Wisdom 2 - Air Integration

Looking at the Wisdom 2 that's on sale dirt cheap at Sport Chalet. My old computer is not air integrated, this one is. What exactly does air integration get me? Is is simply showing my remaining psi on the screen or is it factoring air consumption into its algorithims?

Dave

It is doing everything for you. That computer is acting as your pressure gauge as well as your dive computer based on your air comsumption it does give you your dive time remaining.

Air integration computers do the gas planning equations for you on-the-fly. The dive computer takes into account of how much air is left in your tank, how much air you consume at a particular depth and calculate remaining time at that depth before you have to ascend. This air remaining time takes into account the 3-minutes safety stop so that by the time you reach the surface, you should have 500-psi (or 300-psi, or whatever pressure you want to have in your tank at the end of the dive) left in your tank as a safety measure. Of course, if your nitrogen saturation or O2 saturation builds up before you run out of air at that depth (not total out of air but out of bottom time due to air running low), then the computer will sound the alarm and tells you to begin your ascension as well.

I've had the Wisdom 2 for over a year. It's simple to use and easy to read underwater. Highly recommended. Not to mention it does all the cool stuff fnflaman said.

I absolutely love mine!

I used a Wisdom for awhile before I got fully into technical diving and went with a bascially DIR configuration. For a recreational diver there are pros and cons to air integration.

It puts all your eggs in one basket and the SPG feature adds an element of potential failure. 3 of my 4 wisdom failures were SPG related (I bought one of the first ones and the Wisdom, at the time, had a 3.5% failure rate, but the divers I dove with exceeded that as all five of us went through at least one failure - probably due to a combination of high alitude diving in alpine lakes where the computer may go from 100 degrees on the boat deck to 35 degrees at 100-150 ft in a couple minutes. Warranty support was however superb with on the spot in shop replacement.) If the SPG, fails you surface and are done diving. It is not the issue it was with early wisdoms but it does add some complexity that you don't have with a brass and glass SPG.

It will also display air time remaining or no deco time remaining, which ever is less and with a good SAC rate or large tanks, that number is almost always deco time remaining, which makes the air integration a bit pointless. The ability for the diver to select and lock one or the other would have been nice. For a new diver with a poor SAC and an AL 80, steel 72, etc, it has some utility, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt. For example jumping into cold water will cause a 200-300 psi pressure drop in the first few minutes which is pretty obvious. What is les obvious is swimming up through a sharp thermocline that will warm the air, increase the pressure and offset the gas you are breathing. The computer can't tell the difference, so it will give you an air time remaining number that is wildly optimistic until things stabilize and it recalculates. So you still need to use your head.