Shb Instruments Introduces Navimate™ Device - Makes GPS Available to Divers

[DCBC]

NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Northridge, CA, United States, 11/06/2009 - Navimate is the first underwater GPS available to scuba divers.

Shb Instruments, Inc. today announced a revolutionary new product for the dive industry. Navimate™ is the first product to provide divers with the full functionality, convenience and safety of GPS navigation and positioning while underwater. This affordable wrist-mounted product displays the diver’s exact latitude and longitude, as well as his or her position on a high resolution map of the underwater terrain.

Important locations can be easily marked so they can be found on future dives. As an added benefit, returning to a dive boat is now made easy. If the diver’s buddies are also equipped with Navimate™, they can each see the position of their buddies on the map on their wrist. This device will not only make diving easier, more fun and more productive, but will add a substantial increased measure of safety as well. Navimate™ uses state-of-the-art communication and signal processing technology. It was developed by a team led by Dr. Barry Megdal, currently an Electrical Engineering faculty member at Caltech. Dr. Megdal is also a NAUI-certified dive instructor.

The use of GPS has become ubiquitous in our lives, but until now, divers were unable to benefit from this technology. “Divers have been asking to be able to use GPS for years, and now Navimate™ will make that possible”, said Dr. Megdal. Because of the long-standing demand, Shb Instruments expects this product to be highly successful.

Shb Instruments will be displaying Navimate™ at booth 560 of the Dive Equipment Manufacturer’s Association (DEMA) show November 4-7 in Orlando, Florida.

Shb Instruments (shbinstruments.com) was founded in 1976 and is an industry leader in design, development and production of state-of-the-art electronic systems.

 

[NAM001]

i got this today in email

Thank you for your interest in Navimate™, our revolutionary underwater personal navigation system. We are very excited about the overwhelmingly positive response to our product announcement at the recent DEMA show.



The Navimate™ technology has been in development for more than three years, during which time we have been extensively testing prototype hardware and software. We are now in the process of producing units for retail sale, and anticipate that Navimate™ will be available in May or June of 2010. The wrist unit is planned to retail for $700, and the GPS Gateway (which is hung from a dive boat or buoy, and can support an unlimited number of wrist units) will be $300. We will be offering the GPS gateway free to shops, clubs and other organizations that purchase a minimum number of the wrist units, and will also be placing the gateways on selected dive boats at no cost. Instructor discounts for Navimate™ will also be available. Domestic and international distribution arrangements for Navimate™ will be announced in the near future.



There has been serious interest from a number of major dive computer manufacturers, and we expect that you will see Navimate™ technology integrated into one or more computers during the coming year.



Attached is a Navimate™ brochure, as well as answers to some commonly asked questions. Please watch our website at Navimate - GPS for Divers for information updates, and feel free to contact us at navimate@shbinstruments.com with any questions or suggestions.





Dr. Barry Megdal

President

Shb Instruments, Inc.

19215 Parthenia St., Suite A

Northridge, CA 91324

navimate.shbinstruments.com

(818) 773-2000 (818) 773-2005 fax

navimate@shbinstruments.com

 

[deeper thoughts]

I would love to have this on my boat. Hopefully it will work as advertised

 

[NAM001]

I would love to have this on my boat. Hopefully it will work as advertised

i agree

makes head counting and managemenmt easier. cant loose a boat either

 

[Guy Alcala]

i got this today in email

Thank you for your interest in Navimate™, our revolutionary underwater personal navigation system. We are very excited about the overwhelmingly positive response to our product announcement at the recent DEMA show.



The Navimate™ technology has been in development for more than three years, during which time we have been extensively testing prototype hardware and software. We are now in the process of producing units for retail sale, and anticipate that Navimate™ will be available in May or June of 2010. The wrist unit is planned to retail for $700, and the GPS Gateway (which is hung from a dive boat or buoy, and can support an unlimited number of wrist units) will be $300. We will be offering the GPS gateway free to shops, clubs and other organizations that purchase a minimum number of the wrist units, and will also be placing the gateways on selected dive boats at no cost. Instructor discounts for Navimate™ will also be available. Domestic and international distribution arrangements for Navimate™ will be announced in the near future.



There has been serious interest from a number of major dive computer manufacturers, and we expect that you will see Navimate™ technology integrated into one or more computers during the coming year.



Attached is a Navimate™ brochure, as well as answers to some commonly asked questions. Please watch our website at Navimate - GPS for Divers for information updates, and feel free to contact us at navimate@shbinstruments.com with any questions or suggestions.





Dr. Barry Megdal

President

Shb Instruments, Inc.

19215 Parthenia St., Suite A

Northridge, CA 91324

navimate.shbinstruments.com

(818) 773-2000 (818) 773-2005 fax

navimate@shbinstruments.com

Here's the document that was attached to the above email, which gives more info about accuracy and features:


Here is some additional information and answers to common questions:
Please visit our website at www.navimate.shbinstruments.com -- we will be updating this site as we get closer to shipment.

Because GPS signals are not directly receivable under water, Navimate™ functions through use of a small unit that would most commonly be hung from a dive boat or buoy (the "GPS gateway"). The GPS gateway has a floating radio antenna in order to determine its exact location, and communicates with the wrist units via its underwater transducer portion, using acoustic signals. As a result of this communication, the wrist units know their range and bearing from the GPS gateway, as well as the exact position of the gateway. This allows the wrist units to calculate their own absolute position, independent of the position or motion of the GPS gateway. The gateway or the boat to which it may be attached is free to drift without affecting the position displayed by Navimate™. The position is displayed on the Navimate™ screen both as latitude and longitude values as well as a "dot".

Other Navimate™ units within about 100 yards (90 meters) are broadcasting their position, and will be plotted as small diver icons on each other’s screens. These icons can be tagged with identifying information, as well as the diver’s depth and velocity, if desired. The location of the dive boat is also shown, as well as a compass rose with the diver’s current heading, and the heading back to the dive boat. The Navimate™ display can be zoomed in and out to change the scale of the area displayed on the screen as desired by the diver.

The acoustic communication between the Navimate™ units and the GPS gateway are relatively low-power, wideband digital signals that will have no impact on marine life – they will only be heard as a low level noise-like sound.

The local communication between the Navimate™ devices allows for features such as an SOS alert to the diver’s buddies, or even the sending of messages between divers.

In order to get back to the boat the diver need only turn until his indicated heading aligns with the heading back to the boat, and swim in that direction. However, this system offers much more functionality than previous "how do I get back to the boat" beacon systems. With one button press the diver can mark interesting or important locations ("waypoints") in order to return to their exact positions on any future dive, as well as record a "track" of the path of their dive, including depth and temperature information. These waypoints and tracks can be uploaded to a computer at any time, and downloaded back to Navimate for use in the future.

The contour maps of underwater terrain are a convenience to allow divers to see local features, and the unit loses no essential functionality if maps are not available for the current dive site. We support a number of common map formats, which allows downloading of additional maps (both public-domain and commercial) from a computer as they become available. Navimate™ also has the ability to display additional information for the dive site, such as local fish species, or other interesting aspects of the site. The firmware (resident software) in Navimate will also be field upgradeable, allowing units to be updated to support new features by downloads from our website.

The depth limit of the Navimate™ devices will be determined only by structural pressure limits, and will be 250 feet (75 meters) for initial production units.

Maximum operating range from the boat to the wrist units is ½-1 mile (0.8-1.6 kilometers), depending on ocean conditions (e.g. highly turbulent water or kelp). Accuracy is 20-40 feet (6-12 meters) at the maximum range, and 10 feet (3 meters) at distances of ¼ mile (400 meters) or less (limited by GPS accuracy). There must be a reasonably good line of sight between the Navimate™ wrist unit and the GPS gateway. The signal will be diffracted around smaller obstacles such as a pile of rocks, but can be blocked by larger objects, such as wrecks. In these circumstances a second GPS gateway can be deployed (for example from a buoy), to insure complete coverage of the area.

Soon after the initial release of Navimate™ we will be offering a "no display" unit at reduced price, designed for attaching to the tanks of students with an instructor or divers being led by a divemaster. The instructor or divemaster will then be able to keep track of the location of the other divers in his or her group, but those divers will not be burdened with the distraction (or the cost) of a wrist-mounted unit.

The next product (now being designed) will answer the many requests to be able to keep track of diver locations from a dive boat. The Navimate™ units are broadcasting their GPS positions on a low-power acoustic beacon, allowing us to map the locations of dive buddies within a range of about 100 yards (90 meters). In order to be able to keep track of diver locations at the full ½-1 mile (0.8 to 1.6 kilometers) operating range of Navimate™, we will offer a sensitive acoustic receiver that can be used from the boat and connected to a laptop or other shipboard display.
Finally, the obvious follow-on product integrates a dive computer with Navimate™. We have plans to build such a unit, but based on our conversations with several computer manufacturers at DEMA, Navimate™ technology is likely to be integrated into other future dive computer designs.

For applications such as submersible vehicles, we will offer a ruggedized OEM version of Navimate™, able to operate at increased depth, and including external connections for synchronization with devices such as video cameras, as well as allowing for remote connection of display panels.

Future enhancements include increasing the accuracy of Navimate™ to three feet or less by using a more sophisticated GPS system at the gateway.
We welcome feedback and suggestions for enhancement of Navimate’s functionality. Please email us at navimate@shbinstruments.com

 

[NAM001]

i talked to the navimate guy today. here is a summary of the discussion.
uses 1 or more bouy to provide a gps reference. it is called a gateway jast as the gateway on you computer network. it links the satalite rcvr to the navamate system. it has a compass built in to it has a reference as to what direction north is. for what purose i am not sure of. it has a range of up to one mile (ideal) via ultrasonic sound link of 20-40 khz the lower end is used for bouy posit data to be sent to the divers.

the wrist units use multiple freq's to operate the lower to get posit data from the bouy and a higher freq to communicate to other wrist units exchanging wrist calculated posit data. wrist to wrist range is 100 yds max wrist to bouy range is 1 miile max. doing this allows for longer battery life for the wrist unit as it only transmits 100 yds. the wrist unit has motion accelerometers and does some beamforming of the received bouy signal to determine bearing and range to the bouy with bearing an range the wrist can calculate its posit from the bouy. its calculated posit is sent as a general broadcast to all other wrist units in range on a higher freq. the wrist units plot the posit and labels it with name or id as programmed in each unit by the user.

the system does not rely on wrist being synced ith the bouy to start with like another makers sport and wreck models required.

operationg in the 20-40 khz range i asked about interference from fish finders ect. they reply the data format and modulation techniques are such that fish finder interference is not an issue. the signal if heard using a ultrasound rcvr would be a his noise as apposed to some tonal carrier.

the good doctor was very upfront answering my questions to the limit of specific patent sensitive information. such innfo i did not probe for and he did not dance around an answer he either could or could not discuss that aspect.

the ranging technique is still somewhat a mystery to me but it must work. there is a lot going on in this system. i would say if this reliably delivers all the maker claims it is a steal for the money. desert star ....... take a back seat. there may be a new boss in town.

 

[jagfish]

i would say if this reliably delivers all the maker claims it is a steal for the money.

Have any prices been mentioned?

 

[deeper thoughts]

Last I heard there were delays with this product. I remember the rep telling me the price was around 500-700, cannot remember which

 

[NAM001]

Have any prices been mentioned?

last figures i heard was about 700 for the wrist unit and 300 for the gateway bouy

 

[spoolin01]

What am I missing? The GPS capability seems all but wholly superfluous, unless you have a bathymetric chart with adequate resolution to be of interest to a diver ranging over a couple hundred yards. That can be seen on a what, 30 x 30 pixel wrist screen. That have any bathymetric relief or features prominent enough that you can orient to them. I can't recall seeing even surface topographic charts with that kind of scale.

Not that an acoustic location system with good directional precision and range estimation wouldn't be a great thing to have. I've long wanted one. Just don't see the point of GPS...

ETA: Ah, waypoints are a nice feature, I guess that's where GPS comes in. You can find that great lobster hole or wreck again next week. That will add a new dimension to murky NorCal diving - a second dive to the same spot!

Even if the precision of the locations determined acoustically aren't as good as claimed, it would be a nice thing to be able to map the relative positions of the divers around you. You could easily regroup even in somewhat bad viz, like we do topside when we're roaming about.