Posts Tagged ‘SAC’

Diving Log 5.0.15 released

Monday, November 24th, 2014

You can download a new update for Diving Log 5.0 with the following new features:

  • Suunto Dive Manager 5 Support
  • Divelogs.de Sync Update (multiple tanks)
  • SAC Calculation improvement for sidemount dives
  • SAC Calculation multiple tank average improvement
  • Universal Downloader update
  • Japanese Language Support
  • Bug fixes

The Universal Download is now using the latest libdivecomputer, which supports some new header data as well as new dive computer models: Suunto EON Steel, Subgear XP-3G, Aeris F11, Aeris A300CS, Mares Airlab. Many thanks to Jef Driesen for his continuous work! If you want to support libdivecomputer, you can donate on the project website.

The SAC calculation has been improved to better support sidemount dives. Up to now, tanks used during the dive has to be used in the dive profile in order to calculate the correct SAC rate. That makes sense for dives with multiple gases, because you have to switch the gas/tank to get correct deco calculations. When diving with sidemount tanks, you have the same gas and switch a lot during the dive. However you don’t switch anything in the dive computer, because you use the same gas. For these dives, the SAC rate is now calculated correctly. All tanks, which are not assigned to some part of the profile, will be added automatically to the first tank in the tank & gas window. This works even for dives which don’t have a dive profile. You only have to make sure that the first tank in the list is actually one of the sidemount tanks.

Tank configuration for a sidemount dive

Tank configuration for a sidemount dive (example)

The average SAC calculation for multiple tank dives has been improved to reflect the actual dive time of the tank. A high SAC rate tank during a short period of time is now weighted less for the average SAC rate of this dive.

And last but not least, Diving Log is now available in Japanese! Thank you very much to Hiroyuki Yamada, who not only translated the desktop version, but also Diving Log Touch and Diving Log for Windows Phone! This was a lot of work and I’m sure the Japanese Diving Log users will be really happy.

もしもし (Hello): Diving Log Japanese!

もしもし: Diving Log Japanese

Diving Log 5.0.3 released

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

After five month of development and five beta versions, the final version 5.0.3 is now available (install the update from 5.0.2 to update from any beta 5.0.3). For those of you, who have been downloaded and installed each beta version, there are just a few changes since the last beta. But those updating from version 5.0.2 will get a really big update with tons of new features, which would normally justify a new major version:

This update is a big improvement for technical divers and scuba divers with lots of new data fields including Nitrox, Trimix and Rebreather dives!

Version 5.0.3 Beta 4 available

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Today I’ve uploaded a new beta version which contains the following new features:

  • Improved SAC calculation
  • Trips and shops added to table editor
  • Trips and shops added to print function
  • New data fields in logbook window (CNS, start pressure group, end pressure group, rating, repetitive dive number)
  • Logbook equipment categories (active / inactive)
  • Liquivision X1 import supports gas switches
  • Proxy settings in online logbook sync
  • Some bug fixes

 

Equipment Categories

New Fields

SAC Rate Calculation

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

Calculating the correct SAC rate for a dive sounds like a trivial and straightforward task, but if you want to do it right, you quickly get to some hurdles. SAC means “Surface Air Consumption” or for all German readers it’s the AMV = Atemminutenvolumen. The formula is indeed very simple:

MetricSAC = (TankPressureDiff * TanksizeLiter) / (Divetime * (AvgDepthMeter / 10 + 1))

ImperialSAC = ((TankPressureDiff / WorkingPressure) * TanksizeCuFt) / (Divetime * (AvgDepthMeter / 10 + 1))

So where is the problem, you think? Well, you have to consider:

  • Is there a dive profile? If so, I can calculate the average depth and dive time from the profile. If not, the average depth must be entered manually. Before calculating the SAC rate, I have to check if all required data is available
  • Metric or Imperial calculation?
  • Double tanks? If so, multiply tank size with 2
  • Now it’s getting complicated: Does the dive have multiple tanks? If not, we can calculate right away and that’s how it worked in the past. But now since Diving Log supports multiple tanks it’s getting a lot more difficult:

If a dive has multiple tanks, the only way to calculate a correct SAC rate for the whole dive is by calculating the separate rates for each tank and then the average. So now Diving Log will calculate the dive time and average depth for each tank by running through the dive profile. When completed, it will calculate based on these values the separate SAC rates for each tank and then the average rate for the whole dive. Look at this dive for example (all metric values):

Profile with multiple tanks

You can see the SAC rate for each tank in the tank window

So SAC rate calculation for dives with multiple tanks works only if a dive profile is available and when each tank is assigned to a part of the profile. Each dive can have up to 10 tanks. In a logbook with 1000 dives, each dive 10 tanks, Diving Log will have to calculate the SAC rate for 10000 tanks when creating the SAC rate chart below. Some dive computers record the profile with a 1 second interval, so you could imagine the amount of required calculations to create this chart:

SAC Chart

The improved SAC calculation will be available in the next beta.