Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
It's been a while since I had a good flame, so I thought that the following might do the trick... Okay. Some people here are (understandably) reluctant to dive with computers. "There's nothing like a good dive plan" they'd say, and I guess they're not wrong. After all, don't we all get hammered with the "Plan your dive, dive the plan" song at sometime in our life? So it may come with no surprise that some serious people shun computers (especially if they dive with "exotic" gases), and they will have a program that will generate for them custom dive tables that they will then plastify and carry along with them. That's nice, because a sheet of paper hasn't got batteries to fail nor a microprocessor to bug. Of course, unless one rigorously tracks down their time/depth curve, any repetitive dive planning will treat the previous dive as a square dive, with additionnal "penalty". How about carrying a "continuous logging bottom timer", which keeps for each minute (or smaller time units) the depth for the whole dive? That's *ALL* the thing does. When you surface, you feed the figures to the laptop that will digest them and spit out a suitable repetitive dive table, optimized according to the profile you actually followed during the previous dive. Hey, you could pick and choose the decompression algorithm you want, even program your own, since you run them on a standard laptop. This way, you *STILL* have to dive your plan, and in case the CLBT conks-out, you still have your paper table which you follow; you just won't have the finely tracked dive profile to feed the computer afterwards. I find the idea very seductive, especially that Texas Instruments ships out microcontroller evaluation boards for $37.00 (go look at http://www.ti.com/sc/6008 All you need to add is the pressure transducer, a case and interface. You could conceivably make a cheap and sturdy unit; all it does is track time and depth. You put in a infrared link to go through the clear plastic casing (HP laptops have infrared links, too) and you could even recharge the whole thing with an inductive system, say like Water Pik electric toothbrushes. Since the unit has no display (so you'll have to carry your watch and depth gauge for reduntancy), you don't need to strap it to your arm or console. Just shove it in a BC pocket, or butt-mount it where it will be as much hogarthian as possible. So, what do you think? Gentlemen, I'm waiting for your flames. ------------------ Pour la Republique Francaise du Quebec -------------------- Thanks to American influence, instead of thinking on how solve social problems or feed everybody properly,the elites of the world only think on how to expand their wealth, personal power and influence at the expense of other people. Our children will be happy to live on a planet left in shambles by those "people". ~~ Last dives: still the Aloha, the Effie Mae & the Wolfe Islander, 25 mfw ~~ This is a long signature; Toto, I don't think we're on FIDONET anymore... Marc Dufour - [\] ACUC6 31874 - TDI CD-0197 - http://www.accent.net/emdx
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]