Software Suggestions

[scubadada]

Marg, you are WAY over moderating in my opinion.

+1 on that, thanks C Dub

 

[stuartv]

I took a class in Fortran IV while in college in 1969. I probably would not be of much help with that, though, so I won't try to recover my memories of that. Besides, it would be tough to find a card punching machine.

Hey, so, to get back to your OP, now that I've spent a bit of time today playing with the dive planner screen in Subsurface, I think it's a very viable alternative to Multi-Deco. And Subsurface is free and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The way the UI works is not perfect, but it is very usable. Planning repetitive dives is not obvious in the way it works, but once you realize that you just set the date and times on each dive that you are "planning" and it handles the SI automatically, it starts to make sense.

I sent an email to the Subsurface listserv just a bit ago requesting 3 changes. None of them are required. They would just make it easier to do the things that I want to do.

- Give each dive leg an option to ascend/descend to the leg depth using the configured ascent rates. The default behavior is that it uses the entire leg time to ascend or descend to the target depth. Nice for planning a leg where you're following the bottom up. Not so nice if you want to ascend from the bottom at 130' to the top deck at 90'. The way it works now is that you would have to enter 2 legs for 90' the first leg would be for the duration of time you would use to ascend to 90' and the second leg would be for however long you want to stay at 90'. For me, that means calculating the ascent time from 130 to 90 at 30 ft/min. Why should I have to manually calculate that?

- Add an option to extend your final stop by X minutes. I like to add 3 - 5 minutes at the final stop to my deco dive plans. And if my plan, using Buhlmann w/GF results in no stops required, I would still like my plan to include a 3 - 5 minute stop at whatever depth I have configured for Last Stop.

- Add an option for Last Stop at 30'. Right now, it only has options for 10' or 20'. When I and the people I know dive off NC (Outer Banks), we normally use 80% for deco gas and do the final deco at 30' to stay out of the surface surge.

Like I said, none of these things make it unusable at all, and they are the biggest issues I have with it (so far).

 

[Centrals]

Started on Pro-Planner and gradually shifted to Deco Planner and hasn't changed since early 2000. And still diving with GF 20/80.

 

[lowviz]

I took a class in Fortran IV while in college in 1969. ...

Ha! me too. Then Algol 68, breath of fresh air for a block thinker. Then C. Then object oriented stuff, that didn't excite me much at all for scientific programming. This does: Visual programming language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Things change and those who change with them usually do rather well.

Suggestion: Port a solid ZHL16 implementation to a platform-independent visual programming language. And NO I don't mean Microsoft's "Visual" anything. They just ripped off the name because they saw the threat to their product line.

I've used and enjoyed this: (no affiliation whatsoever) What’s New in LabVIEW 2016 - National Instruments

 

[Dr Simon Mitchell]

Hello,

On actual dives I carry two completely independent computers that run GFs (the rebreather's computer and a shearwater plugged into the cells).

But for playing around with dive planning I do want to acknowledge that I use GFs in Multideco and as I have pointed out before I think it is a nice piece of software.

Simon M

 

[KenGordon]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

I have deleted (not edited) several posts that contained snarky jibes. Some had some useful info in them but in light of the train wrecks some other posts in this forum became, mods will be taking a very hard line to require everyone to play nicely. Please be very thoughtful in your posts so that we don't shut down another thread and/or block people from making any posts. Marg, SB Senior Moderator

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People ask for recommendations of software to use and you delete a post which says one is very frustrating from a usability point of view although correct in implementation. You give the reason as personal attack despite the fact that the whole thread is actually an attack on the author of that software and calls into question the correctness of the software? At least two of the attackers are moderators.

May I repeat. The GF implementation in question is perfectly fine as far as I can tell comparing it to my implementation.

I do not en joy the user experience (eg editing level gas or time) as much as I might hope.

The existence of this software means it is not worth while getting into the business of publishing such software.

 

[KenGordon]

Here is a test for deco software. Change it between metric and imperial and see what happens. Will you end up with a 40ft plan rather than a 40m plan? Will your stops and ascent rates be all weird?

 

[Macan]

I use Multideco on iOS devices. It's fast and easily configured. When cross referencing outputs with other Tec divers using Decoplanner on PC, Multideco and Decoplanner have similar results.

My only complaint about Multideco for iOS is that it's too basic. I wish it could do more. Perhaps the developer can add more features.

 

[leadduck]

If you're going to leave out iOS support (which I fully support ), why not just port Subsurface to Android? It already runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Possibly just port the back end and implement a new native UI. A native UI implementation would very likely be much nicer than trying to do one that worked on all those platforms anyway.

I think most of the effort of all of these tools is in the UI and the dive computer data import functions. Porting subsurface to Android means almost rewriting it, because you have to redesign the UI from scratch. Anyway, why re-invent the wheel. I guess I'll try something else, like an online dive planner with documentation, or a free Android app; not another re-implementation of GF or VPM, but rather showing other ways of conservatism.

 

[victorzamora]

Here is a test for deco software. Change it between metric and imperial and see what happens. Will you end up with a 40ft plan rather than a 40m plan? Will your stops and ascent rates be all weird?

Those are the reasons why I'm no longer using PastoDeco. The implementation of switching units is very weak and incredibly un-intuitive. It also keeps wanting to switch back to Metric if I ever take an eye off of it. The final straw: I was planning a dive in feet, it converted those numbers to meters, and then planned it with the new number (1/3.3 of what I had wanted) and planned it that way. No, thanks, I didn't want to plan a 43ft dive using 21/35.....nice try, though. A long list of those things were what got me searching for a new program....so I'm here hoping I don't have to start trying to program one myself.