On 2014-08-19 19:12, Davide DB wrote:
2014-08-19 16:48 GMT+02:00 Jef Driesen <[email protected]>:
On 2014-08-19 15:20, Davide DB wrote:
Months ago, when i started to use Subsurface, I asked to support
Sensus
ultra devices. I helped Miika to understand their CVS format. Miika
implemented only the CSV import via their file. So the device must be
downloaded via their client.
That's not true. The Sensus Ultra is a supported devices. You can
download
your dives directly from subsurface. Have you actually tried this
This is my request in January:
http://lists.hohndel.org/pipermail/subsurface/2014-January/009775.html
There was a mail exchange with Miika. I gave my support on csv format
and
this end up in this patch that I tried several times:
http://lists.hohndel.org/pipermail/subsurface/2014-January/009873.html
These discussion were about importing data from the Sensus Manager
application, not direct downloading from the Sensus Ultra. That are two
completely different things.
I could not find a patch showing Subsurface downloading directly the
Sensus
Ultra. I searched trough my archives and I found only references to CSV
import.
You won't find any patches for direct download, because you don't need
any. Downloading from the Sensus Ultra has been supported since one of
the very first subsurface releases.
So you are blaming Reefnet for problems with the Prolific drivers?
There
is very little they can do about that, because the driver is made by
Prolific, not Reefnet.
I guess many of those Prolific driver problems are due to the fact
that
their Windows driver started to blacklist counterfeit chips a few
years ago:
http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=155&pcid=41
Those "chinese" counterfeit chips are probably widespread in existing
hardware :-(
Jef, don't misunderstand me. I'm not criticizing your work or the other
Subsurface guys but I'm a final customer which paid a product for 100%
functionality and I blame Reefnet because I paid them not Prolific and
to
log my dives I do not want to know about who wrote what. I paid
reefnet. So
I do not blame the programmer who wrote that data logger.
Just to be clear: If I buy a Wolkswagen Golf and after two years I
cannot
start my car, I blame Wolkswagen, not Bosh who built the starter motor.
Or
maybe SaintGobain for the VW Golf glasses.
In your car analogy, if Volkswagen gets many complaints about that Bosh
start motor, then no doubt they will forward the complaint to Bosh. And
they will hopefully fix the problem. But unlike Volkswagen, Reefnet is
just a really tiny customer of Prolific. Most likely they don't even buy
their usb-serial chips directly from Prolific. So any complaints on
their side are likely going nowhere. Whether you like that or not,
that's probably not to far from the truth...
So IMHO, before spending time on a obsolete device, try to solve the
download problem.
There is a long standing problem with libdivecomputer and the Sensus
Ultra
on Mac OS X (seems to be a timing or latency issue). But on my Linux
system
it's rock solid. I have to admit I haven't tested on Windows in a long
while (it's not my primary OS).
At the time of its introduction, which is more than 10 years ago, a
dive
computer with a PC interface was pretty rare. Nowadays, you may no
longer
need one, because even the cheapest dive computer model has it. But
even by
todays standards, the Sensus Ultra design isn't outdated. For example
the
memory capacity (2MB) and precision/accuracy still exceeds that of
many
current dive computers. Compare that with Suunto (8-64K), Oceanic
(32-128K)
or Mares (16-1024K) just to name a few. Only state of the art
technical
dive computer like the OSTC and Petrel have comparable (or more)
logbook
memory.
Very nice but a Sensus costs 250$, more or less like an XDeep Black BT.
Right now I buy a Sensus Ultra jsut to discover that I cannot see the
USB
device on my Windows pc. What's the solution? Using XP? Blaming
Prolific?
BTW I used to be an assembler programmer until nineties so I fully
understand what you mean but I'm tired to pay cash for things that not
work.
My opinion (again as simple final user) is that first of all must be
resolved the low lever interface problem (aka prolific drivers) to
resurrect this little nice device.
I tried everything on 6 different Win7 machine at my job place. I
downloaded all the existent prolific driver versions with no luck. I
ended
up working with a XP VM.
A frind of mine with a macbook had the same fate. Once update to the
latest
OS incarnation, no way to see the USB device.
I even have two different kind of hardware interfaces (one naked and
another one smaller with a plastic box) but they have the same
chipsets.
They should be somewhere in the basement.
Don't get me wrong, I can certainly understand your frustration, but
there is always another side of the story too. The majority of the
support issues I deal with for libdivecomputer, turns out to be user
mistakes (e.g. no or wrong driver installed, wrong type of cable, wrong
type of dive computer selected, forgot to activate PC mode, nearly empty
batteries, etc). So that's nearly always my first assumption. Note that
I'm not saying this is also the case for you.
Anyway, there are so many different systems out there (3 major operating
systems, each with different versions, different hardware
configurations) and different level of expertise of end-users. That
makes it impossible to guarantee that everything will always work on
every system. I wish I could do something about it, but unfortunately
the low-level driver related stuff is something I have no control over.
Just to give you an example of how bad things can be, take a look at the
procedure to install the driver for Seiko based devices (Cressi, Zeagle,
etc), which requires patching the Prolific driver:
http://www.libdivecomputer.org/seiko.html
I'm not even sure this even works on newer Windows version (7 and 8).
But those users have no alternative, because Seiko has simply exited the
dive computer business!
Jef
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