Shearwater Battery Question

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I had a strange experience with my Shearwater Petrel on Saturday. At about an hour and fifty minutes into my dive in 52F water, my shearwater started flashing a low battery warning. A few minutes later, it reset underwater and seemingly started a new dive. The battery was replaced just a few weeks earlier and had only been used for a couple of dives. I'm willing to chalk up the poor battery performance to user error: it is possible the Alkaline battery used wasn't "fresh".

The really disturbing part is the shearwater dive log shows no record of ANY dive on Saturday. Even with a battery loss, you'd think the log would be written for the last recorded depth/time prior to battery loss. I'm going to send a note to Shearwater to see what they recommend. Anyone had similar experiences?

On a related note, I've ordered SAFT batteries as the lifespan of Alkaline batteries in the Petrel is pretty short.

I was going to ask the very same question as I happened upon this thread. I too experirnced a low battery icon yesterday as I was diving Dutch Springs,Bethleham,Pa...normally I've been diving Fla's much warmer Springs where the temps are normally around 70F +/-. Where as Dutch Springs is known for their thermocline...60 or so at the top to around 40 at the bottom.

If I'm reading this further.. is this a glitch in the soft/firmware??

Clay
Kimberton,Pa.
 
I had a strange experience with my Shearwater Petrel on Saturday. At about an hour and fifty minutes into my dive in 52F water, my shearwater started flashing a low battery warning. A few minutes later, it reset underwater and seemingly started a new dive. The battery was replaced just a few weeks earlier and had only been used for a couple of dives. I'm willing to chalk up the poor battery performance to user error: it is possible the Alkaline battery used wasn't "fresh".

The really disturbing part is the shearwater dive log shows no record of ANY dive on Saturday. Even with a battery loss, you'd think the log would be written for the last recorded depth/time prior to battery loss. I'm going to send a note to Shearwater to see what they recommend. Anyone had similar experiences?

On a related note, I've ordered SAFT batteries as the lifespan of Alkaline batteries in the Petrel is pretty short.

I'm wandering if there isn't some sort of bug or connection problem in the Petrels. I had it flashing low battery on mine while in the Cayman Islands (80 degree waters). My instructor just got his PRISM2 CCR back from having a Fischer cable installed & they forgot to send his Petrel back to him, so I let him use mine (has the connector). When he was using as a back- up monitor for his CCR yesterday, it shut down on him, mid dive. I just installed a brand new Saft battery in the computer about 2-1/2 weeks ago, before leaving on my trip. I only did a total of 17 dives & started giving me the low battery warning on the last 2 dive days. There is no way that battery could be drained by then. Yesterday when it was acting up, he tapped on it, it gave the low battery warning, he tapped it again, it read fine, he tapped it again & it shut down. Then we remembered that his did the same thing about a month ago. My instructor is going to keep mine & send it back to Shearwater to see what is going on.
 
Sounds similar to the battery issues some Predators had.
 
I have seen this issue myself. It happened to me twice in both cases battery below 50% standard alkaline. I have resigned to never allowing the battery beyond 50% and haven't seen the issue again after 100 dives or so. I just swapped over to a AA lithium energizer today. Curious to see how well it performs
 
I've let both a Saft and an energizer alkaline run down to the low (yellow) warning and haven't had any problems with my Petrel yet, but that's been here in HI where the water is relatively warm and I've been replacing as soon as the first low warning appears. I've settled on an approach of running just the cheap alkaline AAs in the Petrel and swapping for a fresh one once it has dropped more than 1/3 of the way down the gage . . . the slightly used AAs then find their way into remotes, wireless keyboards, and xbox controllers.
 
Alkaline batteries seemed to go VERY fast in my Petrel. Reading the computer - it was actually 22-24 hours, but seemed faster. I have switched over to Photo lithium now. Seem to be lasting longer. On long dives in 52-60 degree water, the battery icon seems to drop to half power, even after just 8 hours, but once on the surface, and the computer warms up, the icon shows full.


Im not concerned. Id like to see 45-50 hours out of this photo lithium battery - we'll see!

Any way you cut it, I love this computer!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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