are you associated with Shearwater in some way? Do you have insight into their future business model or is this just speculation on your part? Not trying to be an ass, just curious.

it has nothing to do with failure point, and the "recreational divers" they are talking about are OC tech divers, not recreational like is commonly thought, they are all non-ccr divers. The fischer connector actually is just a port drilled into the side, the guts are the same on both models, software is all the same, and not all CCR units have fischer outputs to support them, they offer that for units that don't have deco software built in. I.e. you have a Meg and don't want to send it back for a hardwired petrel, so you can put a fischer output on there and run it. It's actually a horrid system, but is what it is.

Bluetooth doesn't work well underwater and would be a horrible system to implement. Doesn't matter if 60% of the units going out were for recreational divers, they would still never implement AI. It would cost them too much money to develop the transmitters. Combine that with the fact that last diver they care about is single tank divers *sorry boys, they're a CCR company that happens to sell a lot of units to technical guys, single tank divers don't even show up on the radar*, they also have to factor in the sidemount boys, and I have never seen someone with AI in sidemount. It would be a righteous PITA to set up the computer and the transmitters would be all sorts of in the way *for half the divers they couldn't mount them due to dimensions* and it's just not going to happen. I'm sorry, even if all they had to do was take another companies transmitter and write a program they still wouldn't do it. It has absolutely 0 merit for them, and the amount of people with wireless AI that would buy a Petrel is so inconsequential it just doesn't warrant the cost of development.

 

[Father]

Do you associated with Shearwater in some way? Do you have insight into their future business model or is this just speculation on your part?.

Kind of wondering that myself.
Even though I've actually heard more or less first hand that the odds are highly unlikely SW will go with wireless air, I still felt the need to voice it. And for what it's worth, I don't own it and have never used it.

I did have two other suggestions in the original post... but I guess they were overlooked by the whole wireless air thing.

I'll concede to the majority opinion. I get that there's absolutely no need for wireless with tech divers using multiple tanks and gases.

I do think, given that there are a lot of other computers with less features for a higher price that the Petrel stands to get a foothold in the single tank rec diver market. Whether that is SW's intent or not I can't say.

A lot of good companies start out with one good product aimed at a specific group and branch out from there once they established a good rep. I think this is the path of Shearwater. Time will tell.


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[undrwater]

...and I'm still curious why all the emotion...