Air / Nitrox Diver Monitoring System
The Fathom Systems Air Diver Monitoring System is commonly used with a typical surface supplied (Air Diving) installation where the DMS comprises a self-contained containerised system that is located typically on the back deck area of a vessel, adjacent to the air dive deployment equipment. The system is intended for surface oriented diving from a surface deployed basket with two divers in the water at a time and a third surface standby diver with his own separate deployment basket (per system). Diving operations will be carried out typically to depths not exceeding 50MSW, and Nitrox gas mixes are used to provide favourable decompression times. Air can also be used if appropriate to the working depth and tables in use. With Nitrox tables, it is not anticipated that surface decompression will be used routinely, with the surface decompression chambers (DDCs) being used only for therapeutic decompression treatment of divers if needed. Typically one or two twin-lock DDCs will be a part of the diving system.
The following brief description of the Air DMS equipment and software is important for all users to understand so that they can be aware of the operating principles of the entire system. The descriptions have deliberately been kept simple and ‘non-technical’ to allow all readers to understand the system principles.
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The DMS comprises an industrial rackmount PC or networked laptop computer onboard the vessel, which communicates with bespoke hardware devices that acquire data from ‘real-world’ sensors fitted to various parts of the dive system. These sensors measure parameters such as depths, temperatures, gas compositions, hot water temperature etc. The main function of the system is to measure these physical parameters and store the values on a computer disk file for archiving and subsequent analysis. In addition to recording the sensor values, there are a number of computers that provide operators with real-time graphical displays of the sensor values to assist in the management of diving operations.
