Partial push of Josh's configure-dive-computer GSoC project

Davide DB dbdavide at gmail.com
Wed Aug 20 01:40:06 PDT 2014


2014-08-20 9:58 GMT+02:00 Jef Driesen <jef at libdivecomputer.org>:

>
> These discussion were about importing data from the Sensus Manager
> application, not direct downloading from the Sensus Ultra. That are two
> completely different things.
> You won't find any patches for direct download, because you don't need
> any. Downloading from the Sensus Ultra has been supported since one of the
> very first subsurface releases.


My fault. I did not try just because if my Windows pc doesn't recognize the
USB device there's no way to download regardless of the client program.



>
> In your car analogy, if Volkswagen gets many complaints about that Bosh
>>> start motor, then no doubt they will forward the complaint to Bosh. And
>>> they will hopefully fix the problem. But unlike Volkswagen, Reefnet is just
>>> a really tiny customer of Prolific. Most likely they don't even buy their
>>> usb-serial chips directly from Prolific. So any complaints on their side
>>> are likely going nowhere. Whether you like that or not, that's probably not
>>> to far from the truth...
>>>
>>
>
> Don't get me wrong, I can certainly understand your frustration, but there
> is always another side of the story too. The majority of the support issues
> I deal with for libdivecomputer, turns out to be user mistakes (e.g. no or
> wrong driver installed, wrong type of cable, wrong type of dive computer
> selected, forgot to activate PC mode, nearly empty batteries, etc). So
> that's nearly always my first assumption. Note that I'm not saying this is
> also the case for you.
>
> Anyway, there are so many different systems out there (3 major operating
> systems, each with different versions, different hardware configurations)
> and different level of expertise of end-users. That makes it impossible to
> guarantee that everything will always work on every system. I wish I could
> do something about it, but unfortunately the low-level driver related stuff
> is something I have no control over.
>
>
> Just to give you an example of how bad things can be, take a look at the
> procedure to install the driver for Seiko based devices (Cressi, Zeagle,
> etc), which requires patching the Prolific driver:
>
> http://www.libdivecomputer.org/seiko.html
>
> I'm not even sure this even works on newer Windows version (7 and 8). But
> those users have no alternative, because Seiko has simply exited the dive
> computer business!



Seiko exited the DC business so I can understand. Sad but true. What pissed
me off is that still now there's no word from Reefnet of these problems on
Windows. A friend of mine bought it last year and he was not able to use
it. He asked support to them but their reply in the end was: its' your
configuration. It's not a fair behavior when you google for Prolific and
you discover that there are a lot of complaints.
IMHO a company who stands behind its product behave differently. They could
try to change driver, update it, or maybe change serial/usb cable offering
to their customers a discount on the new interface or something like that.
>From what I see the Sensus itself has just a plain old standard RS-232
serial interface so it shouldn't be a difficult task for them finding a new
driver that works.
Given that nothing of the above happened, I simply believe that this is a
dead product not worth of further development or, if you prefer I'm the
only one with these problems.

Sorry for the OT.



-- 
Davide
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hohndel.org/pipermail/subsurface/attachments/20140820/01f4b16d/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the subsurface mailing list