Suunto Gekko - Dive Download ????

[neonstingray]

Interesting thread. You see electronics manufacturers pull this technique all the time. I think the most incredible example I've heard of was given to me by my boss at work. Years ago our physics research lab had an IBM mainframe system that costed a couple hundred thousand dollars (this was a long time ago). They later paid an additional $50k to have it upgraded. The 'upgrade' was a guy coming in with wire cutters, and snipping a couple wires in the back. Grant it, they had figured they'd probably see something like that happen, but they still did it because they were effectively paying for the professional support of the computer after the modifcation. Had they done it themselves and had a problem, they'd be in a quite a mess.

Austin

 

[CIBDiving]

How far does this go?

Are the Gekko, Vyper, and Vytec all the same units? Can a Gekko 'become' a Vytec? Or a Vyper 'become' a Vytec?

No. well, at least I haven't been able to find a way, And I doubt it is possable.

My program doesn't turn a gekko into a vyper in any case. It changes the value of one memory location to cause the Dive Manager software to think the gekko is a vyper. It has NO effect on the gekko at all - as far as I can tell the gekko never reads the value. The gekko saves the profile info no matter what value is there - you just can't read it out with suunto's software.
You can make the DM program think the gekko is anything from a Mosquito to a Vytec and it makes no difference to the gekko. You can do the same to all the similar memory model suuntos, from mosquito to vytec ( you can't do the "D" computers they have a different memory layout) and it will have no effect no the dive computer, only the DM.

It is a different thing to turn on say 'gauge mode'. That is a value in the memory that will effect the computer. You can't do that with my download enabler program, you need 'Project1' or a similar program. With the Gekko you can enable the backlite and adjust the ontime, all things you can do with the othermodels, it does no good as suunto didn't put a backlit display in the gekko. Along the same line however, you can adjust the profile sample rate ( the interval between sample points is by default 30 sec I believe ) on the Gekko ( done through the DM ) and That will work just as it does on the other models.

Suunto has done a good job of hiding the Mix info as well. You would think that the current FO2 setting ( and in the Vytec all 3 ) would be available in the memory block, but it isn't. Neither is the PPO2 max value. Those are saved to the profile data but they aren't available to an external program.

 

[SteWells]

So the Vyper still has features which the Gekko doesn't? (eg. gauge mode)

 

[stonefish35]

The Vyper has backlight, SIM and guage mode. The link below allows the side by side comparison of different models of Suunto DC. It helped a great deal when I was deciding which DC to buy last yr.
http://www.suunto.com/suunto/main/ar...?search=search

 

[SteWells]

Yeah, I meant even with this software, the only thing it does is make the Gekko downloadable?

 

[stonefish35]

So far, it seems like this case. Unless someone is about to "upload' the vyper OS into Gekko ?

 

[navillus]

Hi all. This looks like a great program, but being the newbie I am, I am having trouble with the program. When I run the program, it will tell me that the com was opened successfully, but then, less then 5 seconds later, it will tell me that the device has timed out. What am I doing wrong?

 

[CIBDiving]

Hi all. This looks like a great program, but being the newbie I am, I am having trouble with the program. When I run the program, it will tell me that the com was opened successfully, but then, less then 5 seconds later, it will tell me that the device has timed out. What am I doing wrong?

You're doing nothing wrong - there's a bug in the latest release of the DLL. I have a half dozen versions of that thing running around on my system and it looks like a lab rat got loose.
I've been doing a custom version for a divelog maker and while this works fine for them, It causes an error in this program.

Check back tonite or tommorow and I'll have ( I hope ) a fix ready for download.

 

[navillus]

I'll do that. Thank you very much.

 

[CIBDiving]

Ok, New version uploaded and ready. I think this solves the problem, but Please let me know if anybody has a problem.