Safety stop algorithms?

I have a question about the way the safety stop works on MK1.

The safety stop start as it should on 5 meters.
(Seems that I really have to get up to 5 m to have it started, whereas my buddies with Oceanic start at about 6 m)

But then when I descended to about 7 m, to join my buddies during the safety stop, my safety stop counter stopped.
I waited for my buddies timers to end their safety stop and then started to ascend with them. Then my safety stop counter restarted again at 5 m starting with a new safety stop timer for 5 minutes.

Probably this is correct behavior, but I would like to know,
1. When a safety stop is started at 5 m, at what depth will it stop again?
2. If the safety stop counter stops when descending during a safety stop, will it resume the count down in any scenario when ascending, or will it always restart with new 5 min when ascending to 5 mm again?

Anyone know how it is programmed to behave or have tested this?

Thanks

0 atj777 over 6 years ago

I have my Oceanic Atom 3.0 set to 4m for safety stop and it starts at 5.5m (i.e. 1.5m deeper than the set value).

My Mk1 is set to 5m and it starts at 5m.

I have seen the safety stop timer pause a couple of times when I went too deep after it started but it always restarted where it left off.

I suspect there are two depths:
1. a depth below the safety stop depth where the safety stop countdown will pause but restart from that point once you hit the safety stop depth again
2. a depth (deeper than 1.) below the safety stop depth where the safety stop countdown will stop completely and start over again once you reach the safety stop depth again

I think this is a safe way to do it as if you go too deep, you aren't blowing off nitrogen at the rate you should be and the safety stop is becoming less effective.

0 Milosherman over 6 years ago

Thank you. Yeas that seems right.
Would be nice to know at what depth the counter is reset after starting a safety stop and going down again...

0 atj777 over 6 years ago

Next dive I'll play a bit on my safety stop and see if I can work out the two depths.

0 Milosherman over 6 years ago

That would be great :-). Thanks!

0 atj777 over 6 years ago

On today's dive:
* The safety stop countdown timer started when I reached 5m. It displays in the bottom right cell.
* When I dropped back to 6m the timer paused but still displayed in the bottom right cell.
* When I hit 7m the timer was replaced by my air mix (Nx27).
* When I hit 6m again, air mix was replaced by timer but it was still paused.
* When I hit 5m again, it started again where it had paused when I first hit 6m. I was not able to get it to reset.

You'd have to go a lot deeper than 7m to make it reset.

0 Milosherman over 6 years ago

That is great info. Thank you for investigating. Really good to know. One would think that Garmin should include this kind of information in the users guide!