Dean & All,
A couple of notes on the Desert Star products...and yes I have a sorta
biased view...
There really are no other commercially available products in that price
range. There used to be a few other recreational diver pinger/pinger
receivers, but I think Desert Star is the last man standing. There are
other more expensive units that are used for applications like finding
aircraft black boxes. Those tend to cost a few thousand though.
The sport and scout were really designed to be used by divers to
relocate something. Like, the anchor line, dive buddy, expensive gear,
etc. As such, they are optimized for that application, and maybe not
ideal for use by a suface boat trying to follow a sub. The receiver
must be in the water to pick-up the signal. This may be difficult to
do from a surface boat, without really long arms ;). They could
conceivably be modified to work better as a surface relocation
device.
And just for clarification the sport and scout both work at 72KHz, the
transmitters are omni-directional and the receivers are directional (45
deg for the sport and 90 deg for the scout) The frequency was dictated
by the availability of low cost transducers and size contraints. John
is correct in that it does not conform to the ABS requirement for a
32KHz beacon. DSS do have other pingers that can operate at 32KHz, but
they are about $1.5K -$2K IIRC, not including a receiver. I think this
is still on the lower cost end of the spectrum.
I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have.
Best,
Andy
ps. Jim if you are reading this, your sub looks AWESOME!
On 3/13/2010 1:23 PM, David Bartsch wrote:
Jon,
That sounds like a really great tracking device. Hope one is
available to see it at this coming convention. I might have a need for
one.
Kyle's pinger is not based upon the HBH design but uses the
underwater speaker (transducer for solids instead) It is still
broadband so would be subjected to the interference you mentioned. This
unit sounds much better and more reliable.
David Bartsch
> Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:47:45 -0500
> From: jonw@psubs.org
> To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Desert Star Sport
>
>
> If Kyle's pinger is the same HBH designs that I used in Spring
testing
> of 2008, there's no comparison. Andy Goldstein brought a "Scout"
unit
> (scaled back sport version) with him to the Maine convention and
it
> easily outperformed the HBH acoustic pinger that I brought. The
Desert
> Star unit is ultrasonic which cut through the salt water without
issue,
> and more importantly it was directional. The HBH/pinger still has
a use
> I think as a last ditch method of drawing attention to oneself
> underwater, and especially since they can be made for about $15.
> However, with our Desert Star discount the cost of the ultrasonic
units
> is somewhere around $120 for the scout, which is quite affordable.
The
> only drawback I saw with the Desert Star unit was that it did not
use
> the ABS approved frequency for pingers, 32khz if I remember
correctly,
> and was centered upward in the 40-50khz range. For tracking
purposes by
> a surface boat however, that wouldn't matter.
>
> Jon
>
>
> David Bartsch wrote:
> > I am curious as to how the locator pinger on Kyle's #7
measures up
> > against the desert star sport for tracking purposes.
>
>
>
>
>
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--
Andy Goldstein
Director Software Engineering
VideoRay LLC
580 Wall Street
Phoenixville PA 19460
Tel: 610.458.3006
Cell: 401.490.1707
Skype: videoray.ag
http://www.videoray.com
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