Replaced my old dive computer with a D5 - what to expect?

Anyone here have experience with a Suunto D5?    This is the first time I've replaced my old Suunto Cobra 1, which I purchased in 2006 when buying my first set of scuba gear.

I had two issues with my Cobra that spurred me to finally replace it.

1. visibility poor in bad lighting conditions.   The display is just hard to read, and when the gear gets dragged onto a dive boat the display often picks up a few more scratches, making it even worse.

2. Suunto is notoriously conservative.   Perhaps ridiculously so.  In my typical dive day I'll be in Roatan, doing three dives a day with similar profiles.   60 minute dive, with 20-30 minutes at 65-80 feet.   I pretty much hit deco (especially on air as opposed to Nitrox) almost 100% of the time on the second dive.    Once I had the Suunto set to the most conservative setting by mistake, and I ended up doing 27 minutes of deco on that dive.  Meanwhile everyone else is back on the boat with no deco.

Really, I do end up in deco pretty much every single day I dive in Roatan with the Cobra.  Since I'm 66 years old, I've just used this as an extra safety factor, but it does get old.  Not just old for me, but old for the people waiting on the dive boat to go back in for lunch.  (On that 27 minute deco dive, the first diver was on the boat 42 minutes before me.)

The D5 is supposed to have a new algorithm that is less conservative,    And it can be adjusted in both positive and negative directions.  How does it compare to Suunto of old?

One reason I've resisted getting a wrist computer is the same reason I gave up wearing a dive watch - it's a pain to have to take it off every time I remove my wet suit.  (Sounds lame, but I have a real tendency to lose stuff on dive boats.)   Since I always dive with a camera rig, I'm thinking of putting the D5 on a strobe arm.   But then I (may?) have issues with it sitting in a rinse tank and not knowing I'm on a surface interval?

What do you guys do with your wrist computers at the end of a dive?

If you have a D5, how is the battery life?   I hear it needs to be charged at the end of every day.   That doesn't bother me if I can get through at least 5 dives in one day.  It will be enough.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Since I always dive with a camera rig, I'm thinking of putting the D5 on a strobe arm. But then I (may?) have issues with it sitting in a rinse tank and not knowing I'm on a surface interval?

I don't have a D5 (my computer is an Aeris Elite T3), but dive computers detect the start/end of a dive by pressure, not by moisture, so unless the rinse tank is like six feet deep, it won't be a problem.

What do you guys do with your wrist computers at the end of a dive?

On a day boat, where I don't remove my wetsuit between dives, it stays on my wrist. On a liveaboard, I take it off my wrist and put the band around the camera carrying handle, then rinse the whole thing.

Barmaglot_07 wrote:

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Since I always dive with a camera rig, I'm thinking of putting the D5 on a strobe arm. But then I (may?) have issues with it sitting in a rinse tank and not knowing I'm on a surface interval?

I don't have a D5 (my computer is an Aeris Elite T3), but dive computers detect the start/end of a dive by pressure, not by moisture, so unless the rinse tank is like six feet deep, it won't be a problem.

What do you guys do with your wrist computers at the end of a dive?

On a day boat, where I don't remove my wetsuit between dives, it stays on my wrist. On a liveaboard, I take it off my wrist and put the band around the camera carrying handle, then rinse the whole thing.

Since I had my own computer since 2006, and was mostly happy with it, I never paid much attention to what other divers did with their wrist computers between dives.  I assume most took it off, put it down, removed wetsuit (at least peeled top off), and then put it back on a wrist.

But not everyone.  I started remembering how my Roatan divemaster David uses his computer while diving - it isn't on his wrist.   As you can see a bit from this photo, he attaches his wrist computer to his BCD:

I remember seeing him look down at his computer during dives, and it was never on his wrist, always on the front of his BCD.   Which probably means he never has to remove it, except to deal with the battery.

I sort of like this system, though I probably won't use it.  Why buy a wrist computer and attach it to a BCD and then use it like my current Cobra, where I have to look down at something.   Just having to recharge the battery at the end of a day would tend to have me not getting much advantage to this.

But attaching to the strobe arms of the camera?  Another story there, since that camera always accompanies me on and off the boat, including dealing with battery charges between dives.  If the rinse tank doesn't affect my surface interval, I think this could be the ideal place for a dive computer.

One thing is for sure.  I need a system to deal with it, or I will end up losing it, forgetting to have it on my wrist when I enter the water, or some other problem.   It's just something I never had to worry about before.  My experience with dive watches isn't a good history, though most of it was in my early diving days.  I also remember my late wife actually losing her dive watch during a dive, after having successfully used it diving for 10 years.   She must have been in a hurry and not got it properly latched down, or maybe the strap finally broke.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

But attaching to the strobe arms of the camera? Another story there, since that camera always accompanies me on and off the boat, including dealing with battery charges between dives. If the rinse tank doesn't affect my surface interval, I think this could be the ideal place for a dive computer.

Best setup that I've seen had a carbon fiber float arm bridging the tray handles above the camera using triple clamps, and a dive computer strapped around that arm. I tried doing that with my rig, but it didn't work because focus light mount got in the way. Your D850 has its cold shoe way out in front on the port, so it might work better for you.

There was that one time that I was on a day boat and my computer strap broke as I was putting it on in the morning, so I ended up zip-tying the computer to one of my strobe arms and using it that way - it ended up being surprisingly convenient, as I could see my air pressure and depth almost without taking my eyes off the camera, but I can't do that permanently because I switch between ladder arms for wide-angle and float arms for macro.

Regardless of that, I'm thinking about getting into CCR, and if I do take this (very expensive!) plunge, I'm fairly certain I'll invest into a Shearwater NERD 2, which will alleviate any and all mounting concerns.

kelpdiver wrote:

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

One thing is for sure. I need a system to deal with it, or I will end up losing it, forgetting to have it on my wrist when I enter the water, or some other problem. It's just something I never had to worry about before.

as you say, having a routine is key.

When I come out of water, I sit the tank down in its spot, put the mask in the bin (or bag if on a day boat), take off the computer and strap onto dring, then square away my fins. Then take off first stage for refill. Next, do whatever camera task (get out of rinse tank, or dunk myself), then unzip wetsuit and proceed to surface interval.

Sounds like plan B for me - wrist-to-Dring.   Plan A, at least as a trial, is a strobe arm.  I'll see if I can get it level to read somehow.

Downside to attaching the computer to the camera rig is that you've added a dive dependency and a potential for it to get knocked off with rough handling.

I'm primarily thinking Roatan now, as it's almost the only place I dive anymore, and the conditions are very predictable.  At an unknown site, I'd likely start on my wrist, unless by then I'm so comfortable having it on the camera that there is no need to switch.

Dependency isn't too much a concern.  I've only handed the camera back to the boat once since I got my first Nauticam housing 6 years ago.

Should you opt to not enter with it (rough seas, bad viz, whatever), you need to remember to get it, and do last minute gear shift. If your flood indicator comes on and you hand it back up to the boat, you just handed off the computer.

True, but I can't imagine conditions rough enough for me not to bring the camera - or I wouldn't dive.   Roughest entry (and exit) I had so far is the hammerhead dive off Molokai.  Big swells, high current.   Five of us had to go in at the same time, and I had to hold the whole rig above my head and jump in.   Getting out wasn't fun either.  Any worse than that and I won't be diving.

I''m a bit excited about this new piece of kit.  My gear has been remarkably stable since 2009.   I have a feeling my divemaster in Roatan will be happy to see me not having to do all those deco stops!  (Especially as they are usually right before lunch.)

Reef House no longer supplies Nitrox.   They have to get a new compressor to do it, I think.  Apparently Nitrox was chewing up the old system which wasn't designed for it.

Otherwise I dive Nitrox any chance I can get.  But especially when I'm planning on 37 dives in 2 weeks.

I'm interested to see how the new dive algorithm compares to my Cobra1, apparently one of the most conservative dive computers on the planet.    I'd guess at least half my 170 dives in Roatan were deco thanks to the computer being sooooo much more conservative than every other diver I've been around.