Suunto D4i logbook - dives missing

[Nick Ruberg]

Hi all,

I have had an interesting trip with two Suunto D4i computers:

I purchased D4i black strap in July 2013 for my son and dived with it without much problem. In July 2015 I sent the computer and the transmitter for a battery change to the local Suunto agents (I am based in South Africa).

I purchased D4i pink strap in March 2014 for my wife and she dived it without a problem. In July I sent the computer and the transmitter for a battery change and a service (button complaint).

These two computers are now a nightmare. We went on a trip last week to the Red Sea (21 dives) and the following is what happened:

D4i Black – A couple of times it wouldn't read pressure so we needed to re-pair it (this probably happened 2 times), but on 3 dives wouldn’t read the pressure after re-pairing and working at the surface. Worked fine on surface, checked pressure, etc. Jump into the zodiac and down into the water a couple of minutes later and no pressure (no conn).

D4i Pink – This one gets interesting. On 1 dive it didn’t read the pressure (no conn), on another dive the lower left button wouldn’t press in (it was pushed in already) – these buttons are absolutely crap! Why can’t they take a cue from Scubapro and use magnetic ones. I in fact asked the servicing guys if the more expensive units like the D6 or Dx use magnetic buttons (I would have gladly changed).

On another dive, it would press and change the info shown, but it refused to give the pressure. One had to rely on the bar graph which thankfully still worked. It cycles through all the other values but not pressure. I complained about the buttons when I sent it in for a service.

This is the interesting part: After about 5 dives we wanted to fill in log books and the last dive was in July 2015. The 5 dives we did were not there (neither was the 40m test dive which was there after the battery replacement). One or two dives later, they were back. At the end of the trip, they were gone again. At this stage, they are not there – I hope it remains like that so that it does this when the dealers receive it back. Just in it works after a while, I took a small video.

It worked fine throughout the dives and gave all the depth, time, etc. values and also even gave a surface interval and a no-fly symbol, so it knew the dive had happened.
Needless to say my trust in these computers is gone, which is a pity, since they are nice watch sized air-integrated computers, which is why I chose them in the first place.
I will send both units in for you to look at and hopefully fix.

Any comments or similar experiences?

Kind regards,
Nick

 

[Nick Ruberg]

I find it interesting (read - disturbing) that Suunto has not commented. I dropped off both dive computers with the Suunto agents in South Africa and there was a lot of head scratching going on. Perhaps someone from Suunto would like to check this up with them. The logbook thing concerns me - if there was a diving accident, the logbook would be the first thing to be checked by medical personnel.

 

[Hendrik@Suunto]

Hi Nick,
I had read your post yesterday but didn't want to answer hastily as I ran out of time. First of all sorry to hear about the numerous issues. Obviously a detailed examination is needed to find the respective root causes. Did you send in the transmitters too? This way we can check if the fault is with them. Another thing I'd like to know is if at any stage (recently) you've got an error code during some dive or had a completely drained battery during some dive (or some similar event).

br, Hendrik

 

[Nick Ruberg]

Hi Hendrik,

Thanks for replying - hmmmm. Interesting question and I think we may be starting to bark up the correct tree here.
During July a friend used this computer and she reported that during one dive it warned about a low battery. I checked at the surface and by going into dive mode it told me "battery OK". Next day 917 July) we checked again during the air check and all OK. During the dive the computer actually blanked out altogether. Back at the surface I once again checked battery and it said battery OK - strange. The computer logged a 0m dive on the 17th of July.

I sent the unit for a new battery and checked when it came back that it showed the 40m pressure check dive.

Now here is another interesting one. When you go into logbooks, it shows the last dive as being the 0m dive on the 17th. Push FW(or UP I guess) and it goes to "end of logs". Push up again and it goes to the first dive. Keep pushing up until you get to the 0m dive on the 17th and you would expect that the next button press would take you to "end of logs", but it doesn't. It takes 22 presses to get there (21 dives in the Red Sea + a 40m pressure test dive). So it is as though the info is there, but the screen doesn't change.

The transmitter is a bit iffy I must say and nothing is worse than having equipment you don't trust. As for the buttons: Do the fancier computers (like the D9 and Dx) also have these rubbish buttons? I was quite prepared to ditch these D4's for something better if the buttons were magnetic or of a better quality.

Thanks,
Nick

 

[Hendrik@Suunto]

Hi Nick,
ok that's something we can go upon with and I will get in touch with Ultimo to see what their findings are.
True that equipment needs to be trustworthy and we do our best to provide a high reliability of our devices. We'll take a close look at your units to understand the causes. As for the buttons: The construction is the same in all D-Series models. In general we've made good experiences with it and further improved them in early 2014. I'm sorry that they let you down and we accept your criticism/suggestion.

br Hendrik

 

[Nick Ruberg]

Hi Hendrik,
just a heads up that Ultimo have changed both computers for new units. They have changed the transmitter batteries again and I will check the outcome when we next go diving. Thanks for showing such great support in replying to the thread and with the replacements. I still look forward to finding out what happened.
kind regards,
nick