Subsurface 1.2 User Manual

Scope of this document is the usage of the program. Please read the build manual for instructions how to build the software and (if needed) its dependencies.

Audience: Fun Divers, Tec Divers, Professional Divers

1. Introduction:

Subsurface was started because of a lack of viable dive log software on Linux. It turns out that the resulting software was easily ported to Windows and Mac, but it clearly is a native Linux program first. Right now, the program is under development and from version 1.1 it is already very usable for divers with supported dive-computers.

In this manual the Suunto Viper will be used for all examples.

2. Requirements

Before you are able to import information from your divecomputer into Subsurface, you need some preparation. Do you have the following:

  1. Your Divecomputer – Compatible with libdivecomputer (see list in Appendix A)
  2. Communication interface – Cable to connect your divecomputer to your PC/Laptop/Netbook
  3. Working installation of Subsurface
  4. If needed, the manual of your divecomputer

3. Start using the program

When you start the program for the first time, it shows no information at all. This is because the program does not automatically load the already available dive-log files.

There is a menu, containing File, Log, Filter and Help.

The screen is devided in 3 area’s:

  • Area with 3 tabs: Dive Notes, Equipment, Info & Stats
  • Area next to the 3 tabs which will contain the dive profile
  • Area with the dives (usually called dive list) which can be sorted by number, date, etc.

4. Import new dives from your divecomputer

Before you start fiddeling around with your divecomputer, note that there are divecomputers that consume more power when they are in the PC-Communication mode. This could drain your battery. Therefor, ensure if your computer is recharging when connecting to the USB port. The Suunto Viper does not recharge trough the USB connection. Please consult the manual of your divecomputer if you are unsure if it will be recharged when connected to the USB port.

Now it is time to hook up your divecomputer to your Linux system:

  • Make sure that your OS has the required drivers installed
    • On Linux this means you need to have the correct kernel module loaded. Most distributions will do this automatically for you.
    • On Windows, the OS should offer to download the correct driver when you connect to the USB port.
    • On a Mac you at times have to manually hunt for the correct driver. For example the correct driver for the Mares Puck devices can be found as Mac_OSX_VCP_Driver.zip at http://www.silabs.com/support/pages/support.aspx?ProductFamily=USB+Bridges
  • Connect your interface cable to a free USB port
  • Put your divecomputer into PC Communication mode. (For Suunto Viper, press Mode – 1 Memory – 3 TR-PC) (You should consult the manual of your specific divecomputer for your brand and type)
  • Go in Subsurface to File – Import
    • Within the popup, under Dive computer, choose your brand and type. Here we choose Suunto Vyper.
    • Change the devicename under which your interface is connected.
      • On Linux, default is /dev/ttyUSB0
      • On Windows, default is COM3
      • On Mac, default is … specific to the dive computer
    • Click the OK button.
  • Now watch how your data is retrieved from your divecomputer! Depending on your type of computer and/or number of dives, this could take some time. Please be patient.

5. Viewing and completing your logs

When all data from your divecomputer is transferred, you will see a listing of your dives in Area 3.

An example:

On Sunday Oct 23, 2011 you made a dive. In the log line of this dive, you see the following information:
#
12
Dive number
Date
Sun, Oct 23, 2011 10:50
Date and time of your dive
*
Your rating (none at this time)
m
12.8
Your maximum depth in meters
min
31:20
Your dive-time in minutes and seconds
Deg. C
13.0
Lowest water temperature during your dive
Cyl
Your used cylinder (none at this time)
O2%
air
What type of mixture
SAC
SAC (none at this time)
Location
Where you performed your dive (empty)

As you can see, some information is already there because it is retrieved from your divecomputer. Some information is waiting for you to be added. By double clicking on this dive, you can view and complete the log.

6. Edit the dive info

When you double click on the dive log line, the editor window opens. Now you can add information that is missing. Let start with completing the example:

You double clicked on dive #12, as described in Viewing and completing your logs. The Dive Info window pops up and you will see the following:

Location

An input where you can enter your new location, or you can choose with the pull-down previous locations

Dive Master

An input where you can enter the name of your Dive Master, or you can choose with the pull-down a previous name

Buddy

An input where you can enter het name of you Buddy, or you can choose with the pull-down a previous name

Rating

A pull-down where you can rate your dive.

Notes

A free input where you can enter information about your dive. What you’ve seen, etc.

In this example we use the following information:

Location

Oostvoornse Meer

Dive Master

S. de Vries

Buddy

S. de Vries

Rating

3 stars

Notes

First dive here. Good visibility. Did see the concrete poles, some crab and fish. Very nice and easy dive.
Made movie with headcam.

Now don’t press ok yet!

7. Edit equipment info

You also want to edit your Cylinder information. And in the previous chapter, this was not edited. There is still another item to edit in the Dive Info screen:

  • Cylinder: A double-click fieldset. Here you can edit your Cylinder information

So, when you double click on the cylinder info, you get another popup. This popup gives you the following:

  • Cylinder: Pull-down where you can choose your Cylinder, or add your own
  • Size: The volume if not ‘filled’
  • Pressure: The maximum pressure of this Cylinder
  • Optional:
    • Start Pressure: What was the pressure starting the dive
    • End Pressure: What was the pressure ending the dive
    • Nitrox: What was the percentage of blend

Now we are going to enter the data:

  • Cylinder: 15.0 l
  • Size: 15.0
  • Pressure: 220

Now tick the option for Start & End pressure

  • Start Pressure: 180
  • End Pressure: 60
  • Press Ok

Now your dive information for this dive is complete. You can now press ok in the Dive Info screen and view the results.

8. Adding equipment info

In Area with the 3 tabs there is the tab Equipment. With this tab, you can add Cylinders. We are going to add an additional Cylinder:

  • In the main screen, click on the Equipment tab. This shows your Cylinder you added in chapter 7.
  • Now press the Add button and the Cylinder popup comes back.
  • Just like you added your Cylinder information in chapter 7. Edit equipment info, you add your cylinder information for the second Cylinder. Fill in all the information about this Cylinder and press OK.

9. View info & Stats

After adding all the information, you can use the tab Info & Stats. This tab will provide you with all the (statistical and calculated) information regarding your dive.

The information contains:

  • Dive Info:
    • Date: Date and time of your dive
    • Dive Time: Duration of your dive
    • Surf Intv: Interval between previous dive and this dive
    • Max Depth: Maximum depth of this dive
    • Avg Depth: The average depth of this dive
    • Water Temp: Lowest temperature of the water
    • SAC: The amount of Surface Air Consumption liters per minute
    • OTU: The Oxygen Toxicity Units of this dive
    • O2/He: Amount of Oxygen/Helium
    • Gas Used: The total volume of gas used during this dive
  • Statistics:
    • Total time: Total time of all your dives together, calculated
    • Avg Time: The average divetime of your dives, calculated
    • Max Depth: The maximum depth of all your dives
    • Avg Depth: The average depth of all your dives, calculated
    • Max SAC: Highest of Surface Air Consumption of all your dives
    • Min SAC: Lowest of Surface Air Consumption of all your dives
    • Avg SAC: Average Surface Air Consuption of all your dives, calculated

10. Setting up preferences

Subsurface has the ability to modify the preferences you want. By using menu File – Preferences you will be presented a popup with the Units. You are free to choose what is your preference, with other words, use Metric or Imperial.

You can set the following options:

Depth

Your diving depth in Meters or Feet

Pressure

The pressure of your tank(s) in Bar/Ato or PSI (Pressure Square Inch)

Volume

The volume of your tank(s) in Liter or CuFt (Cubic Feet) (At sea-level pressure)

Temperature

The temperature of the water in Celcius or Fahrenheit

In the main screen, you did see in Area 3, some information. In the Columns options, you can enable/disable options you would like to show there:

Show Temp

Shows the temperature of your dive

Show Cyl

Shows the cylinder(s) of your dive

Show O2%

Shows the O2% of your dive

Show SAC

Shows the SAC of your dive (Surface Air Consumption)

Show OTU

Shows the OTU of your dive (Oxygen Toxicity Units)

And, you can change the font usage of the program.

I will give an example here:

I am a diver in The Netherlands, using the Metric System. Therefor, I go to the menu File, choose Preferences here. In the Units section, I use the folowing:

Depth

Meter

Pressure

Bar

Volume

Liter

Temperature

Celcius

I would like to see the:

Temperature
Show Cyl
Show O2%
Show SAC

 

As a beginning diver, I don’t need to track my OTUs. So I leave this one not enabled.

Clicking OK on the dialog stores these settings.

11. How to find the Device Name

When you connect your divecomputer by using an USB connector, most of the time, the default of /dev/ttyUSB0 should work. But if you have other Serial to USB devices, this can be different because /dev/ttyUSB0 is already in use.

One of the ways to find out what your dive name is:

  • Disconnect your usb cable of your dive computer
  • Open a terminal
  • Type the command: dmesg and press enter
  • Plug in your usb cable of your divecomputer
  • Type the command: dmesg and press enter

Within your terminal you should see a message similair to this one:

usb 2-1.1: new full speed USB device number 14 using ehci_hcd
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
USB Serial support registered for generic
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
usbserial: USB Serial Driver core
USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device
ftdi_sio 2-1.1:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
usb 2-1.1: Detected FT232BM
usb 2-1.1: Number of endpoints 2
usb 2-1.1: Endpoint 1 MaxPacketSize 64
usb 2-1.1: Endpoint 2 MaxPacketSize 64
usb 2-1.1: Setting MaxPacketSize 64
usb 2-1.1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB3
usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio
ftdi_sio: v1.6.0:USB FTDI Serial Converters Driver

You see that in the third line from the bottom, the usb adapter is detected and is connected to ttyUSB3. Now you use this information in the import settings as /dev/ttyUSB3. Your divecomputer interface is connected and you should be able to import your dives.

12. Importing dives from JDivelog

Maybe you have been using JDivelog and you have a lot of dives logged in this program. You don’t have to type all information by hand into Subsurface, because you can import your divelogs from JDivelog.

JDivelog stores its information into files with the extention of .jlb. These .jlb contain all the information that has been stored, except your images in xml format.

By using the menu File – Import you get the popup, like described in chapter 4, Importing new dives. Within this popup there is the option to import existing files which are already on your computer. To import your JDivelog file(s) do the following:

  • Open File – Import on the menu
  • Use the file locator under XML file name
  • Browse your directories to the location where your *.jlb file is
  • Select your existing .jlb file and click *open
  • Click the OK button in the popup

After a few moments, you see your existing logs in Subsurface. Now you can edit your dives like explained in chapter 6.

Information that is imported from JDivelog into the location field:

  • Extended dive location information

Information that is merged into the location or notes field:

  • Used amount of weight
  • Used type of suit
  • Used type of gloves
  • Type of dive
  • Dive activity

Alternatively, you can start subsurface with the –import comand line which will have the same effect:

subsurface MyDives.xml --import JDivelogDives.jlb

will open your divelog (assuming that’s called MyDives.xml) and then import the dives from JdivelogDives.jlb. You can now save the combined divelog back as MyDives.xml.

Subsurface will similarly import xml exports from DivingLog as well as Suunto DiveManager.

When importing dives subsurface tries to detect multiple records for the same dive and merges the information as best as it can. So as long as there are no time zone issues (or other reasons that would cause the beginning time of the dives to be substantially different) subsurface will not create duplicate entries.

13. Importing dives from Suunto Divemanager 3.*

Before you can start importing dives from Suunto Divemanager, you first have to export the dives you want to import. Subsurface does not import directly from the Suunto Divemanager log files. The following procedures unpacking instructions for Linux and Windows.

13.1. Export from Suunto Divemanager

  • Start Suunto Divemanager and login with the name containing the logs
  • Do not start the import wizard to import dives from your computer.
  • In the navigation tree on the left side of the program-window, select your dives.
  • Within the list of dives, select the dives you would like to import later:
    • To select certain dives: hold ctrl and point & click the dive
    • To select all dives: Select the first dive, hold down shift and select the last dive
  • With the dives marked, use the program menu File – Export
  • The export popup will show
  • Within this popup, there is one field called Export Path.
    • Click the button browse next to the field Export Path
      • A file-manager like window pops up
      • Navigate to the directory where you want to store the Divelog.SDE file
      • Optional change the name of the file you want to save
      • Click Save
    • You are back in the Export popup. Press the button Export
  • Your dives are now exported to the file Divelogs.SDE.

13.2. Unpacking the Divelogs.SDE on Windows

Renaming your file to a .zip:

  • Use the filemanager (explorer) and navigate to your Divelogs.SDE file
  • Right click on the Divelogs.SDE file and choose Rename
    • Change the name into Divelogs.SDE.zip
    • Press enter when done. A warning popup shows: 
      The file could be unusable when changing the extension. Are you sure:
Press OK.
    • Your filemanager will show now the filename Divelogs.SDE.zip

When you double click your Divelogs.SDE.zip file, your preferred archiving tool will start and show you the list of xml files that are in the zip archive. Select all the xml files and extract them to a place where you can find them later in the process.

13.3. Unpacking the Divelogs.SDE on Linux

The assumption is that you have exported your Divelogs.SDE on a Windows system. You have to transfer the file to a location where you can read it from within your Linux environment. You can use file-tranfer, shared storage or an USB storage device to do this. The example uses an USB storage:

  • Insert your USB storage into your Windows computer
  • Use the filemanager (explorer) to navigate to the location where your Divelogs.SDE file is located
  • Copy the file to your USB storage:
    • Select the file by 1 click
    • Press Ctrl+c
    • Navigate to your USB Storage
    • Press Ctrl+v
  • Disconnect your USB storage by right clicking your USB storage in the explorer and choose Eject
  • Insert your USB storage into your Linux computer
  • Use your favourite filemanager to navigate to your USB storage
  • Copy the file to /tmp by:
    • Right click on the file
    • select copy
    • navigate to /tmp
    • press Ctrl+v or use the menu Edit – Paste
  • The file is now transfered to /tmp

Now the file is in /tmp, we can extract the xml files from it. You can do this by hand, or use the example script in Appendix B.

To extract the xml files, we need to open a terminal and use the following commands:

cd /tmp
mkdir suunto
cd suunto
unzip ../Divelogs.SDE

Your divelogs have now been extracted from the Divelogs.SDE file and you can import them with the command:

subsurface *.xml

And with the menu File – Save you can save your dives into the Subsurface format.

14. The menu and sub-menus

Within Subsurface, there are several menu and sub-menu options. All of those will be described here with their function.

14.1. The file menu

The file menu is used for the following menu options:

Open

Open your saved Subsurface xml file(s)

Save

Save your current divelogs or changes you made to your divelogs

Print

Print your current divelog profiles and information about the dive

Import

Import your dives from your divecomputer, JDivelogs or Suunto Divemanager

Preferences

Set your preferences as described in chapter 10

Quit

Quit the program

14.2. The Log menu

Within the Log menu, there are only 2 sub-items:

Renumber

This option provides you with a popup. Within this popup you can choose what the first number of your dives should be for this set of dives.

View

This is a submenu containing:

List

Show only the list of dives you have made

Profile

Show only the dive profile of the selected dive

Info

Show only the 3 tab information screen

Three

Show the ‘default’ 3 screen setup

14.3. The Filter menu

This menu gives you the choice to enable or disable Events for the selected divelog(s). At this time, you can enable or disable ascent. When you enable ascent for your dives, within the dive profile, a yellow marker with exclamation sign (!) will show on the points where you have ascented.

14.4. The Help menu

The Help menu shows only the About, which contains the version and author information and License button.

15. Appendix A: Supported Dive Computers

The use of libdivecomputer provides the support for divecomputers. Within the list of computers in the File – import menu, you will see a listing of divecomputers. This list is covering a compatible set. Please check your users manual to check if your computer will be supported.

Supported divecomputers
Atomics
Cobalt
Cressi
Edi
Mares
Icon HD Nemo Puck Air
Oceanic
Veo250 VT Pro
OSTC
DR5 2N
Reefnet
Sensus Sensus Pro Sensus Ultra
Suunto
Cobra 2 3 D3 D9 D4 D4i D6 D6i D9tx Eon Gekko HelO2 Mosquito Solution Alpha Nitrox/Vario Stinger Vyper 2 Air Vytec DS Zoop
Uwatec
Aladin Memo Mouse Smart
Zeagle
N2iTiON 3
  • OSTC computers are listed in the pull-down menu as OSTC. All 3 types are supported.

16. Appendix B: Suunto Export Unpacking Script

#!/bin/bash
#
# Small basic example script to unpack Suunto Export files
# for the use with Subsurface
#
echo -n "Enter the directory where you stored your Suunto Divemanager export file: "
read SuuntoExportDir
echo -n "Enter the name of your Suunto Divemanager export file: "
read SuuntoExportFile
echo "You have entered: $SuuntoExportDir/$SuuntoExportFile"
cd $SuuntoExportDir
if [ -e ./$SuuntoExportFile ]; then
        mkdir SuuntoXML
        cd SuuntoXML
        unzip ../$SuuntoExportFile
        subsurface *.xml
else
        echo "Nothing found! Try again!"
fi