What problems do you often encounter while diving?

Hello everyone,

This is my first post. I am a product designer and I was assigned by my school to create a light that is used by SCUBA divers, skin divers, spear fishermen, snorkelers, et cetera.

This would presumably be something like a beacon light, flashlight, or light for signaling and communication while underwater...Right now it's kind of up in the air.

But here's where you guys come in: I have 0 SCUBA experience. I have only spear fished occasionally, and snorkelled on and off.

I would like your expertise. Any sorts of stories that you have would be great. I really just want to understand the whole process and figure out what your needs are so I don't design something that's totally worthless.

So just a few questions:

*Some overall interesting stories about diving.
*how to prevent against accidents
*figuring out where your boat is when you have to get back to the surface, especially at night
*how to handle emergencies such as injuries or problems that may occur
*what you typically use lights for while diving
*how you currently communicate underwater, and how important that is (if it is important at all)
*problems with current lights on the market
*the general process of diving and what it is you do while you're down there!

Thanks guys, your input is appreciated!

Well, the first four points are really way too general, but I can address the last few.

I use a high intensity, focused light to see where I am going, bring out colors, let my buddies know where and how I am, and to communicate with them by signals. All the basic signals (OK, Attention, go this way, look at this) are done by lights, with more complex communication done by hand signals with the hand illuminated by the light. (I also cave dive, where lights are even more critical for sight AND communication.)

Problems with current lights: HID lights are bright enough and focused enough, but relatively fragile and have high current demands that limit burn time. LED lights are getting bright, but still lack focus. ALL lights are subject to flooding. High end lights are VERY expensive.

Hope that helps.

We do a lot of night diving, Lights can make a good communication devise.

If we are close to the bottom I can shine the light on the bottom in front of my buddy, If I do a circle on the bottom in front on my buddy, I am asking are you OK, Than my buddy will respond by do a circle on the bottom that he/she is OK.

If I do back and fourth slow on the bottom: I need your Attention.

If I do back and fourth fast on the bottom: I have Emergency.

The dive I want to do is always 10 minutes longer and 10' deeper than my NDL or MOD.

TSandM:

Well, the first four points are really way too general, but I can address the last few.

I use a high intensity, focused light to see where I am going, bring out colors, let my buddies know where and how I am, and to communicate with them by signals. All the basic signals (OK, Attention, go this way, look at this) are done by lights, with more complex communication done by hand signals with the hand illuminated by the light. (I also cave dive, where lights are even more critical for sight AND communication.)

Problems with current lights: HID lights are bright enough and focused enough, but relatively fragile and have high current demands that limit burn time. LED lights are getting bright, but still lack focus. ALL lights are subject to flooding. High end lights are VERY expensive.

Hope that helps.

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That helps a lot.

Can you clarify the statement "lacking focus"?

Is there ever a need for a more ambient light while underwater? In order to see peripherally? One thing I've noticed is that you can only see where you are pointing the flashlight--not on either side of you. Is this a problem?

When cave diving, or just diving in general, how do you figure out how to get back? I would guess that it might be easy to get lost? Is there any sort of marking system that you use there? Maybe some sort of line that connects to you from the boat?

And perhaps I can be more specific with some of the questions: I've been told that sometimes, a diver will surface, and when he looks around, his boat is nowhere in sight; is this a very rare incident, and is finding your boat usually pretty easy? Or is finding the boat that you originally jumped off of sometimes a challenge at night?

I know that these questions sound really ignorant, but thank you for being so patient.

I want to design a light that is very useful to divers, especially in ease of signaling and communication while underwater. So in order for me to do that effectively, I have to absorb a lot of information in a very short period of time.

Stoy D Dabbs:

We do a lot of night diving, Lights can make a good communication devise.

If we are close to the bottom I can shine the light on the bottom in front of my buddy, If I do a circle on the bottom in front on my buddy, I am asking are you OK, Than my buddy will respond by do a circle on the bottom that he/she is OK.

If I do back and fourth slow on the bottom: I need your Attention.

If I do back and fourth fast on the bottom: I have Emergency.

Click to expand...

Okay, thanks a lot, that helps!

If you are going to design a dive light make it led.

Halogen is old school (yellow light and uses a lot of power for the amount of light).

HID is better but the bulbs are expensive.

Look at the new led SST-50. It is a single emitter that is designed to put out approximately 500 lumens but can be powered up to 1100 lumens.

Since it is a single emitter as opposed to a quad package (Cree MC-E) it may be easier to produce a spot beam with. That's harder to do with 4 leds focusing at 4 different points.

In general dive lights are spot lights. Using the UK Light Cannon as an example of a 10 Watt HID it puts out approximately 450 lumens into a 6 degree spot.

If you can do that with the Luminus SST-50 emitter that would be good. If you can get 4 hours at 500 lumens out of a hand held unit that would be good. Try using lithium-ion rechargeable technology to keep the efficiency up and the battery pack size down.

If you keep the dive light size down it can be used hands free with a Goodman handle.

For recreational use it needs to be waterproof to 200 feet but most recreational lights are tested to 300 fsw I believe.

Make it very robust. Use a magnetic switch (can't leak) and maybe have only one point of access at the tail end for the batteries. If you can make it so that you can recharge the batteries without taking them out through a plug in at the tail cap this would be great.

It's important to make the light have a tight pattern, next comes lumens, but the most important is to make it robust. If it leaks easily it's worthless.

This is one idea for you anyway.

You may want to consider a design that makes use of inductive charging. (Perhaps I should patent this idea before posting it here on ScubaBoard.)

Waterproof integrity (at elevated ambient pressure) is essential for a dive light. Making use of electromagnetic induction would enable the user to charge the batteries without breaking the waterproof seal to the battery compartment. Some lights have one, two, three, or more o-rings which need to cared for...or else a flooding event pretty much kills the light. The o-rings need to be cleaned and lubed periodically. With certain lights that might only have a 2-3 hour burn time, I can see how "wireless" charging would be so much more convenient. I'm not sure if there would be heat dissipation issues during a charging session, though.

As TSandM mentioned, burn-time is an issue. Some manufacturers have addressed this issue by including variable circuitry in their lights (high and low settings). A nice feature would be a variable power switch...something like a dimmer...only with a way to lock-in a desired setting.

Size of the light is an issue. The most powerful lights require large batteries. The larger a light gets, the more unwieldy it is. Canister lights address this problem by separating the larger battery (which resides in a water-tight canister) from the light head. The bulky battery canister is mounted on the BCD/backplate/harness, and an electrical umbilical cord leads to the smaller light head, which the diver mounts on the back of one of his hands with a strap or handle. It would be great to be able to shrink the battery down small enough so that the battery + light head would fit nicely on the back of a hand...with no umbilical cord necessary. Unfortunately, in order to accommodate such a design with current battery technology, unacceptable concessions would have to be made with respect to light power and run time. A guy can dream, can't he?

With regard to the battery issue, I always thought it would be really cool if one could convert the mechanical/kinetic energy of exhausted bubbles into usable chemical energy. I realize that this idea is waaaaaaaaay out there.

Some of the more popular canister light manufacturers include Green Force, Dive Rite, Halcyon, Sartek, and Salvo (recently closed down). You may want to take a peek at their lights. The Green Force lights, in particular, have a pretty interesting design.

By the way, please don't design a light that's meant to be mounted on the head or on a helmet. Sometimes it's desirable to illuminate objects with the edge of the light beam...for instance, if you don't want to scare a fish or blind your buddy. Also, a helmet/head-mounted light makes it very annoying for your dive buddies when you glance over in their direction. A dive team needs to maintain good communication, and often times this entails using lights (especially when there is little ambient light, e.g., at night, in a wreck, or in a cave). It is simply too limiting to tie the direction of the light with the direction of one's gaze. I guess what I'm trying to say is: Please don't design a headlamp.

I'll post later if any other ideas come to me. Good luck on your project...

JLW1:

Is there ever a need for a more ambient light while underwater? In order to see peripherally? One thing I've noticed is that you can only see where you are pointing the flashlight--not on either side of you. Is this a problem?

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You seem to be hinting at a lighting system that throws out light peripherally as well as in front of the diver. This feature probably wouldn't be that useful. Generally speaking, divers have very poor peripheral vision due to the design of their masks.

JLW1:

When cave diving, or just diving in general, how do you figure out how to get back? I would guess that it might be easy to get lost? Is there any sort of marking system that you use there? Maybe some sort of line that connects to you from the boat?

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Divers find their way back by following existing cave line (or line that they run themselves). They mark their way using small plastic discs (cookies)...kind of like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs in the forest.
For open water boat diving at night, some dive operators will mount a strobe on the anchor line to help divers find their way back.

JLW1:

And perhaps I can be more specific with some of the questions: I've been told that sometimes, a diver will surface, and when he looks around, his boat is nowhere in sight; is this a very rare incident, and is finding your boat usually pretty easy? Or is finding the boat that you originally jumped off of sometimes a challenge at night?

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I'd say that's a pretty rare occurrence. Usually, the captain turns on some underwater lights which makes finding "home" much easier. As I mentioned previously, sometimes a flashing strobe is placed on the anchor line. One local dive boat here in SoCal projected music via an underwater speaker system to provide divers with an audible homing beacon.

Design a focused LED can light, optics would probably be the way to go as reflectors just don't cut it for focusing purposes with an LED, some kind of focusable optic would be cool. 1000-1500 lumens with a 3-4 hr burn time