Aquacomp

Background

In may of 1994, under Bill Hoyt, I earned my open water diver certification. Very cool. A few days before that, more like a few years, I started playing around with computers. Okay, so it was a little more serious than that. In any case, the idea of putting tasks relating to diving on the computer became a fascination.

I started gathering all the information that I could about Decompression Theory. The "net" was extremely useful for preliminary gathering, and even presented some interesting individual understandings of Decompression Theory. I found several programs that attempted to deal with the realm of Scuba. By far the best implementation is that of Dave Waller's Divecomp. Which is an excellent simulator which uses curses and runs on UNIX machines, so just about anyone with access to a unix box can use it.

However, I was looking for a product that could aid in planning dives and keep a log as well. Spring Term of 1995 I found myself in the Advanced Systems Design Class at the University of Oregon. The goal of the class was to work on a project from inception to completion. The instructor had several ideas for the class in case we were unable to come up with something. I thought this was great, and offered my idea. It was approved as a course project.

Aquacomp has three parts. A Planner, A Simulator, and a Log Book. The Planner allows the user to enter information concerning a dive in a logical way so that things don't get over looked. The Simulator requires three basic bits of information to run: The theory model (there are several), the type of gas being breathed (most recreational diving uses compressed air, but there are some "techies" using Nitrox now), and last, the type of water the dive will take place in (Ocean or Lake). Once these are selected, the simulator initializes and a dive profile can be entered. The last part of the program is the Log Book. In this module, the user can enter data about a completed dive, and include information about the dive created with the Planner and the Simulator.

The current version of Aqaucomp was created using Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0, Standard Edition. The version that is still being developed is being built with the professional edition to take advantage of the database features. The version after that will be implemented in Visual C++.

Since these pages are constantly changing, keep checking for updated info.

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Comments to: seansks@fsl.orst.edu - Oregon State University, Forestry Sciences