Suunto Zoop Novo troubles

[Lars Bebensee]

Hi Support Forum,

I purchased a Suunto Zoop Novo a few weeks back, and have attempted in vain to connect to first by DM5, and then Subsurface. Take note, no dives have been logged on this (new) device yet but I thought I can use the dive planner to upload a dive. DM5 does not seem to pick up the device even though I get the dive computer detected on a COM port. Reading through other forums where people mentioned Subsurface to work better I gave this a try and installed it on a Linux box but even Subsurface does not seem to be able transfer any data. I have ticked:

Save libdivecomputer logfile
Save libdivecomputer dumpfile

Subsurface only created the attached log file, no dump was created. Write permissions to /dev/ttyUSB0 are fine.

The very last idea that came to mind was that the computer needs to be taken to at least one dive before working correctly but I can neither confirm, nor reject this assumption. I am hesitant to take a computer to a dive that I might have to return because it does not work correctly. Any new ideas would be appreciated.

Regards,

Lars

[Jef Driesen]

The log indicates that the dive computer doesn't answer. The most common
reason for such kind of error is a low battery. The PC interface
requires more power, so even if there is enough power left for diving,
it might not be enough for the PC interface.

If DM5 also doesn't work, then I suspect this might be a hardware issue.
Note that the COM port is detected as soon as you connect the PC
interface. That doesn't indicate a working connection to the dive
computer. (You can connect the PC interface without the dive computer.
The COM port will still show up, we can still send commands, but there
will of course be no response.)

Jef

[Lars Bebensee]

Hi Jef,

as I pointed out the Dive computer is new. From the attached screendumps the battery looks good, and I do not get a "Low Baterry" warning or some such!

I have no idea how to could check if the hardware (cable, or DC) is indeed faulty.

Regards,

Lars

[Dirk Hohndel]

I seem to remember that many dive computers don't successfully download until they have at least one dive on them.

/D

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[Jef Driesen]

On 2016-09-23 16:06, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
> I seem to remember that many dive computers don't successfully
> download until they have at least one dive on them.

I'm pretty sure that's not the problem here. The Suunto communication
protocol is too low-level for such kind of problems. You simply
read/write some bytes at a certain memory address. The protocol has no
knowledge of what is stored at that address.

I have memory dumps from Suunto dive computers without any dives yet, so
that confirms this is supposed to work just fine. (It's not impossible
that there are bugs in libdivecomputer regarding the handling of devices
without any dives. Since that's quite a rare corner case, it doesn't get
as much testing as the normal cases. But that's another story of
course.)

What happens here is that the dive computer doesn't answer at all. It
already fails when sending the very first command, when we try to
retrieve the model number and firmware version. That's typically caused
by:

- low battery
- bad cable or bad contacts
- broken usb-serial driver installation
- using the wrong serial port
- not activating PC mode on the dive computer (on some devices this
happens automatically, but for others this needs to be done manually by
the user)
- ...

Jef

[Lars Bebensee]

Guys,

I tend to agree with Jef:

I submerged the DC in the pool today to have it do something so I have a dive on the dive log now with 30 mintues at 1.7m depth. However, when I connect and run dctool (from libdivecomputer site):

dctool -v -l dctool.log -d "Suunto Zoop Novo" dump -o dctool.bin \\.\COM14

I still get the output as per attached. And agreed the serial converter cable gives me a serial port whether the DC is connected, or not. So let me rule out what has been stated by Jef:

  - low battery                                         DC is brand new, and no sign of low battery anywhere 

  - bad cable or bad contacts                 

  - broken usb-serial driver installation   Not 100% sure but it is a virgin installation of DM5/Suunto Driver
  - using the wrong serial port                 Right serial port selected, as per log it's correct [see line 3: Opening the device (Suunto Zoop Novo, \\.\COM14)]
  - not activating PC mode on the dive computer:   DC goes into "Data Transfer" mode automatically

That leaves the cable, or the DC itself. The cable was new, as well and the way it is designed one cannot make a mistake connecting it: it has got two dots to align and then turn to about 2.00 hours clockwise. I will need to find out of the dive shop I got the cable from can provide me another one to test.

Regards,

Lars