CCR

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 04:37:14PM +0300, "Paul-Erik Törrönen" wrote:
> 
> I have been in contact with Martin at VMS (http://www.vmsrebreathers.com/
> they took over the Sentinel from VR) about opening up the protocol to 3rd
> party (such as libdivecomputer), but he insists on keeping it proprietary
> and creating his/their own desktop software.
> 
> Beats me why, since it is in no way in their interest. I did plead that he
> would at least consider including an export function to that software, so
> that Sentinel users could then continue using their favourite log software
> (ie. Subsurface).

We have a long history of companies who either ignore us (Cochran,
Liquivision, the old Uemis) or are even actively hostile, going as far as
threatening to sue developers who try to support their hardware (Suunto...
remember, friends don't let friends dive a Suunto).
In some cases they have a confused business model (Uemis with their
captive portal, Suunto with DM4 and their vision of differentiation), in
some cases they simply seem to see no interest from their users in decent
software and are afraid of the drain / effort of supporting us.

I know of at least one case where after reverse engineering their
protocoll it became clear that they didn't want us to do this was that we
would see a) how broken their interface is and b) that marketing
statements that they made were flat out lies.

> Until VMS defacto provides a software which enables me to do export, my
> intermediate solution will be to get a DC which understands setpoints
> (Petrel or NSTC2/3), and trade the HelO2 for that, so that I get at least
> approximate data out. This however still does not cover the fact that I
> still will need to fill the cylinder information manually.

Almost no dive computers allow the user to set the cylinder in use and
then give that information to a divelog. The two exceptions I'm aware of
are Uemis SDA and Atomics Aquatics Cobalt...

Given that - what would make your workflow easier here? Do you usually
dive with the same set of cylinders? How about a way to set up a template
that you could simply apply to a dive (first cylinder is this, second
that, third that, fourth that)?

Is there a better way to do this?

/D