DiveNav has closed

[rhwestfall]

Sensorcon: 0-500 ppm range, accuracy is +/-10% of reading, display resolution is 1 ppm.

 

[jgttrey]

What was crap about the unit? Mine works just fine.

I, personally, never had any big issues with them customer service-wise either - but they did have an overly aggressive spam filter which made getting in touch with them via e-mail harder than it needed to be (a bad thing for customer service). However, once sorted out, I never had any issue contacting them again.

I had the unit back to them twice for calibration and that did seem pretty pricey - but on the last one, they sent me back a brand new unit with the new firmware as they found a board issue with my unit - so they did right by me.

I did see the owner get “into the gutter” arguing with some posters here which is never a good idea for a business owner to do - regardless of who’s right or wrong.

In the end, it’s a shame to lose a unit like this from the marketplace - but I’ll look to source sensors and bump gas and keep it running myself.

I think you got lucky. I don't have a comprehensive list of the problems my buddy experienced but the ones I was present for were a shoddy battery compartment/contact situation that he had to fix himself to keep the battery in place (and maybe one of the sensors rattling around inside, I can't recall for sure) and getting locked out of testing by a nag screen about replacing his sensor that, IIRC, could only be cleared with a cell phone, which he didn't have with him at the time. There were other issues (many), but I wasn't a witness to them or I've forgotten what they were.

The short story is that he pretty much gave up on it. The CO testing was appreciated and it was used as a convenience as a secondary analyzer, but he never would have relied on it as our only analyzer on the boat because more than once he had to put it back in the case and ask to borrow someone else's.

I compare that to the zero problems I've had with my Palm O2 and DiveSoft analyzers.

He also had the typical experience with customer service which involved trying every method of contact short of carrier pidgeon with no response.

Like I said, it was a great concept and it seemed that it was creeping in the right direction with firmware updates, etc. I would have had far less problem with the beta-type issues they had if the company had been responsive in supporting its users and helping to fix them in a timely way.

 

[laikabear]

@Joneill

The CooTwo has a crappy on- button that you have to use in a series of hard and soft presses to work the analyzer. Sometimes it works as intended. Sometimes the unit turns off repeatedly every time you try to calibrate it, and you have to keep trying to turn it on over and over (when fully charged).

The charger port on mine stopped working and I was able to open the analyzer, jiggle some stuff around, and then get the charger to work intermittently. For a while I had to actually hold the charging plug in with my hand to get it to charge. Any time I tried to let go it would stop charging. That seemed to get better (after a couple of times of opening the analyzer) and now the charger can be charged without me holding it, but you have to be careful to make sure it actually starts charging when plugged in. The plug on the CooTwo is temperamental.

The battery life indicator doesn't work right. Sometimes it says the battery is dead when it isn't, and the unit shuts off. If you restart it, it says the battery is completely charged, and then it works. At this point there is usually no warning when the battery is getting low, the unit just stops working abruptly and won't turn back on.

I only use it in standalone mode, I don't try to pair it with my smartphone. It was temperamental for that, also. Luckily you can use and calibrate it without the phone.

Those are my only complaints. When it works, I haven't had a problem with the sensor accuracy. It's found some CO in tanks that I wouldn't have known about, and it analyzed some really smelly gas once and confirmed it was very contaminated with CO.

I haven't replaced either sensor, and I haven't done any type of re-calibration for CO.

 

[Joneill]

@Joneill

The CooTwo has a crappy on- button that you have to use in a series of hard and soft presses to work the analyzer. Sometimes it works as intended. Sometimes the unit turns off repeatedly every time you try to calibrate it, and you have to keep trying to turn it on over and over (when fully charged).

The charger port on mine stopped working and I was able to open the analyzer, jiggle some stuff around, and then get the charger to work intermittently. For a while I had to actually hold the charging plug in with my hand to get it to charge. Any time I tried to let go it would stop charging. That seemed to get better (after a couple of times of opening the analyzer) and now the charger can be charged without me holding it, but you have to be careful to make sure it actually starts charging when plugged in. The plug on the CooTwo is temperamental.

The battery life indicator doesn't work right. Sometimes it says the battery is dead when it isn't, and the unit shuts off. If you restart it, it says the battery is completely charged, and then it works. At this point there is usually no warning when the battery is getting low, the unit just stops working abruptly and won't turn back on.

I only use it in standalone mode, I don't try to pair it with my smartphone. It was temperamental for that, also. Luckily you can use and calibrate it without the phone.

Those are my only complaints. When it works, I haven't had a problem with the sensor accuracy. It's found some CO in tanks that I wouldn't have known about, and it analyzed some really smelly gas once and confirmed it was very contaminated with CO.

I haven't replaced either sensor, and I haven't done any type of re-calibration for CO.

Maybe luck - but I have never had any of those issues with mine and it has always worked seamlessly with the app on my iPhones. I do recall some of the testy exchanges with the owner here on SB were about the Android version of the app.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

That's kind of a shame to hear, but if they had a going out of business sale, I would have bought another one.

Mine doesn't connect to my iphone properly. It got worse after the firmware update, and I think it's the Cootwo that is broken, because it won't display the bluetooth logo for 2 minutes like it claims in the manual, after 20 seconds or so, it goes away. I can see the unit on the phone, but when I try to connect, it doesn't work.

I also don't understand for the life of me, why the Divesoft doesnt' come with CO. If the Solo cost $100 more but included CO, i'd buy one tomorrow. It doesn't make sense to have 3 different analyzers, for He, O2 and CO, and the fixed costs of computing power, case, etc, are much bigger than the extra $20 for the CO sensor.

Fingers crossed my Cootwo survives for a while, it's working fine in standalone value for now. I wanted it to connect to the phone so I could take screenshots of the values as records incase of any issues during a dive, but my handwritten checklist works well enough.

 

[Altamira]

Probably good units to have if you rent homes with gas utility in them. I'm not sure you can reasonably use it to test tank air. Will those units even tell you if you have 1ppm CO present? I've got a portable room co meter that I use for traveling but it doesn't give you a CO reading, just an alert if co is too high.. something like 20ppm

I use a Sensorcon to test my tanks prior to every dive. So far it has been working just fine. My tanks, filled by my LDS, have always showed 0 ppm, but last Fall, displayed a 25 ppm on my dive buddy's tank filled by a different LDS . Obviously we thumbed the dive with that reading, and later found out that particular LDS had issues with their compressor, and was not checking the air they were selling to divers. My buddy had to get his tank cleaned and then refilled by my/our LDS.

 

[JohnnyC]

I've had crappy battery connection issues, CO sensor falling off the board, interface issues, connection issues, lock out issues when it's time for calibration and my phone isn't around. And I was backer #1 on Kickstarter. Literally the first backer because I believed that the market needed something like this and the safety aspect was well worth dealing with DiveNav. Shame on me I guess. I never even got my promised half-price O2 sensor. Fortunately it takes the same cells as one of my rebreathers so it worked out ok with rotated cells.

I managed to get my hands on an Analox CO meter, they still support them, just don't manufacture them anymore. Coupled with my Divesoft, I've got all my bases covered and don't have to worry about DiveNav and their crappy product and even worse service anymore.

 

[TrimixToo]

Another Scubaboard darling goes belly up. Learned my lesson there. The CooTwo is a piece of junk and the guy was a jerk. Too bad because it was a good idea and so far no one else has CO capability in an O2 analyzer. Mine still limps along with excessive babying, but basically has the quality of any item you'd buy for a quarter out of a grocery store vending machine.

Tobin had some good stuff but his wing design was stupid and he was a jerk, too. Good riddance. There's really no reason to treat your customers not just badly, but with contempt.

That's 2 out of 3 for the biggest Scubaboard darlings since I've been around (not long). Fingers crossed the SB seal of approval curse doesn't harm Shearwater.

Shearwater's sensible designs, service excellence reputation, and courtesy (hey, they're Canadian, after all!) are clear differentiators. I doubt SB's "SOA" can hurt them. ;-)

 

[seaseadee]

I took mine apart because I can’t even get it to come on. The battery is reading 0V even after being connected to the charger overnight. The PCB actually has “AAA” etched under the battery, so I tried it with a AAA battery and it still doesn’t turn on. Does anyone know that it will work with a AAA battery given that those are 1.5V and not the 3.7V of the rechargeable? If it should work with the AAA battery then I will give up and not bother to spend any money on it. Otherwise I can try to source one of those batteries to test.

 

[rhwestfall]

I took mine apart because I can’t even get it to come on. The battery is reading 0V even after being connected to the charger overnight. The PCB actually has “AAA” etched under the battery, so I tried it with a AAA battery and it still doesn’t turn on. Does anyone know that it will work with a AAA battery given that those are 1.5V and not the 3.7V of the rechargeable? If it should work with the AAA battery then I will give up and not bother to spend any money on it. Otherwise I can try to source one of those batteries to test.

That is the 3.7v AAA. I had to use a "real" battery charger to return it to life...... Been fine since then.