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The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

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Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#161

Post by mynameisvlad »

threeseed wrote: post #81
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS doesn't work underwater. Would it be for finding your way back to the boat after resurfacing?

If you can't see your boat after you've resurfaced something has gone pretty wrong. Most professional divers will be using a Surface Marker Buoy which indicates where they are underwater and where the boat should be looking to pick them up. One feature that would be very useful under water but was disabled was Compass way tracking. Hopefully Apple thinks about it allowing it.

> Most professional divers will be using a Surface Marker Buoy which indicates where they are underwater and where the boat should be looking to pick them up.

These are generally deployed only during the safety stop, not for the entirety of the dive for obvious reasons-- handling up to 120ft of line underwater for the length of a dive would be near impossible. They would be pretty useless if you resurface and can't see the boat.

That said, you are right, something would have had to go pretty wrong to not see the boat. During a dive trip earlier this year my buddy and I resurfaced 1mi+ from where we were supposed to. But even then, we saw the boat, they saw us and our SMBs and it wasn't a huge deal other than getting the "pickup of shame".

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#162

Post by mynameisvlad »

krugua wrote: post #160
mynameisvlad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it? I doubt it, honestly. Huish, the makers of this app, own the majority of big names in the industry. The reason it’s called Oceanic + is because they own Oceanic. Along with Apollo, Bare, Ollis, Zeagle and a few others. Interestingly, they don’t believe enough in this app to brand it Suunto, their more current dive watch brand. My fear is the next Suunto watch will have subscriptions, if this app proves succe…

To my knowledge Suunto is owned by Anta Sports / Amer sports. Huish is the U.S. distributor for Suunto. Or did I miss something?

Apparently it's no longer Amer sports, according to https://www.divenewswire.com/huish-outdoors-named-distributo...

Honestly it seems more like a partnership than a distribution agreement. Huish's website (https://www.huishoutdoors.com/suunto/) and the press release itself make it sound like Suunto Outdoors is another brand like the others Huish actually owns, so I'm not confident where they stand. I always assumed Huish owned Suunto given their own site's materials.

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#163

Post by nradov »

TreeRingCounter wrote: post #114
lolsoftware wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight clarification: the Apple Watch Ultra has a water resistance rating of 100m. The Oceanic+ app has a 130ft/40m limit because that's the recreational diving limit. [1]: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP879?viewlocale=en_IN&locale=e... .

For those curious, 40m is a standard cutoff for rec diving because A) oxygen partial pressure with compressed air reaches 1.05atm, with 1.2-1.4atm posing a serious risk of oxygen-induced seizures (extremely dangerous) B) nitrogen partial pressure becomes high enough that it becomes narcotic (every gas gets you high at enough pressure, even noble gasses).

There is virtually zero risk of an oxygen toxicity seizure in the 1.2 - 1.4 atm range. I don't think there has ever been a confirmed case of a sport diver toxing at that level. We normally target about 1.2 atm for the working phase of the dive (reduce slightly for long exposures) and 1.6 for deco (with back gas breaks for long oxygen stops).

Narcosis is an issue with nitrogen and oxygen (as well as most other gasses). Helium is the exception. It is a noble gas and has no real narcotic effect; rather the opposite. Other noble gasses such as argon are much more narcotic than nitrogen and aren't used as diving breathing gasses (outside of a few limited experiments).

The other problem with nitrogen and oxygen is that they are relatively dense and so at greater depths they cause increased work of breathing, which in turn causes CO2 accumulation. CO2 is itself highly narcotic, and has other negative physiological effects. So for deeper dives we add progressively more helium to the mix.

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#164

Post by JohnBooty »

teddyh wrote: post #142
JohnBooty wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC, local water pressure varies significantly when you move something around underwater If Wikipedia can be trusted here, movement doesn't increase water pressure as much as we think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_watch#Water_resistance Movement induced dynamic pressure increase is sometimes the subject of urban myths and marketing arguments for diver's watches with high water resistance ratings. When a dive…

> If Wikipedia can be trusted here, movement doesn't increase water pressure as much as we think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_watch#Water_resistance I stand corrected, but the same article also states: “Water Resistant 100 m […] NOT suitable for diving.” “Water Resistant 200 m [.] Suitable for skin diving only. NOT suitable for scuba diving.” And, IIUC, WR100 is exactly what the Apple Watch Ultra has.

Yeah, totally agree. That's why it's kind of weird/concerning that they conform to the much more lenient standard.

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#165

Post by JohnBooty »

jitl wrote: post #136
JohnBooty wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC, local water pressure varies significantly when you move something around underwater If Wikipedia can be trusted here, movement doesn't increase water pressure as much as we think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_watch#Water_resistance Movement induced dynamic pressure increase is sometimes the subject of urban myths and marketing arguments for diver's watches with high water resistance ratings. When a dive…

ISO 6425 is generally used for dive watch , eg a Rolex Submariner, not dive computer . I don't know any dive masters who wear a dive watch while diving; they seem like mostly a fashion / status symbol kind of thing? I have no interest in them anyways. I looked at the Garmin spec sheets before buying my Apple Watch and didn't find any of their computer/watch combos listing ISO 6425. Instead they list a depth (usually…

My understanding is that before the advent of dive computers, dive watches were used for diving so that you could time your ascents and so forth. That's what lead to the development of the (quite strict) ISO 6425 standard.

    they seem like mostly a fashion / status symbol kind of thing
Yeah, this is my understanding from talking to diver friends. As a guy who likes watches yes, they're crazy popular in the watch community.

They've become kind of a genre unto themselves. Citizen, Seiko, and others make affordable ISO 6425 models. I own a few, didn't pay more than $150 for any of them.

Though, I dunno about the "status symbol" aspect. For $30 you can get a diver-style watch that looks like an actual ISO 6425 watch unless you know specifically what you're looking for. So I don't think anybody would be impressed by them. But they are fun to own and rather handsome, if you like that kind of thing.

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#166

Post by thinkmcfly »

shkkmo wrote: post #85
thinkmcfly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have the same clout tho? I bet you can make some pretty sweet gram content with this. Edit: why the hate? Do you guys love Instagram or something?

I suspect you are being down-voted because your comment is perceived as sarcastic and/or joking and comments like that tend to get down-voted because they are seen as low-value comments.

I guess I'd be pretty upset if I bought hardware and then had to pay a subscription for planned functionality too. I suck at playing things off as funny when I feel like I'm being targeted by mockery by people I don't know very well

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#167

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

nradov wrote: post #158
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WR is standard water resistance. EN 13319 may be sufficient, but I don't feel like buying the standard[0], to see. Usually, you want to get PADI and NAUI on board for these types of things, and I don't see either, mentioned anywhere in the press release. [0] https://standards.iteh.ai/catalog/standards/cen/5d35e933-ca5...

Dive training agencies like PADI and NAUI don't typically certify or endorse particular pieces of equipment such as dive computers. They sell instructional materials and supporting services to retail dive shops, which each deal in a mix of different equipment brands. So the agencies don't want to piss off their main customers by playing favorites with particular manufacturers.

I seem to remember a PADI endorsement of my old dive computer, but that was many moons ago.

They aren't just training agencies. They also certify stuff. I remember seeing their names all over my stuff, but that was many moons ago (mid-1990s. I stopped diving, after I had my noggin worked over by a noggin mechanic).

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#168

Post by gresrun »

jitl wrote: post #53
jakear wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't dive with two regulators? I haven't been in a while but I fairly distinctly remember having two regulators per person, that way if one fails you don't have to immediately fall back on passing regulators back and forth breath-by-breath. The backup isn't a particularly nice regulator, probably reusing the mechanism your vest uses to inflate, but better than nothing.

Regulators come in two stages; you carry a backup second stage for someone else if their system fails - but you don’t carry two first stages (the part that screws onto the tank).

In sidemount diving, each diver carries two completely independent tanks & regulators, one on each side of their body.

While it is used primarily in cave diving because it is more streamlined and less likely to collide with cave ceilings and features, I find it also quite comfortable for recreational dives with a pair of AL40s.

It’s also a fun conversation starter with other divers who are curious about my gear!

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#169

Post by jupp0r »

threeseed wrote: post #88
jupp0r wrote: post #6

Any HN scuba divers here that would use this as their only dive computer on a dive? I'm not a scuba diver myself but do engage in other adventure sports where reliable equipment can make the difference between a great trip and disaster. I'd be very reluctant to trust my life or health to this.

I just spent a month in Thailand diving around the sites near to BKK e.g. Koh Chang with the Apple Watch and used it as my only underwater computer. I had a proper dive computer on the boat to help with planning. a) You never trust your life to any single device and there are always backup plans if something fails. And at recreational depths you're not going to do severe damage if your watch fails and you lose no dec…

> I've had Apple Watches since the original one and reliability has always been excellent.

I've had numerous activity tracking apps crash on me randomly, I think because they have been running out of memory on my Apple Watch 3. Strava was one of them. I stopped using it for this purpose after I lost a few tracks.

Re: The Oceanic+ app comes to Apple Watch Ultra

#170

Post by belorn »

izacus wrote: post #153
maratc wrote: post #152

I have more than 500 dives under my weight belt, and I have a (regular) Apple watch, but I'm skeptical. First, there's no mention of Nitrox anywhere (except in a screenshot). Most of the serious folks use this mix (basically, air enriched with some more oxygen) for their dives, it's unclear if — or to what extent — this supports Nitrox. Second, there's no mention of the decompression algorithm they use. Buhlmann, Suu…

I'm pretty sure this will be used by people who go on a week of dives every half a year or so (those are most people I meet in touristy dive places these days) and not by tech or nitrox divers. For those people it makes more sense - no need to carry another dive computer, no need to buy another device and the battery will be just fine for two/three dives in a day. More serious people will still get their Shearwaters/…

Practically all "touristy dive places" use nitrox today. It lower the risk for the dive center that a accident occur on their boats/shores/guided tours, so they have a huge incentive to offer divers to use it. Nitrox is also fairly easy to mark up since divers tend to be willing to pay extra for the reduced risk.

The only places that don't have any benefit of offering nitrox is if the maximum depth of the place is 9 meters, or if people will remain at the surface.

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