=== DIVE UPLOADS ===

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Thu, 2013-12-05 at 14:07 +0100, Jef Driesen wrote:
> On 2013-12-02 13:10, Willem Ferguson wrote:
> > Dear subsurface community,
> > 
> > Please write to this mail list, listing
> > 
> > 1) which dive computer(s) you have used
> > 2) Whether it/they worked out-of-the-box in uploading dives to
> > subsurface, or whether any special setup was required to get the DC to
> > upload dives to subsurface.
> > 
> > For example, here is my rather short list of experience:
> > Mares Puck 2: out-of the box, using device ttyUSB0 on Ubuntu
> > Mares Puck Pro: out-of the box, using device ttyUSB0 on Ubuntu
> > 
> > What happens with Uwatec DC's or Suunto D9 tx?
> > 
> > The above information is required to get the upload information in the
> > user manual as current as possible. We regard this as CRITICAL for the
> > use of subsurface, especially if any special setup was required to
> > achieve dive upload from a particular DC.
> 
> My impression is that the majority of supported device computers works 
> fine out-of-the-box. Most reports I receive are either user errors (e.g. 
> pc mode not activated, almost empty batteries, cable upside down, wrong 
> cable purchased, etc) or at the parser level (e.g. incorrect decoding of 
> some data). Real communication errors (as in getting no response from 
> the dive computer) are relative rare, but unfortunately they do happen, 
> and they are very difficult to debug too.
> 
> But on the other hand, I usually only get to see the failures. For every 
> troubleshooting report I get, there are probably many more successful 
> downloads. So it's very hard to tell whether one brand or model is more 
> problematic than others. For example, if I get a fairly amount of bug 
> reports for Suunto devices, is that because they don't work very well, 
> or just because they happen to be the most popular brand?

I can answer that one.
They are very popular. They are pieces of crap. And the download cable
that they use is an even worse piece of $h!t. Nearly a hundred dollars
for a 15 cent chip connected with two badly soldered cable to two 20
cent connectors... the connections can very easily break and get
unreliable (see Linus' earlier email).

So when running into transfer issues with Suunto, always suspect the
cable, first.

Willem, when adding this data to the manual, you may want to tone down
the language a tiny bit, but including the fact that Suunto computers
are at the bottom end of the scale and that the cables tend to be of
terrible quality (regardless of "original" or "3rd party" can't hurt.

/D