Is this DIR compliant? (LOL)
Nifty seeming idea, horrible unpredictable safety, would not use. The fact that the iPhone multitasks is enough to keep me away from this. In a purpose built computer, you have purpose built hardware controlled by software that is running in a controlled environment, that is largely predicable (but not always!). The iPhone, although heavily POLICED by Apple, is hardly a controlled environment. If Apple were to decide to hardware embed a dive computer into the solution, it MIGHT make it slightly safer, however on second thought I have had the phone app trash memory so badly that the entire device had to be restarted in order to gain control. Rebooting during a dive? Sounds like fun! The software developer of a dive computer can predict pretty certainly what is running in memory, what has access to critical areas of the environment (Ring 0 for instance) and how to recover their app from failures. An iPhone based app has none of these luxuries. If you dive a computer, you are relying on it for your safety. You can verbally profess to be able to switch to tables mid dive, but reality is you will be aborting a dive. Do that enough and you could have bought a really nice computer. What would your reaction be if your dive computer locked up on you mid-dive? Have you ever thought beyond your nose about this? I have had to, after having a PURPOSE built tech computer die on me during a long deco. In my case I had all the typical backups to deal with this situation, but again a typical rec diver does not carry paper tables, much less the ability to calculate an NDL on the fly AFTER a dive has commenced. Get this to work the GPS, and I would definitely carry it as a secondary nav device, LOL. To answer someones question regarding the iPhones compass, the iPhone has a very cheap compass chip in it. Stick with a Suunto compass. I have tested all sorts of electronic compass solutions and any that are in the average consumer price range have terrible resolution, and limited usefulness for navigation. I am all for new technology, innovation to the sport, and leveraging technology to improve the fun/safety of Scuba. Granted the thing only goes to 100' of water, but that is way deep enough to get yourself into serious trouble if your computer malfunctions and you are unsure of how to handle the situation. This can even happen with a purpose built dive computer, but its a lot less likely to happen. This product goes directly against my philosophy of safety through risk reduction. KISS wins every time. Not to mention I dont want to have to set this thing up and tear it down before and after every dive. Not to mention having 500 soft buttons at 100' with narc creeping over you. I could go on because the longer I sit and type the more holes I am shooting in this thing, but its not necessary. As badly as I would like to see something like this be feasible, I just dont see it. I would not dive this device, would not ever dive with someone using this device, and would not allow a diver off the side of my boat knowing they intended to use this as their primary computer. Using an iPhone as a dive camera? Better hope you have some REAL POWERFUL lights, or be very shallow.
Dont get me wrong I REALLY hope this works out for the guys that are manufacturing this device, and I am sure that they have come up with clever ways to overcome many of the limitations of this type of a setup, and I wish you the best of luck. I see a safety issue here and dont mind saying so. Its up to the individual to decide how safe they feel diving with ANY product, or for that matter their own brain.
I took a look at the app, with the limited amount of settings that were visible to me without actually owning the hardware, it looks VERY simplistic. Almost no settings for ANYTHING? Want to dive Nitrox below 32%?? You are done. All of the gas setting are fixed eg: 32% 36% 40%. makes me wonder how many actual divers they actually had involved during the development. The fact that they tell you to close all apps, and manually put the device in airplane mode when you hit the dive button is a little disconcerting as well. I guess its good that they at least remind you to do this? These are all MANUAL activities. More room for errors. Besides, this is not the sort of thing I want to be focused on pre-dive.
I guess in the end with such a simplistic app, I am finally left with one huge question in my mind - WHY?? If they were somehow leveraging a functionality or a unique capability of the iPhone, then MAYBE - however we already have perfectly great working solutions that do everything this claims to, and do it better. If it aint broke, dont break it!
Wonder who will cover the liability of a company producing such a device? How will the manufacturer afford this liability insurance? I mean these are not DVD players. Your not going to sell millions of them.
As far as the Fischer pen is concerned, I have owned one for about 20 years, love it. Best pen I have ever owned. They are not just good for for astronauts, you know! You know you can write with the pen in any direction even upside-down, however I suspect in the long term they would not be good for diving either! Talk to your buddy Fischer's family, we may have just discovered a new product/market for them.
Lastly, heres some interesting info to geek out over the 9dof and the AKM compass chip
http://www.chipworks.com/en/technic...e-degrees-of-freedom-sensing-in-the-iphone-4/
ishness
