Leak Sentinel from Vivid Housings

I'm one of those guys who prepare the husing in a heated room of 24 degrees C then jump into 3 degrees C water ;-)

 

sounds like a case for false negative perhaps

 

False positives only arise when the air temperature in the housing increases. This can be due to change of conditions i.e prepare the housing in an environment significantly colder than the water you dive in, but most importantly by the camera inside heating up as it is used

Especially for video you can easily reach 35C when you shoot a lot, if you prepared the housing in a dry air conditioned room that makes a 15C differential that is almost guaranteed to give false positives if you just did the additional stroke

You can create more vacuum to make the system more resilient I have suggested an update to the documentation the formula is rather simply see how many strokes you need to get to green and then multiply this for 0.2 and round up.

Another 40 mbar vacuum create no issue and don't make the device less reliable. Beside I have been told the temperature sensor is already there is the software that does not account for it

Just thought I'd chime in with my experience using this in the Galapagos for a 7 day live aboard and 2 days of land based diving. It worked perfectly. Great peace of mind in my opinion. We dove waters that were a bit colder (65F), when it was 90F outside, with no issue.

You can create more vacuum to make the system more resilient I have suggested an update to the documentation the formula is rather simply see how many strokes you need to get to green and then multiply this for 0.2 and round up.

 

You are talking about a delta of 30mbar so not a great deal of difference. I think getting false positives is more annoying as you may disregard a real positive. Miso agreed to change the documentation and put this suggestion in case you prepare the housing in environment colder than the water you dive

Hi,

I have used it quite a bit over the last year.

The only false alarms I have gotten was while rinsing it in the Bathtub after diving.

When I by mistake have tapped up to warm water :-)

Apart from that it is working nicely.

/Erik

All,

I just bought one of those (Leak Sentinel V3). It came today, unfortunately without a user's manual. I have sent Miso an email. In the meantime, I have a couple questions:

1) How do you place the battery? On post #12, PeteAtkinson shows a picture on which the battery sits below the circuit board? If that's the case, how do you remove the board?

2) Is there a way to turn the unit on/off, or do you do that by removing the battery?

3) Do you travel with the unit on the housing?

Thanks,

Joss

EDIT: Miso had emailed me the user's manual in a separate email before the unit arrived. It's my mistake I missed it.

It comes with a battery installed already. The unit turns on and off. You definitely need the instruction I will send them to you

I'm still curious as to whether people travel with the unit attached or set it up when they arrive on location.

I take it separately and set up at location.

I'm still curious as to whether people travel with the unit attached or set it up when they arrive on location.

Our's is permanently attached. If it's fitted corretlty, seated properly and sealed, why remove it? (We do strip down the housing completely to service all o-rings and seals at regular intervals, but that's a maintenance task. not a set up thing)

Ours stay permanently on two Subals. After two week long trips, I remove the circuit boards and clean/lube the 'O' rings and pitch the battery. I put a new new battery in at start of next trip.

When I fly I have the housing shut but not seal. Instead of removing the orings I loosen the bulkhead cap that is why I don't have it installed when traveling.

The leak sentinel is an electronic device that may fail or run out of battery I prefer to test the battery prior to installing it once at location.

I have had cases of CR2032 batteries running dry much earlier than the supposed life as that depends on the time they have been on the shelves.

As it is not advised to dive with it if not pressurized I always take the housing protective cap with me.

During the trip I then leave it alone

At the end of the trip I inspect it like all other parts and follow similar procedure as okuma

It is a matter of preferences

Mine is permanently installed in the microphone port of my Aquatica AD7000. I install a new battery before every trip. On average a battery lasts about 10 days on a liveaboard trip. My unit is on most of the time. I prep my housing the night before and leave it pumped down all night. The green light greets me each morning. I carry 3-4 extra batteries with me.

Another vote of thanks to Miso at Vivid - I got my Leak Sentinel this week and installed it this morning on a Nauticam EM-5 housing in less than 5 minutes. First test went without a hitch. I am very happy with the added peace of mind this will provide.

Just coming back from a 2 week trip to Maldives using the Leak Sentinel V3 on the Na-EM5.

Experience with minor flaws had been outstanding. It was giving me a lot of confidence pre and during diving the usual maintain, dip and hope methods never could achieve.

Some recommendation or tips for those of you considering I can make.

Putting under pressure on in AC cooled hotel rooms and then going out into the hot can easily generate false positives. So after the first day I brought the pump to the diving vessel and applied pressure around 20 minutes before diving while travelling to the dive site. Then shortly before jumping I checked the status. This way I never had a false alarm.

When releasing under pressure you need to be VERY carefull, especially when diving salt water, the pressure valve and its surroundings is dry as well as your fingers. The electronic board is just underneath the valve. It happened to me that one tiny drop got sucked in with the air, This caused the sentinel to not work anymore. To repair (and I would not necesarily recommend the same) I opened the Sentienl housing, took out the circuit board, removed the battery, dripped the board into drinking water for about half an hour to loosen the corrosion (shown as white markings at the soldering points) and then used a tooth brush to carefully clean the remaining dirt. Finally I dried it in the sun before puzzling everything together again. After the device was back to working properly but I think I just had been lucky in this case.

If the vendor reads this I would recommend to use an electronics varnish leaving out the tiny sensor to prevent the same in future versions.

Cool, it would be great to see some pictures of the installed detector from one of you EM-5 guys, thanks! Im contemplating getting one myself for peace of mind. It seems to me that because the acrylic in the middle, it could sheer off if hit badly, right? What is keeping the "sandwiched" contruction together?

Cheers/O

Preparing the housing on a dhoni doesn't sound exciting. Would have rather done it outside your room in the shade. Afterward if you kept the housing under a cool wet towel you should be ok. Also you should dry the housing thoroughly before opening it. You can get a nozzle to go into your regulator low pressure inflator and you have your drying tool with you at all times

I'm still curious as to whether people travel with the unit attached or set it up when they arrive on location.

I eventually decided to not attach the unit unti I was at location. The reason why is that I had the housing in my carry on and the Leak Sentinel protrudes awkwardly from the housing on the NA-RX100ii. More to the point, I didn't have room for the pump in my carry on anyway.

Another vote of thanks to Miso at Vivid - I got my Leak Sentinel this week and installed it this morning on a Nauticam EM-5 housing in less than 5 minutes. First test went without a hitch. I am very happy with the added peace of mind this will provide.

Hi there I have the EM-5 housing & have been looking at the Leak Sentinel, could you tell me how you install it on the housing as don't have a clue ! thanks Sam