Dm5

[GreggS]

Not sure if this has been answered already but I recently bought an Eon Core. The Eon Core is displaying imperial units but when the dive logs are exported to DM5 all the information switches to metric. Is there a way to fix this?

As I've not used DM5 in over a year, I can't remember for sure, but I think there is a menu setting that you have to change it from metric (default) to imperial. It would probably be under File/Preferences or something similar.

 

[Saboteur]

Hi all. I want to start downloading dives from my Zoop into DM5 (or MacDive or Subsurface...not sure which one yet) and am going to need the cable. eBay has non proprietary cables available for half or less than Suunto's cable. Are there any issues with buying a non-Suunto cable...... a cable is a cable right? Sorry, I'm not computer savvy.

 

[GreggS]

I've not had any experience with the "after-market" cables, but would assume they would be okay. You might want to check the seller's feedback to check if anyone has bought one recently and see if they have anything to say about it.

Just my 2 cents worth. YMMV.

 

[Landau]

I had one of the aftermarket cables for my Zoop and could never get it to load with DM5 - only subsurface and that was always tricky to make work. The aftermarket cable came with proprietary USB drivers - so may not have been what DM5 was looking for. There would be no incentive for Suunto to make DM5 work with a Non-Suunto cable.

That said SubSurface served my needs.

 

[GreggS]

Well, truth be told, for me, after using DM5 for a while, it stopped working with the Suunto factory cable. So I don't know that is a good argument or not. I mean, DM5 worse than sucks.

 

[atdotde]

Are there any issues with buying a non-Suunto cable...... a cable is a cable right?

These cables are slightly more than a cable as they contain a chip that does the USB <-> serial conversion (funnily enough as the S in USB is for serial as well but USB has more of protocol around it). The PC needs a driver to talk to this chip and that driver depends on which chip exactly is built into the cable. The good news is that almost everybody uses chips by "FTDI" and the driver provided by them does the job (if it is not already installed on your computer).

Once you have installed the correct driver for the chip in your cable, the differences are abstracted away and to the application (be it DM5 or Subsurface or anything else) it looks like a "serial over USB" device which is standarized. I.e. with the correct driver it should not matter which logbook software you use (unless they have other problems which are then independent of the cable used).

I have excellent experience with the cables sold by Smartinterface – Your online shop for dive related accessories This one man company is not super super cheap but service is very good as well.

 

[Saboteur]

An update to my earlier post, I just bit the bullet and got the Suunto cable, less likely to have to mess with drivers for aftermarket cables. Those drivers come on CD and I'd have no easy way to upload them on an iMac. No problems uploading dives into Subsurface or DM5. Looks to me that DM5 is still a troublesome app, crashes frequently just by navigating through the uploaded dives. FRUSTRATING!! Subsurface works great...I've been messing around for a few nights entering dive details and manually entering old dives....stable and no problems. IMO to anyone reading this thread, don't even bother with DM5. It's sad that a free program can run so well on multiple platforms and PDC's and Suunto can't even get their proprietary software to work well. I'm more than happy with the Zoop and I'm not ruling out ever buying another Suunto PDC but Suunto your company name is on this!! Please support it!

 

[daveco2]

I assume you have the Zoop which has a menu item to direct it to computer connection. I have the Zoop Novo which doesn't have that menu item in favor of an automatic connection. My Novo worked fine with DM4, but doesn't with DM5 nor with Subsurface on three different computers including a Mac.

 

[daveco2]

It works. The trick was to connect the dive computer and PC cable, have "Data Download" displayed on the dive computer; and in that condition, install DM5. The same procedure worked successfully on both my Win7Pro and Win 10Pro machines. I am grateful to Suunto support for sticking with the problem for several weeks of trial and error. They got back to me on a daily basis.

 

[Rogerthedodger]

talk about junk softwear