DEVELOPMENT OF A WIRELESS PRESSURE SENSOR MODULE TO CONVERT THE MOBILE PHONES INTO DIVE COMPUTERS

Diver carried computers are basically designed to measure the depth and time and provide safe ascent profiles in order to avoid decompression sickness in divers. All of the units in the market are based on embedded systems where the user cannot reprogram the units except entering limited number of dive parameters such as the content of cylinders and the conservatism of the computation. An innovative system is designed and patented by the authors for implementing a diver carried computer using a mobile phone inside a pressure and waterproof housing in combination with an external microcontroller based electronic module. The aim of this work is to communicate the design of the key component of this system which is the external module built in order to measure pressure and temperature data and send them wirelessly to the mobile phone. The external module compartment is placed adjacent to the mobile phone compartment. The impermeability is provided by two successive o-rings. A double lock system is used to prevent the external module and the mobile phone compartment from breaking apart underwater. The external module collects data from its sensors and peripherals and put them together into a so-called frame. This frame is transmitted to the mobile device using wireless communication (Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) and analyzed by the mobile device when received. This functionality is ensured by a minimalistic electronic design that includes a microprocessor, an oscillator, Wi-Fi module (IEEE 802.1x protocol) or Bluetooth, resistors and capacitors. The module is tested and benchmarked successfully with 7 existing dive computers in the market up to 42 m in open water conditions. The system has the advantage of rapid model implementation and deployment, ability to run multi-model decompression procedures, user specific screen layout through the application of “skins”, very large data logging capacity and all the advantages of mobile phones including sending post dive SMS messages in case of preset rules for emergencies, automatic wireless transfer of dive logs to research centers via internet and/or to dive center management services. Future projects target the use of photo and video recording, music and film playing capacities of mobile phones to entertain divers during long decompression stops as well. This platform is further expandable with additional modules to capture a wide variety of information such as oceanographic parameters like salinity, conductivity and dissolved oxygen