wrist-mounted sonar

[geraldp]

I dove on a charter boat out of Cape Ann, MA last weekend and one of the divers had a wrist mounted sonar. What a cool concept. You drop a transponder off of your boat on a short tether, dive in, and your sonar points your way right back to the boat. At all times during your dive you know exactly what the bearing and distance is to your transponder. Unfortunately I didn't ask enough questions at the time, now I'm curious... who makes such a thing? At what cost?

Thanks, Jerry

[Quarrior]

I'd love to hear about this too, sounds interesting.

[archman]

I think Dive-Trak is what you're talking about. Don't know if they're still made.

[DMDC01]

Let me know if you find any info on it, I know of a few people that could use it!! :LIFSAVR:

[MechDiver]

I dove on a charter boat out of Cape Ann, MA last weekend and one of the divers had a wrist mounted sonar. What a cool concept. You drop a transponder off of your boat on a short tether, dive in, and your sonar points your way right back to the boat. At all times during your dive you know exactly what the bearing and distance is to your transponder. Unfortunately I didn't ask enough questions at the time, now I'm curious... who makes such a thing? At what cost?

Thanks, Jerry

If you do a search on the site using "sonar" you'll get a number of pages of posts to review.

[norcaldiver]

It's probably a Xios EyeSea. They are way cool, if rather bulky. Unfortunatly, they started to have some finalcial troubles, from what I heard. Their website www.xios.ch is down, so they may be out of biz.
Here's a link with a picture so you can confirm if this is what you saw. http://www.saintbrendan.com/cdnapr01/ngear4.html

[geraldp]

I dove on a charter boat out of Cape Ann, MA last weekend and one of the divers had a wrist mounted sonar. What a cool concept. You drop a transponder off of your boat on a short tether, dive in, and your sonar points your way right back to the boat. At all times during your dive you know exactly what the bearing and distance is to your transponder. Unfortunately I didn't ask enough questions at the time, now I'm curious... who makes such a thing? At what cost?

Yes it was the Xios EyeSea he was wearing. After posting this question I did a google search and came up with the Xios, but as norcaldiver mentioned their webpage is down.

The guy who was using it said it was only good for a 150 yards or so from the transponder, and he usually used it in conjunction with his compass. If he went beyond the range the compass brought him within the vicintity, and the sonar brought him home. Besides boat diving, he also used it on shore dives, tethering the transponder to his dive flag. He'd be a good buddy to take on a dive.

[Bob3]

There are some commercial pingers a guy can get if you're wanting to spend some serious $$.
Like the goodies listed here: http://www.amronintl.com/diving/products.cfm?id=301
I picked up a few handheld sonars that look somewhat like a flashlight, you can point the critters around & usually spot that errant buddy or the wreck if its within 120'. They're only pressure rated to 50' though.

[geraldp]

Also check out http://www.rjeint.com/ and click on the picture of the diver. This looks like more geared towards commercial and military, but it also has some gear very similar to the Amron International stuff you mentioned. According to a Sport Diving magazine article they showed off an underwater GPS system at DEMA last year (although I don't see it on their website).

From Sport Diving magazine: "UNDERWATER GPS: A model was shown at the DEMA show, but alas ... Divers or ROVs will carry pingers that relay acoustic signals to satellite buoys floating on the surface. This info is relayed to a command system that displays a three-dimensional underwater GPS position map."

Sounds expensive.

[geraldp]

Also check out http://www.rjeint.com/ and click on the picture of the diver. This looks like more geared towards commercial and military, but it also has some gear very similar to the Amron International stuff you mentioned. According to a Sport Diving magazine article they showed off an underwater GPS system at DEMA last year (although I don't see it on their website).

From Sport Diving magazine: "UNDERWATER GPS: A model was shown at the DEMA show, but alas ... Divers or ROVs will carry pingers that relay acoustic signals to satellite buoys floating on the surface. This info is relayed to a command system that displays a three-dimensional underwater GPS position map."

Sounds expensive.

RJE International makes the Dive-Trak that Archman mentioned.