Suunto Ocean general discussion
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Something interesting happened to my Ocean, and I’m not sure if it’s a feature or a bug.
I went swimming a few days ago and tested out the “freediving” sport mode, and sure enough my local pool is 3.5m deep. I exited the freediving mode, didn’t save the swim, then started floating around waiting for people to leave so I could start my lane swim.
During this time I dove down again with the watch with no sport mode activated, and it automatically started the “scuba diving” mode, which is a feature.
Since then my watch has been showing how long it has been since my last “dive”. I’m up to 61h now.
The manual states “If an algorithm deviation has occurred during the dive, the no-fly time is always 48 hours.”
Shouldn’t the time since last dive change back to date mode now? I’ve tried rebooting the watch, I’m hesitant to reset it.
Here’s an image of the watch face:
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Does the personal breathing rate directly related to the tank pressure affects the NDL calculation time in Suunto Ocean when using transmitters?
No, NDL is based on time at depth, and tissue saturation as a result, and a gas mixture you breath. Your breathing rate or tank pressure don’t factor in for obvious reasons such as computer not knowing if it’s you breathing or your regulator free-flowing, or how much air your particular set of lungs can process.
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@diogao13 I hope not - as the NDL value should only show the No Decompression Limit. I agree it would be comfortable to have a kind of combined value.
You are thinking of Gas Time. Basically the time you have remaining under water based on your breathing rate and tank pressure at current depth. If your breathing rate is high, or you are at depth, your GT will be much smaller than if you breathe slowly at shallow depth. Somewhat related is TTS, time to surface which shows how much time you need to surface safely based on deco obligations and safety stops.
Ideally, you want both the tank pressure and Gas Time on screen in addition to the information Suunto included.
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@Kevin-Major By design. All dive computers activate scuba diver mode when you splash deeper than 1 m give or take. That’s why Garmin has a “pool mode” that disables this behavior and Suunto lets you configure depth that triggers scuba mode.
At least, you are cleared to fly
Something tells me the dive watch face will be shown at least until the surface interval is counted in days and Ocean decides you are truly done diving
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@Brainicus I’m happy to announce that sometime between 69 (nice) hours and 71 hours it reverted back to the original watch face.
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@isazi yes the heart rate monitor works while diving
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Additional thoughts after taking my watch for its first freedive:
- I’m stuck with whatever depth/dive time alarm I had configured before I started the dive, with no means of changing it mid-session. I’d like to be able to change my alarms mid-dive - perhaps while on surface mode - to account for changing conditions. For example, perhaps the depth of my dive line has been changed and I’d like to change my alarm to alert me just before hitting that new depth.
There are also features missing when viewing enlarged charts for freediving stats compared to stats from other activities (eg swimming), and I don’t like it. The missing items include:
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The option to display up to three different metrics as main graph, comparison graph, and background graph is not available. Instead, only the main graph is shown. I can only more than one metric at once (such as depth vs heart rate) when the charts are not enlarged and was being shown as part of the stats overview screen.
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When moving the cursor across the graph, I’d only get a readout of the y-axis but not the x-axis (ie time). I’d like to get a more precise reading of the time, please.
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When looking at depth, I’d like my ascent/descent rate to be shown in metres per second.
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There is no option to hide events such as dive alarms or when a dive has started. This clutters up the screen.
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Information on the top bar is not as informative in freediving mode compared to other activities, though I appreciate that my phone’s notification slider is hidden when viewing freediving stats.
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The “Select Lap” option to quickly zoom into the portion of the graph for a particular lap (dive?) is not shown.
Below are screenshots for charts for freediving (above) versus swimming (below) for comparison. The black bars to the left are presumably there to get around my phone’s in-screen camera, so I’ll just use that space to add labels. The blurred out portion in the “swimming” screenshot are my phone’s notification icons.
For context to those who haven’t checked out freedive mode, the metrics that can be displayed on the chart are depth (along with dive events mentioned above, marked with green circles), heart rate (if HR monitoring is on), and sensor temperature. These are plotted against time elapsed since the start of the activity, of course.
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Hello. How was your general experience in freediving mode? I used the suunto d4 until I broke it, I was very happy. Would it be a good alternative?
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@Yerai-Hernández-Díaz I’m not sure how to compare with the D4 since I’ve never used it, and I don’t recall having studied its instruction manual while I was shopping for a dive computer.
I would say its freediving features only covers the bare basics, while the lack of a surface alarm and a way to change the other alarms (depth and dive time) once freediving mode has started is annoying. As I have mentioned elsewhere on this forum, I wish Suunto starts copying Atmos Mission 2’s homework when it comes to freediving features.
On the other hand, it does have a vibration alarm in addition to a beep alarm, though you could miss the vibration alarm if you weren’t expecting it. And if you are ever tempted to look at your watch in the middle of your dive (naughty… naughty…
), at least it’ll be quick because the screen is very bright and readable even in dark murky waters. -
@kohjl th
Thanks you for the replay!!!
Waiting for any review for freedivers, but It could be a nice watch for ocasional freedive…
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@Yerai-Hernández-Díaz It’ll get the job done.
I just hope it’s not too much to ask for at least a surface interval alarm, or change alarm settings mid-dive, because even the cheap(er) and cheerful Suunto Zoop Novo can do that.
And then we can get into the more advanced features, like a variometer.
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Not really. For example ATMOS Mission 2, let’s you decide at the watch’s general settings which diving mode will be activated by default, if you dive without going first to a pre-dive screen.
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@Johnkokk My point was that automatic dive mode activation is a thing. For example, you don’t get automatic walk activation or automatic run activation unless you are using one of those activity trackers like Fitbit and even then, you don’t get to choose road run vs trail run.
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@Brainicus I see your point but the thing is that on land you can do everything(but dive). It would be a wild guess for the watch to choose the correct activity.
In the water however when you submerge the watch you can do either scuba or freedive, not hiking for example
So all suunto has to do, is put an option that will set which mode(freedive or scuba) will be activated by default if you SUBMERGE the watch in the water. There could be also an OFF option, so that nothing happens.
It’s what other diving computers do and it makes sense.
By the way if you ask me, if SUUNTO for some weird reason wants only one option for automatic mode, that should be freedive and not scuba in which anyway you have to set up lots of things and would make more sense that scuba should be activated through a pre-dive screen.
Anyway, i hope suunto gets notified for all these we are saying.
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@Johnkokk said in Suunto Ocean general discussion:
In the water however when you submerge the watch you can do either scuba or freedive, not hiking for example
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@Johnkokk I would guess there are still more scuba divers out there than free divers, especially considering the brand we are talking about. But more importantly, as some would say, Suunto products aren’t exactly known for their customizeability. You get what you get and you don’t get upset.
Besides, at the moment Ocean doesn’t have a dive planner, a compass, an ability to add custom dive screens or modify the fields on the main screen, nor does it have GF99 or SurfGF, nor Trimix that would be a standard gas for GUE even on 50m dives… Sadly, I’d guess being able to customize which dive mode to pick when one goes below the surface is very low on the list of priorities.
I have a beer that says we gonna see a sidemount support first
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Well if that’s the case for the scuba activity as well whith so many misses, then the hole situation is actually sad.
It is supposed to be a DIVING watch, and all the diving part (scuba and freedive), so far is poor (to put it polite).
I really want to keep hoping though.
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By the way has anyone noticed that when you have GPS enabled (at least for freediving), but maybe it is also for swimming, etc, that distance that you swam is way off in the suunto app ?
I did a couple of spearfishing sessions with gps enabled and at one time the app said i swam for 10 meters(!!!) and yesterday it said 400+ meters when a I swam at least twice as that. In both cases, the route is correctly marked on the map in the app, but the distance is completely off.
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@Brainicus Good points. Regarding dive planning, I tried to find out if the Suunto DM5 software works with the Ocean but no one seems to know. Would be good if someone with an Ocean could try it.
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@Alejandro dive planning should come to Suunto App, as far as I know.
Watch: Suunto Vertical Ti
Blog: isazi's home
