Mares Nemo Wide gone insane

[zamzow]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone here can help me out, though I'm not sure how... I'm currently diving in Antarctica, from Palmer Station, USA. My brand-new Mares Nemo Wide has performed flawlessly for my first dozen ice dives, but last night it went berzerk. It has logged four "dives", all to 52 feet, while hanging from a peg in the dive hut. It was brought to my attention by the beeping this morning and when I looked at the computer I was dumbfounded to have it telling me it was in 52 feet of water. I brought it out of the dive hut and over to the lab building and it still was "diving". It finally stopped after 12 minutes this last "dive". When I scrolled the logbook I found out it thought it had dived four times in the last 12 hours, but each dive record read a temperature of 90 degrees F, which is how hot we keep the dive hut to ensure dry gear. If someone was pulling a fast one on me it would have read 35 degrees, the water temp right now!

So, given that I'm on the seventh continent, I can't very well just mail it off to the dive shop. I'm hoping someone might have heard of a similar problem? The battery says it's 100%, and I just have no idea what to do with the thing. Is it possible that it doesn't like the extreme temperature of the dive hut? Any advice gladly appreciated - I'd sure like to use my Mares instead of being forced to use the old UWATEC ones everyone else uses around here.

Sorry for being so long-winded - would appreciate any advice!!

Jill Zamzow
National Science Foundation - Polar Programs Postdoctoral Fellow
Palmer Station, Antarctica

 

[ianr33]

Couple of long shots you could try;
Soak in fresh water in case the pressure sensor has been blocked with salt deposits.
Remove battery for a few seconds (if removable ! ) to reset the computer.

If that does not work the you are SOL.

I had an Aeris computer do something similar once. Insisted I was at 5 feet on dry land.Removing the battery got it working for a while but it died a few months later.

 

[SteveAD]

I'd rather dive an uwatec than a mares that's working right, let alone one that that definitely has a problem.

The battery reading 100% sounds like a red flag to me, even if the battery was changed recently, just a few dives would have brought it down to 99%. If a computer is showing one factor known to be false then anything else it shows has to be suspect.

If you want to dive the mares, bring along a backup and compare the 2.

 

[zamzow]

Thanks for the suggestions, Ian - I tried both and since then it hasn't gone diving on me for 8 hrs. I think I'll put it back in the dive hut and try to see if it is a temperature thing somehow... not that it *should* malfunction at 90 degrees, mind you, that's well within its stated thermal operating range.

Re: UWATEC vs. Mares, I took both multilevel diving to 130' earlier this season and got nearly identical deco information, so I don't see a big difference, except that I love my big buttons on the Mares, especially for use with dry gloves, and I like the big display.

My ears are open for any other suggestions!