One of the most common complaints about the Mk1 (at least in this forum) is it incorrectly logging dives that aren’t actually dives.
Pool mode adequately addresses the issue for instructors and dive masters doing pool sessions with their students.
What isn’t satisfactorily handled is people going swimming or snorkelling. Having to set an activity or even pool mode might work but could cause other issues. For example, what if you are on a dive trip and go for a swim between dives , turn on pool mode while you are swimming but forget to turn it off before your next dive? Setting priorities for the various activities is just too complicated and wouldn’t work with the swimming on a dive trip scenario.
What we need is for the Mk1 to be able to make a sensible and logical choice.
My first ever dive computer was Citizen Cyber Aqualand NX. It was basically a watch with alarms, stopwatch, countdown timer, different timezones, etc. But it was also a dive computer: calculate and display NDL, track tissues, calculate and display deco information, handle Nitrox, log the dives. Sound familiar?
I never had to set it to dive mode as it would automatically go into dive mode. It also had two dive modes: skin diving and scuba diving. Skin diving was basically for snorkelling and was the equivalent of Apnea mode on the Mk1. It would log both of these activities.
While I used it as my dive computer for my local diving I didn’t wear it as a watch for day to day use… until I went on a dive trip. On a dive trip it was my 24x7 watch. This means I not only wore it diving but I also wore it if I went for a swim or a snorkel. The whole time I had it, it never once logged a a scuba dive that wasn’t a scuba dive. It often logged a swim as a skin dive but that was fine.
How did it do it? Here’s the relevant page from the manual:
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I believe this could be easily implemented in the Mk1. The water detection part is not really necessary. It should use 1.2m (as it does now) rather than 1m. The 3 minute delay could be hard coded or it could be user configurable but with a default of 3 minutes.
What the Citizen detected as skin diving, the Mk1 could detect as Apnea (perhaps last used Apnea mode), i.e. you could go for a snorkel/free dive and not have to set the mode and it would still log it as an Apnea dive.
What the Citizen detected as scuba diving, the Mk1 could detect as the last used Dive mode (single, multi or CCR).
Just like the Citizen, the Mk1 should enter the dive modes no matter what current activity is in force. e.g. if you were already in Apnea mode and you stayed under 1.2m for more than 3 minutes, it should switch to regular dive mode (and the dive started from the moment you went under 1.2m). If you were already in one of the dive modes and went deeper than 1.2m for less than 3 minutes, it wouldn’t register as a dive.
OK, so it means if you go for a swim and the Mk1 goes deeper than 1.2m you’ll get an Apnea dive logged but that’s way better than it logging a dive of less than 3 minutes. And it may be of interest/value to log your swim.
