Question Suunto Eon Steel Black Safety Stop

[Dinomyte]

Hey fellow divers!
Right upfront, Im very new to open water diving with 16 dives logged in total. 7 of them are open water, the rest indoor.
With the last 3 dives, I used the Suunto Eon Steel black and while I totally get that a cheaper more basic diving computer might have been better, I figured I invest in something right away than upgrading later anyways.
What brings me to the question.. safety stop. I didnt do any fancy deep diving yet, the deepest dive was 18 meters. As also said by my instructor, we do a safety stop at 5 meters for 3 minutes which is very basic I'd say. On my girlfriends computer that was the case. But not on mine. We did the safety stop and went back to the surface when the computer literally yelled at me saying I ignored the safety stop. I should have made the safety stop at 3 meters?! Never heard of that.
So I went in the settings, and changed the "deep stop" to 6 meters, which was wrong as well. It was honestly embarassing because apparently I dont understand the dive computer. I went back to the Suunto page and it just says "Safety stop for 3 minutes" which is right but it has no setting on what depth. Just the deep stop which shouldnt affect me anyways because thats activated if I go deeper than 20 meters.
Any guidance or tips are really appreciated!

All the best

 

[Dan G]

This is from the Suunto Eon user guide:

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Safety stop​

There are two types of safety stops: voluntary and mandatory. Safety stop is mandatory if ascent speed violation happened during the dive. Mandatory safety stop is shown in red, while voluntary safety stop is indicated with yellow.

A three (3) minute safety stop is always recommended for every dive over 10 meters (33 ft).

The time for a safety stop is calculated when you are between 2.4 and 6 m (7.9 and 19.6 ft). This is presented with up/down arrows on the left side of the stop depth value. The safety stop time is shown in minutes and seconds. The time may exceed three (3) minutes if you ascend too fast during dive. If violations happened several times, the additional stop time is longer. Safety stops can be set to three (3), four (4), or five (5) minutes.

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I wonder if you did not go shallow enough to activate the SS. Also, do some research on Deep Stops before you use that setting again because there has been some updated thinking about them since they became customary. Divers Alert Network is a good resource for this. I am sure there are others, too.

 

[Edward3c]

Hey fellow divers!
Right upfront, Im very new to open water diving with 16 dives logged in total. 7 of them are open water, the rest indoor.
With the last 3 dives, I used the Suunto Eon Steel black and while I totally get that a cheaper more basic diving computer might have been better, I figured I invest in something right away than upgrading later anyways.
What brings me to the question.. safety stop. I didnt do any fancy deep diving yet, the deepest dive was 18 meters. As also said by my instructor, we do a safety stop at 5 meters for 3 minutes which is very basic I'd say. On my girlfriends computer that was the case. But not on mine. We did the safety stop and went back to the surface when the computer literally yelled at me saying I ignored the safety stop. I should have made the safety stop at 3 meters?! Never heard of that.
So I went in the settings, and changed the "deep stop" to 6 meters, which was wrong as well. It was honestly embarassing because apparently I dont understand the dive computer. I went back to the Suunto page and it just says "Safety stop for 3 minutes" which is right but it has no setting on what depth. Just the deep stop which shouldnt affect me anyways because thats activated if I go deeper than 20 meters.
Any guidance or tips are really appreciated!

All the best

Did you wait until the screen went green? I’ve done over 100 on the Black there are times it gives me a mandatory stop (red display) then the optional (amber) before clearing (green). For no apparent reason. Also if you drop below 6m the stop countdown holts.

 

[Dinomyte]

Did you wait until the screen went green? I’ve done over 100 on the Black there are times it gives me a mandatory stop (red display) then the optional (amber) before clearing (green). For no apparent reason. Also if you drop below 6m the stop countdown holts.

I'll do another dive on Monday, I'll make sure to look at that. Honestly I wasnt actively checking the computer since I did the obligatory 3min stop on 5 meters and thought Im good. My computer didnt think so.

 

[Landau]

Honestly I wasnt actively checking the computer since I did the obligatory 3min stop on 5 meters and thought Im good

Actively check. Otherwise how do you know you did the stop?

Maybe you were at 6.1m. Maybe it was only 1 minute. Here in the murky water I can’t always accurately tell my depth without looking at my computer. Nor am I that good at estimating elapsed time.

The Eon has a nice clear by the second countdown for the safety stop, but it only works if you look at it.

 

[Dinomyte]

Hey guys!
Want to give a little feedback as we just came back from our trip.
So I guess I was just too overwhelmed the first time I was diving in the open waters in May that I just did not look actively look at the computer.
This week went much much better. Actively looking at the speed of getting back up t the surface, 3 minute safety stop went on automatically, everything in the green area. Easy peasy. Thanks again for the tips all!

 

[Edward3c]

Hey guys!
Want to give a little feedback as we just came back from our trip.
So I guess I was just too overwhelmed the first time I was diving in the open waters in May that I just did not look actively look at the computer.
This week went much much better. Actively looking at the speed of getting back up t the surface, 3 minute safety stop went on automatically, everything in the green area. Easy peasy. Thanks again for the tips all!

I was examining a 20m CBL rescue on Saturday when we ascended at around 11m/s from 20m to 6m. This incurred a 1 min mandatory stop followed by a 3 min safety stop. I have the audio alarms turned off as their much too sensitive and annoying.

 

[Bento.Box]

With the last 3 dives, I used the Suunto Eon Steel black and while I totally get that a cheaper more basic diving computer might have been better

No. You did chose well.

The Eon Steel is one of the best beginner diving computers in my eyes. It has a big, bright colourful screen and is easy to handle with big buttons. You also get all the telemetry out on your PC or Smartphone so you can analyze after the dive.

There are a few things it can't do very well (e.g. Sidemount), but I will not go into that now.

Most important thing:
Read the manual. Understand all the settings and why you set them in a specific way.

You'll need at least: Altitude, Gas mixture, Algorithm (Suunto or Bühlmann) incl. desired conservationism, tank size, declination (for compass).
I would also configure tank pressure and depth alarm (18m), both audio and visual. That doesn't excuse you from not paying attention, but the computer will get your attention when you are distracted.

Take your time at home and familiarize yourself with how to operate it. Play around and customize the screens in a way that makes sense for you. One thing that I find very helpful is the remaining gas time.
Once you're in the water, it should be muscle memory.

For the ascend procedure:
The computer will tell you the ceiling (if you accidently ran into deco) that you must never ever break. Otherwise it will indicate the voluntary safety stop depth (I believe between 3 to 6m) and the Suunto algorithm will add a semi-mandatory safety stop if you "misbehave" (ascend too fast etc.). It's not "necessary" according to PADI, but do yourself a favour and just wait until everything is clear before you ascend above the safety stop minimum depth. It's for your safety.

There really is no rush to get back to the surface under normal circumstances. Your gas will last "forever" in shallow depth and the slower and more graceful you ascend your final meters, the less stress you put on your body.

Keep in mind that the suunto algorithm also extends the no-fly time beyond the 24h padi recommendation if you dive a lot in a day.
Also the maximum ascend speed according to PADI is 18m/min, which is very fast and the EON steel will yell at you (for good reason in my opinion).

 

[pauldw]

Deep stops and safety stops are not the same thing.

I'm going to add something here. Scubaboard can be a bad place for recreational divers, especially vacation divers or others who don't dive much. There's TMI: lots of complicated information here shared by people who have been diving a long time, and even diving on gear that most divers will never see in real life. You don't need complicated information as a beginner, it's just a distraction, and you can't afford to be distracted from safety basics. You need to master essential skills like neutral buoyancy and slow ascents and equalizing ears and clearing face masks and not panicking. You don't need to know about gradient levels and m-values and whatever else. It's just too much information that's not important to recreational diving and that is a distraction from mastering the very basics, which you need to practice, practice, and practice. Learn about other things later. Your dive computer has, to my mind, underwhelming instructional videos. I have an Eon Core--it's similar, but less of a dive weight, working about the same. You can certainly use the Steel for basic diving, it's a very good computer. You don't need some fancy tech diving computer. You need to mind your depth, and your tank pressure, and your ascent rate, and the Suunto will do that if you pay attention to it; make sure you can recognize when it's telling you to be winding things up. What you do with the deep stops option is up to you. Safety stops are pretty much universally recognized as being the brief delay you do at a few meters. I suppose some people might say that deep stops are some form of safety stop, but that's not what the terminology refers to. They're different. Do your safety stop, for that extra measure of safety. There is nothing remotely near consensus on whether deep stops make you safer. They aren't an automatic part of diving, like safety stops. In my opinion a dive computer should not default to deep stop warnings; that should be a conscious settings decision.

 

[Hagaygur]

Chiming in with my first post since I have some experience with the Eon series and this exact confusion.
Tl;Dr: The Eon is extremely sensitive to small changes when ascending. As in raising your hand fast is enough to get penalised. And make your safety stop mandatory as mentioned above.

My father and diving buddy has this problem all the time with his Eon. Having experimented with it a bit to figure out what the hell is the problem, as he was constantly beeping like hell during safety stops for no apparent reason, I dove with it as backup for quite a few dives to try it out.

It seems that the Eon measures ascent speed in really small slices. Every continuous thing such as ascent has to be measured in slices to determine if going too fast. While most computers seem to measure in large enough slices that random movements average out to be fine, the Eon seems to consider a quick rise of 30 cm to be a violation.

This is all good and fine, until tou realise raising your hand, or even unspooling the SMB can raise it above 30 cm.

When such a thing happens, it defaults to requiring the user to stay a bit below 6 metres for a little while before ascending to the safety stop, shown by a red blinking down arrow IIRC.

There's no setting to adjust that as far as I could find, and adjusting the profile to be less conservative is a really bad solution. So just avoid raising your hand really quick, as it's a phenomenal computer otherwise for someone doing mostly rec dives.