UW Light Dude G6 Product Release

[tbone1004]

@stuartv you want to minimize wet connections and the good ones are pretty bulky unfortunately.

This is in the UWLD subforum, so technically we are not supposed to talk about other manufacturers, but given this is not a product that @Bobby makes, I hope he doesn't mind. I have full confidence he will delete this if he does.

Light Monkey and several others make standalone heater valves that look like this. You can make the cord length as long or short as you want, and you could tie a bolt snap to the end of the E/O cord and clip it off to a d-ring if you were so inclined to make it not floppy. When not in use, you can remove the whole thing and plug it, but that's a lot of work. Many people will have a second suit, or just deal with it. If you're going to bother removing it though, just use a nice dual inflator, and the Si Tech Vega is by far the best of the lot, and say you only use the heater seasonally, you can remove it and swap the inflator over to a normal one. Takes maybe 5 minutes, and is a far better solution IMO than having an extra hole, and/or adding the complexity of another type of wet plug

 

[rddvet]

My thought was a port that does require another hole in the suit. But, from the outside, when NOT being used, it would look a lot like a Si Tech Trigon pee valve. I.e. it would be thin and flat and super low profile. And it would have no holes. It would just have electrical contacts flush in its surface.

Then there would be another piece that has the E/O pigtail coming out of it. When you want heat, that piece would just attach to the part that is installed in the suit. Maybe a quarter-turn bayonet-style connection. Or maybe you position it how you want and then screw down an outer locking ring or something, so you have infinite adjustment on the position of the pigtail.

The whole point being that when you don't have heat, you have the least amount of bulk on your suit and no pigtail dangling at all.

Disclaimer: I have never had any kind of suit heater. So, I get that this may just be the ramblings of the ignorant, addressing a problem that literally does not exist. I just don't like the look of the solutions that leave a pigtail dangling unused.

Hopefully it's not too rude to post a link to a competing manufacturer's website, but it's just for example.
Stuart the closest I've ever seen is just the straight bulkheads with e/o connector like this one on the LM site
Drysuit Heater Adapter with Cable
Most people that have them put them near their zipper, so you can put a hole in the zipper cover and then tuck the pigtail in there when not in use.

It's not an awful option. I think the better option are the ones integrated into the drysuit fill valve. The biggest negative when searching for those is I go back and forth between sm and bm. My inflation comes from the right in sm and from the left in bm. There were a couple of the inflator style ones that had such limited movement in the inflator nipple that I couldn't consider them for my needs. Not sure about how much the vega turns, but I've heard good things.

Edit: Crap. Apparently tbone posted the exact same thing and I totally read right past it. Ignore my same info

 

[stuartv]

New question: The website info for the G6 lights says "up to 30 hours burn time".

The Burn Time Matrix is still not there, but I know Bobby has been really busy and my emails to him are probably already making him feel like he's being pecked to death by ducks.

So, can anyone tell me how you get that "30 hours burn time"?

Looking at the light specs, the LD-20 and the LD-40 both say their Low setting is 7W. Even if I don't factor in the 10% that somewhere else on the UWLD site says to do, 160W-Hr divided by 7W only gives 23 hours. At 7.7W (i.e. 110% of rated power), it gives 21 hours.

Is there really a way to get 30 hours? Or is that just stale info that needs to be updated based on the G6 specs?

Of more direct concern to me is I'm looking at a heated vest solution that would be (by my calculation) 42W on High. Just to figure out worst case, I calculated vest on High, LD-40 on High, with the Tall (160W-Hr) can. My math computes to (32W + 42W) * 110% = 81.4W. 160W-Hr / 81.4W =

2 hours of burn time with light and vest on high.

Do I think I will ever do that in real life? Probably not. Maybe light on High during the bottom portion and vest on 1 (or maybe 2) (of 5). Then, on the deco, light on Low or off and vest still probably not on 5.

The last deco dive I planned was 60 min on the bottom and 60 min of deco. Using that just for an example, the math works out to:

32W (light on High) + 16.8W (vest on 2) for 1 hour
7W (light on Low) + 42W (vest on 5) for 1 hour
48.8 + 49 = 97.8
x 110% = 108 W-Hr consumed, out of a 160 W-Hr canister leaves plenty (52 W-Hr) of reserve capacity.

Okay UPS, hurry up...!

 

[stuartv]

ps. Regarding the power port valve, Seaskin sells the Si Tech Vega.

With shipping from the UK (and no VAT), it works out to USD$114.

SI TECH VEGA Inflation Valve - Seaskin Custom Diving Suits

But, that does not include the E/O cord that would be needed.

 

[Bobby]

New question: The website info for the G6 lights says "up to 30 hours burn time".

The Burn Time Matrix is still not there, but I know Bobby has been really busy and my emails to him are probably already making him feel like he's being pecked to death by ducks.

So, can anyone tell me how you get that "30 hours burn time"?

Looking at the light specs, the LD-20 and the LD-40 both say their Low setting is 7W. Even if I don't factor in the 10% that somewhere else on the UWLD site says to do, 160W-Hr divided by 7W only gives 23 hours. At 7.7W (i.e. 110% of rated power), it gives 21 hours.

Is there really a way to get 30 hours? Or is that just stale info that needs to be updated based on the G6 specs?

Of more direct concern to me is I'm looking at a heated vest solution that would be (by my calculation) 42W on High. Just to figure out worst case, I calculated vest on High, LD-40 on High, with the Tall (160W-Hr) can. My math computes to (32W + 42W) * 110% = 81.4W. 160W-Hr / 81.4W =

2 hours of burn time with light and vest on high.

Do I think I will ever do that in real life? Probably not. Maybe light on High during the bottom portion and vest on 1 (or maybe 2) (of 5). Then, on the deco, light on Low or off and vest still probably not on 5.

The last deco dive I planned was 60 min on the bottom and 60 min of deco. Using that just for an example, the math works out to:

32W (light on High) + 16.8W (vest on 2) for 1 hour
7W (light on Low) + 42W (vest on 5) for 1 hour
48.8 + 49 = 97.8
x 110% = 108 W-Hr consumed, out of a 160 W-Hr canister leaves plenty (52 W-Hr) of reserve capacity.

Okay UPS, hurry up...!

My apologies for not updating the burn time Matrix yet. Lights have been going out to fill orders as soon as I make them. I need around 10 lights to get solid numbers for a new burn time matrix and the time to run all the burn tests. I have a large tank that I can burn multiple lights in however not enough data loggers for that so it is a slow process.
Yes the 30 hours is from the gen 5 lights on low. The G6 lights are a completely new driver and LED's and I was very conservative on the power consumption numbers. I have had a couple of burn tests on G6 and it looks like low power will actually be 3-5 watts of power consumption. Without making this post overly technical and boring LED's all have a voltage range that they operate at, not an exact voltage. When going down to their minimum threshold they can very considerably on how many watts they require. The drivers will have some variation as well, so having exact numbers requires running a bunch of burn tests. I then take the worst case numbers from all parts of the test ie; one light head might run @ 33.7 watts on high then 2.8 watts on low, the next might run @ 32.5w on high then 3.2 watts on low. From this I would use the two highest power consumption's to calculate burn times even though they came from different light heads. Now I'm also realistic and don't take the time to actually burn test 10 lights on high medium and low, it would be far too much time involved. I will run a few of them on high until they turn down to low @ the low voltage threshold, then test a bunch more at each light level for say an hour or so to get solid numbers on watt consumption. From this I do a bit of math and figure out a conservative burn matrix table.

The 10% factor is for the heat controller only. If you have a heated vest that runs at 60w then you want to use 66w for calculating battery run time. Again this is conservative however conservative is our goal in diving. The firmware in the HC's is set to safely maximize the heat potential of the undergarment.

I hope that clarify's things a bit. Now I need to get back out to the shop and continue making stuff.

 

[Bobby]

Yeeeehawwww, we now have inventory back in stock. I appreciate people's patience. Primary lights, video lights, and battery canisters are all back in stock now.
We are still waiting on heat controller boards, that have been on order, to come in. I'll get them built as soon as I have them.
I hope everyone has a great weekend.
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