Aquatica Vacuum Leak Sensor turns orange underwater

I have a CANON 5DMk3 in the Aquatica Housing.

It comes with Aquatica Vacuum/moisture sensor kit.

No problems at 0 - 5m, the green light will stay on permanently - for days - until I use the pump to let out the vaccum.

I have a problem because it turns orange when I descend to 10m and below. When I ascend it will eventually turn back to green.

I'm not sure what's going on. Should I be concerned?

I had the battery checked out and its OK.

Hi smoothcoffee,

If the orange light is related to a slight pressure drop then it will be most likely related to a slight pressure drop because of cold water when the air inside cools down.

I had this issue with my Hugyfot housing and one pump more fixed this.
Try to pump one or 2 strokes more and you may solved the problem.

Chris

Hi smoothcoffee,

If the orange light is related to a slight pressure drop then it will be most likely related to a slight pressure drop because of cold water when the air inside cools down.

I had this issue with my Hugyfot housing and one pump more fixed this.
Try to pump one or 2 strokes more and you may solved the problem.

Chris

I have the exact same setup, but during the initial pump down stage, I do a couple to three more pumps after the LED has turned green. I've taken the system down to recreational scuba limits with no change in LED colour. Also, I wouldn't suggest leaving the system pumped down as it would accelerate battery consumption.

Regards

Stewart

The battery is OK. But now I'm getting a weird problem. When I install everything and pump it - the AQUATICA SENSOR light goes from GREEN to RED not orange as before. Then it goes to Green. This is baffling.

I've had some issues with mine, and in fact Aquatica replaced the first one I had. Smooth, be careful you are not over-pumping as well. I have done that as well, and it produces wonky results.

More recently, I couldn't get the sensor readings to make any sense. Mrs. Stoo (she's very smart) speculated that it was the pump that was the problem... and it was. (I doubt that that is your problem however.)

My point is that if you can't pump and get a green flashing light (plus a couple more for good luck) then it might be worth sending it back for testing.

We did the pressure test in the workshop (40m) and it was OK.

But field testing here in the Maldives produced some issues. After one dive when I brought it back to the ship the sensor went silent and I found some water on the focus gears. But not enough to activate the moisture alarm.

I suspect I may have self-sabotaged myself by spraying the buttons with WD40 sometime ago.

Anyhow the good news is that after 2 weeks here in the Maldives - it seems OK..

I changed the O-ring seals. That seemed to help. Also changed the battery too.

One of the UWH buttons - the SET button was sticking. It'd push in but wouldn't come back up - so I used the aquatica lube to grease it from the inside. Pressing it a few times seemed to cause the some oily residue (old WD40?) to leak back out. Button works like new.

I pressed all the buttons in drink water after each dive. It seems OK now.

Orange light does come on underwater but it changes back to green when I come back up. It stays green until I open it up again.

I had problems with an Aquatica vacuum system as well. At least half the time, I couldn't get it to turn on by pressing the button before closing the housing. I had to take the battery out and replace it each time to get it to function at all. Behavior was erratic when pumping out the system. Sometimes it would work as expected, turning green after about 15-20 pumps. Other times I would pump for a long time (counting over 75 pumps) and it was still blinking yellow. Only about one dive in four was it still indicating a vacuum at the end of the dive, though the housing appeared to be functioning fine.

As I was out on a liveaboard at the time there was nothing I could do about this, so I ended up largely ignoring the vacuum system. That trip ended with my first ever complete camera flood, after 700 dives with housed SLR cameras. The cause of the flood isn't clear, but Aquatica & Backscatter are replacing the vacuum system as part of refurbishing the housing.

I will be bench testing this system very carefully when it comes back. The design of the main seal on the latest generation of Aquatica housings makes it nearly impossible to do a visual inspection or run my finger around the o-ring. So that vacuum system isn't just insurance, it is a critical part of closing the housing.

-Mark

That vacuum seal setup worked like a charm on the last couple of dives!!!

I didn't turn the dome port on the correct way. But I had pumped it up. Still turned orange underwater.

Did all my dive and swims - and when I unassembled my system I found to my horror the dome port was NOT CLICKED in. I paint markings on the dome port and housing and follow that - but I made an error. If it wasn't for the vacuum seal the port would likely have popped out.

Pumping it also requires a certain technique. The housing has to be flat on a stable surface.

I did mine on an angle and I bent the pump - now it has problems pumping out the air.

They do seem to be sensitive things but after replacing both the sensor and the pump, mine is working well. It's very reassuring to see that little light flashing away.

As others have learned, when this little "system" isn't working reliably, it becomes easy to ignore warnings, which are in fact telling us that something is amiss. During my first dives when the sensor was being weird, I did a couple of dives in the Blue Hole in Belize, where I was down to almost 200'. I got an orange or red light at depth (hard to tell which at that depth) but I couldn't surface anyway, so I just kept on shooting while keeping an eye on my camera. Eventually I noticed some moisture in the bottom of my dome. As tempted as I was to write this off as condensation, it seemed like a lot. At any rate, it turned out that I did have a tiny issue with the o-ring around my dome, I replaced it, and everything was fine...

I was going to add also, that I think that "lubricants" like WD-40 are absolutely the worst things to use on o-rings. These are petroleum-based products and will destroy o-rings very quickly.

This image is from that dive...