Help needed decoding data

[John Van Ostrand]

Also,

Part of my problem was I was overthinking Cochran. The computer is quite
sophisticated and it clearly feels designed by an innovator and engineer
who might try to stuff bits anywhere. It has rough edges so I doubt any
usability expert or ergonomics person has had any input. And, yes, it does
sense salt/fresh water.

I purchased the Cochran EMC-20H after a recommended from a friend of a
friend and after the friend purchased and dove it while we were both in the
tropics. It was far more liberal than his Mares Icon and my Suunto Vyper II
giving more than 10 minutes of NDL over my dive computer on dives later in
the day. It has 50 increments of conservatism. Zero seems to be Navy Tables
(on the first dive) while 20 seems to be close to PADI tables and 45 is
close to Suunto.

After looking at the material it seemed like the Cochran algorithm is for
engineers where algos like the Suunto and Mares are for lawyers. Well that
or Mike Cochran has learned how to alter physics or dive physiology. Maybe
it just draws a better "Texas bullseye" around the test dive data.

The company claims that they were first to release many features and are
still the only DC that offers some features like workload compensation
(based on gas consumption), water temperature compensation (colder = more
metabolically active), a flight data recorder in the DC (giving a N2 credit
for diving after flying), and the ability to clone tissue loads to other
dive computers.

Now in reality not much of that is very useful to me but I like the idea
that they are doing what I thought DCs should do, and that was 8 years ago
after OW cert. But 18 navies around the world are attracted to those
features, that's impressive to me.

The one big reason I discounted bright and shiny computers like Shearwater,
Liquivision and OSTC was the battery life. I have enough rechargeables to
deal with in my life the last thing I need is to arrive at a dive site with
a dead battery. The Cochran batteries last 2 years or 1000 dive hours, that
bullet point is near the top of the list for me.

-- 
John Van Ostrand
At large on sabbatical
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