Wireless/hoseless or hosed air integrated computer?

Are we seriously back to this argument of number of O rings.

For heavens sake.

I live in a location with a much harsher environment that most here can imagine. We look forward to when the temp cools to below 100F

Not only do I have SPG's on all my regs, but also my transmitters are connected via short hose and QD fitted to each regset.

Last year alone I made +150 dives, with my gear being exposed to heat, treated roughly on deck of a rolling boat or just sat around pressurised in the heat.

Strangely enough never had a failure, other than a tiny leak from my HP spool. The O-ring on my LP hoses and inflator are just as likely to go as are those on the valve of my cylinder. As we all know, an LP leak empties the cylinder faster than an HP leak

Hoses invariably fail on pressurisation or if they finally give up the ghost after being ignored.

The most unreliable part of my gear is the WAI transmitters - but this is more to do with batteries than the design (and a whole different issue)

Everyone is free to dive their way, but to try to belittle someone's choice by citing the infinitesimally small possibility of O Ring failure is ludicrous, especially when simple maintenance and observation can reduce the likelihood by 90%

This is about someone point scoring rather than offering a balance opinion

 

Since (1) it has never failed ON A DIVE, (2) failure was a small leak not a catastrophic blow-out, (3) I still prefer some form of pressure gauge redundancy vs. not, I will keep it for now. But hey, I still wear my Suunto SK7 compass on my right wrist as well, so clearly I am a slow adopter of new technology!

 

Just curious: If you are diving with a Perdix AI and a transmitter, why would you keep the Teric in non-AI mode?

Isn't the point of diving with a backup computer for in case your primary computer dies? If your Perdix AI dies, wouldn't you want to still be able to see your tank pressure on your Teric?

 

Considering that just 2 people in this thread have reported a combined total of 4-5 O-ring blowouts on SPGs, it seems like more than just an academic consideration.

 

And yet we find that in fact the majority have been leaks, not catastrophic blow outs.

O-rings wear as you well know, I'll wager you regularly inspect and change the O-rings on the battery compartment of your Perdix. Because you know they wear.

If someone doesn't conduct regular maintenance on their equipment, of course the likelihood of a failure rises.

The fact is, the change of a catastrophic blowout is infinitesimally rare. I can back that claim up with Data too.

I have records from teh last 5 years of our monthly weekend trips. Over that time there's been around 5250 individual dives made.

The failures have been.

1 x LP inflator run away
1 x Hose burst on dive deck
1 x O-ring extruding on dive deck (by chance it was a transmitter fitter directly to the 1st stage)
5 x tank O rings on the A clamp user's - but they don't' really count.

Even though some have old kit they're quite attached to, the reason there's not lots of failures despite most of my crowd making 100+ dive a year is because it's all maintained and service by people.

But my final argument to your preposterous assertion and hyperbole is this.

Those people making the really big dives, with many many hours run time in caves and in deco, who are all risk averse - Use SPG's

 

I use an Suunto D6i with transmitter and a cobra hosemounted AI for backup. Now i got a Oceanic OC1 and are going to get a transmitter for that one too. Just have not decided which of the Suuntos i going to drop. the plan is to change out both Suuntos in the future, going to get something with bigger screen that can use the same transmitters Oceanics use, and preferably in SM mode.

 

Just for statistic purpose I had a leakage (not a complete failure) from a small o-ring in the swivel of my SPG.
It was just a beginning of a dive, but I kept going because it was not an issue diving to 25 m.

 

Hi stuartv.

The vast majority of my diving is on CCR, thus the Teric has been used almost exclusively as a redundant back-up to my hard wired Petrel 2. I’ve yet to use AI technology for my current rebreather and bail out rigs, and have no immediate plans to do so. You are I believe a newly certified CCR diver. Congratulations! Thus, you are aware that you’re not nearly as concerned with monitoring your O2 and dil bottle volumes as frequently as you are on OC, and this, (coupled with the recent recall by Shearwater of the yellow transmitters), is more than reason enough for me to continue to monitor my rebreather cylinders and bail-out rigs with SPGs.

Regarding my OC dives, I’ve found that the Shearwater products that I’ve owned have proven to be almost exhaustively reliable, though not reliable enough to make me complacent. I’ve yet to experience ANY failures with my Perdix AI, and should the worst occur and the Perdix give up the ghost during a dive, I’m disciplined enough to monitor my gas frequently during all OC dives to know that at any time I’ll have more than enough gas volume to thumb the dive, slowly ascend, do a long safety stop, and end the dive with confidence. For my purposes thus far, I’ve been satisfied to allow the Perdix AI to monitor my gas volume for single cylinder OC dives.

Note though that I have not made any “big” dives on OC for many years. Should the highly unlikely circumstances arise where I had to revert to OC for such a dive, I would not wish to rely exclusively on AI to monitor tank volume; I’d attach SPGs to all regulator first stages.

One of the weaker aspects of the Teric is the decrease in battery life when accessing the AI feature. (This is stated in the manual, but I’ve yet to try it.) I’ll be working in the South Pacific for almost the entire month of February, and will not have support for my CCR. Thus I’ll be making multiple OC dives a day for a substantial stretch of time. As I’ll be on a live-aboard with a reliable power supply, I’ll most likely activate the AI capacity of the Teric and use it in conjunction with the Perdix. (I’ll still bring along a SPG and hope to leave it in my cabin for the duration of my stay.) Were I to be in a location where recharging was not readily available, then I’d most likely forego this feature of the Teric in order to maximize each charge. I’d never know when I’d be able to access sufficient power to re-charge the battery.

As to the part of this thread concerning O-ring issues: For as far back as I can recall the only failures/leaks that I’ve experienced with SPGs have been due to worn O-rings in the spools. These incidents have not been catastrophic failures, but rather resulted in a slow trickle of tiny bubbles, and were not drastic enough to end a dive. I’ve always got some spare spools on hand, and simply replace the faulty ones upon surfacing. It’s much faster and easier to replace the whole spool than to deal with the two tiny O-rings. You should be able to find these at your LDS. If not, Dive Gear Express sells them pre-loaded with Viton O-rings for about $1.50. Live large. Order more than one.

Life was simpler when I just wanted a mask, fins, snorkel, and camera.Those were the days, and they weren’t that long ago. I did just that last August when I was photographing Humpback Whales in Tonga.