Question to Aladin TEC/Prime owners

I posted this a week ago in the wrong place so may be was not read by the intended audience... so I post it again. My apologies if you read it twice.

I have recently bought an Aladin TEC to replace my old Aladin Sport. After 3 dives I am getting used to all the new information and features, and am pretty happy with it. However, there is one thing I didn't like: its ascent rate display (and alarm) is way too sensitive... compared to the Sport, the TEC gave ascent alarms all the time, short but annoying ones, while the Sport was telling I was within the accepted ascent rates. I believe the ascent speed calculator should do a bit more averaging, as the Sport, in order not to give alarms for fast ascents that last only a fraction of a second, like when moving your arm. Instead it should try to average the reading of a couple of samples at least.

I like to keep my dive profiles in my PC using SmartTrak, but now, with the TEC the profiles are jaggy and half red, while the ones from my old Sport on the same dives, look smooth and only red where ascent rate was exceeded for a longer period... Not very nice to have an almost flat profile filled with red ascents of few centimeters...

I know that the new Aladin logs data every 4sec instead of the 20sec of the Sport, and thus it gives more resolution in the depth profile, but I can clearly see that all the alarms are triggered for only one sample (4sec) for ascents of 1m or less.

I hope I can get used to this... but I hate to have to keep my arm almost motionless to avoid triggering the alarm.

Are all Aladin TEC like this or is a problem of my unit only?

Peter

You can turn off the audible alarm... Page 44 of manual.

petsin:

I have recently bought an Aladin TEC to replace my old Aladin Sport. After 3 dives I am getting used to all the new information and features, and am pretty happy with it. However, there is one thing I didn't like: its ascent rate display (and alarm) is way too sensitive... compared to the Sport, the TEC gave ascent alarms all the time, short but annoying ones, while the Sport was telling I was within the accepted ascent rates. I believe the ascent speed calculator should do a bit more averaging, as the Sport, in order not to give alarms for fast ascents that last only a fraction of a second, like when moving your arm. Instead it should try to average the reading of a couple of samples at least.

I like to keep my dive profiles in my PC using SmartTrak, but now, with the TEC the profiles are jaggy and half red, while the ones from my old Sport on the same dives, look smooth and only red where ascent rate was exceeded for a longer period... Not very nice to have an almost flat profile filled with red ascents of few centimeters...

I know that the new Aladin logs data every 4sec instead of the 20sec of the Sport, and thus it gives more resolution in the depth profile, but I can clearly see that all the alarms are triggered for only one sample (4sec) for ascents of 1m or less.

I hope I can get used to this... but I hate to have to keep my arm almost motionless to avoid triggering the alarm.

Are all Aladin TEC like this or is a problem of my unit only?

Peter

Click to expand...

Hi Peter,
I'm the new owner of an Aladin Tec myself and I've noticed the same thing. I came from an even older version of Aladin, the first generation that were sold under Beuchat, and I really liked it. With this one I'm also learning to get my head around all the information and the settings and short of turning off the audible alarms, I don't think you can change the rate of ascent on the Aladin, be it the Prime, the Tec or whatever, for just the reasons you mentioned (sampling rate frequency). Plus I think the ascent rate is hardcoded and cannot be "customized", like your O2 mix, MB level etc. I have mine on a console and I guess the probability of the ascent rate alarm going off every time I grab the console to check my info is very similar to you, having it on your wrist - "same difference". I don't care much because I don't download my data on the PC yet but maybe once I do that feature will annoy me, cluttering the display and making me look like a dork with all those warnings while going up. I guess we'll have to wait for a next version of it to take care of that problem. Write Scubapro/Uwatec maybe?

The 4 sec sampling rate is for logging purposes only. The computer is sampling all the required data for his calculations in real time.

I have the Tec on a wrist mount as well. I find keeping my arm extended out in front of me on ascent where I can see the computer helps. It keeps it from beeping at me as I don't need to move it around much to see it.

Thanks for the comments.

I don't like to turn off the alarm because it should be there when a real fast ascent happens.. but I guess with this computer it is not possible to tell apart real fast ascents from just arm movements.

I have written to Uwatec, and the first reply was non-sense (they ask me to download the latest version of SmartTrak, which I already have) I will post it here if any useful answer comes back.

As for the sampling rate, I am not sure if the display was being updated faster than 4sec. but at least, the alarms logged are all of 4sec only, with ascents of 80cm to 1m in 4sec.

Does anybody know if these computers support firmware upgrades through the infrared interface?

I have the prime and have the same problem. On the plus side it makes me be more careful while ascending so I do not get the alarm.