What's slowing the fixes to Oceanlog?

[shimbob]

If Oceanlog goes open source, I hope that will also include writing a driver or releasing specs for the various cables. I have a Geo and the cable; as it is with Linux kernel version 2.6.27 there seems to be no driver that will handle the proprietary-looking chip (idProduct=0xf460) that's in this cable.

 

[Cleavitt]

I agree that OceanLog is a perfect candidate for open source. Not only is it already distributed at no charge by Oceanic, it seems to be a burden to them in the sense that it is a disapointment to many of their customers even with the time and resources they have dedicated to the project so far.

As an Oceanic VT3 user and a programmer I am especially interested in seeing this happen. Programming is voodoo to most non-programmers. However, to those of us that are programmers it's clear that OceanLog is suffering from issues that really shouldn't exist and most could probably be easily fixed. In addition the look, feel, and usability of the program could use some work.

Once released to open source the software quality would probably improve rapidly and Oceanic could simply distribute the latest releases that are known to be stable. It really would be a win-win for all parties IMHO.

 

[rmarrash]

a disapointment to many of their customers

I have seen about 10-20 people "complain" about it on this forum over the past several months with the main person being RAWalker. To say that "many" of their customers are disappointed is probably a bit of an overstatement not based in factual data.

However, I do think Open sourcing the SW would be an ideal solution as long as they are not interested in a revenue stream from it in the future. And as RAWalker pointed out, they could (and probably should) continue to release a "base" model of the SW and probably the Driver as well. I think it would be a lot of fun to see what the community could do with the SW and the great thing is it would always be free.

Russell

 

[Anti-Hero]

As a programmer and Oceanic Atom 2.0 user, and a Linux fanatic, I HIGHLY champion releasing the spec. at least. The current source code would be nice to speed things up, but is not necessary if we have the detailed spec of the cable and interfaces.

Imagine the evolution of the product with literally hundreds, if not thousands of engineers / programmers / designers working to make a better product. For free...

And I could finally stop using my work laptop to download my logs.

 

[Cleavitt]

I have seen about 10-20 people "complain" about it on this forum over the past several months with the main person being RAWalker. To say that "many" of their customers are disappointed is probably a bit of an overstatement not based in factual data.

Personally, I feel that 10 - 20 is a lot considering that a very small percentage of Oceanics customers post on this particular forum. More importantly, there are far fewer people saying that they are happy with OceanLog. If you want to conduct a scientific poll then be guest, but for the purpose of this discussion I'm not interested.

Oceanic is known for high quality products. I have quite a bit of their gear and the software is the only thing that is not up to par with Oceanic quality. I do still like the software, but it could be so much better and that is disapointing.

I notice you are a relatively new diver (according to your stats) which is great, but I'm guessing you haven't been using OceanLog for very long. The issues get more annoying the more you have to deal with them. Having an upgrade trash your dive log data is fairly lame as well. It's happened to me 3 out of 4 times I have tried to upgrade the software (thank god for backups).

 

[Cleavitt]

I HIGHLY champion releasing the spec. at least. The current source code would be nice to speed things up, but is not necessary if we have the detailed spec of the cable and interfaces.

Agreed.

 

[rmarrash]

yes, new to diving but not SW development

I can understand the frustration related to having the SW structure change from release to relase but that is something that should really be very easy for Oceanic to control. To me, one of the quickest and easiest solutions would be for them to dump the data into a flat file (during the transfer) that is raw text. This would allow anyone with basic programming skills to write a program to parse the data. And assuming each variable had a tag you would never need to worry about the upgrade process.

Russell

 

[Anti-Hero]

Oceanic - In release version 2.2.3 Build 0.6.08 I cannot download my dive or PDC settings. It says invalid product, even though the correct serial #, ect. are there. When it does connect it does not show my dives that need to be downloaded.

Please help.

 

[RAWalker]

That is an old build the new version is 09.09.08 try uninstalling it and downloading the newer build

 

[Anti-Hero]

I uninstalled / installed the new version and now for some reason it downloads a BUNCH of erroneous dives that I didn't make. It lists about 50 dive # 165's, and the dates are out of order and don't make any sense. Grrr!

My computer also did a funny thing this weekend. While on the boat it beeped, then the screen displayed all the elements, like when you download dives, then it looked like it rebooted and everything worked as usual. I have no idea what that was all about...

I think it's time to take it to the shop for a warranty.