Suunto Dive Manager Issues

[chrispete]

I run SDM under XP as well and haven't had a moment's trouble, although I don't like the nullification of dive series calculations after you change the record in any way. Now the Mares program for my backup Surveyor, that crashes every two seconds and is the king of horribly written MSAccess programs.

 

[Arnaud]

I use it with Windows ME that tend to otherwise crash all the time. It never did with the Dive Manager. There might be a compatibility issue since XP is so much more stable than any other Windows OS. Have you looked into the hardware side? Are you sure the cable isn't damaged or improperly inserted? An on and off physical connection can cause crashes, too.

 

[The Chairman]

so I exported it into a csv format. What a mess!!! Instead of giving NAUI all of my NitrOx dives, I only gave them about 20. It was way not worth the hassle!!!

 

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

WreckWriter once bubbled...
I use 1.4 with a Vyper. Hasn't crashed once.

Tom

I'm with WreckWriter, but times two. We have two Vypers, run 1.4, and both were upgraded from 1.3 that ran well. One runs on a laptop with 98, and the other on a desktop with XP. No problems with either.

Now I have had other problems with SDM, but it's been due to other hardware issues - a loose nut on the keyboard. But the problems have all been self imposed when I've changed user names, played with the sample times, tried to edit profiles etc.

As far as grabbing the info yourself - I had chatted with Nick Banks (nickjb) here on the board about exporting info to a Palm from SDM. He was going to look into the feasibility of writing something. He did write a program that downloads directly to a Palm found
here though you have to build your own interface for it to work.

Have you tried loading SDM on another computer to make sure that's not the problem?

 

[wb416]

RPanick once bubbled...
I have been using the Suunto Dive Manager this summer with the 3 Cobra's (me, wife and daughter) and quite frankly I'm sick of the very poor quality of the program. It hangs frequently, it corrupts the data files, and has one of the worst user interfaces I have ever seen.

bonk:

Man... sorry to hear about your tough luck... I've been using the dive manager for the last 3 years, downloading a few hundred dives, with only minimal issues. I did have a small rash of "corrupted" dives, but after I cleaned the contacts on my Vyper, they seemed to go away.

wb

 

[SM Diver]

Has anyone noticed this issue in the DM simulator? Try changing the simulation between tank sizes and pressures. Try to simulate a dive on an 80 cu ft tank at 3000 psi, and then a 120 cu ft at the same pressure (or even higher pressure). Then simulate the dive in the graph area. It tells you you have the same amount of air time.

What's up with that?

 

[RPanick]

The funny part is that it never seems to have a problem downloading from the Cobra's, that's the part that always seems to work. Its usually printing that it seems to have fits with. I've also had a few corrupted data files. I suppose if I gave up keeping a paper trail I wouldn't have so many problems.

But I'm still new enough at it that I do keep a log book up to date. Mostly because I can never seem to remember what weights I was using with what combination of gear.

I suppose that's one advantage of diving cold water, you always wear everything so weight issues aren't so bad.

 

[Arnaud]

Scott,

I did notice that if I switch from air to EAN after inputing a dive profile, the simulator does not recalculate the NDL. It's clearly a flow. That's the only one I have found.

 

[chrispete]

I did notice that if I switch from air to EAN after inputing a dive profile, the simulator does not recalculate the NDL. It's clearly a flow. That's the only one I have found.

From the Suunto manual, "Note! It is not possible to change between the air, nitrox and guage modes before the instrument has counted down the no-flying time..."

Basically the software is taking into account that the computer will not allow you to switch from air to nitrox or vice versa, thus if you model your first dive using the air mode, it will ignore the change to nitrox and model the second dive in the series as an air dive.

 

[DiverBuoy]

For anyone interested in building a better version than dive manager:

Suunto Cobra Protocol


Everything reversed engineered