dive site handling

[Linus Torvalds]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 1:18 AM Pedro Neves <nevesdiver at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 25/02/19 21:53, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > There _have_ been noises about people doing gps buoys, but honestly,
> > that sounds a bit theoretical.
>
> I guess there's always a Subsurface user for every conceivable case ;-)
>
> I do, on several occasions, record our GPS track for some of our dives,
> particularly when doing habitat mapping. What we do is tow a surface
> marker buoy on which a GPS receiver/logger is placed. Despite the angle
> of the cable that connects the SMB to the scooter/diver, this works
> really well for depths down to 25/30 m...
>
> We then use the GPS tracks to georeference pictures, videos and other
> observations. So yes, I'm up for assigning a GPS track to the dives...

Oh well. So much for "theoretical".

I guess we should make the GPS location data simply be an "event"
among others.  That would make it possible to show any path, and the
Garmin Descent case would just become "add event for beginning/end".

The only problem there is that once you make that kind of change, then
older versions of subsurface won't understand it. The advantage of the
"extradata" field was that it was already basically free-form.

Of course, if the gps information is an "event" thing, then it would
be per-dive-computer (like the "extradata" thing already is), and that
in turn means that the GPS buoy would logically have to be treated
like a dive computer, instead of being merged with some existing
computer.

That sounds like a nightmare too.

I'll mull it over.

                Linus