The Ouroboros
One of the benefits of dive trips is exposure to other
divers and seeing their gear. My recent trip to
Photo
by Kurt Bowen of Advanced Diver magazine. Thanks for the great UW pics Kurt!!
Here is a pic of Kevin diving
the Ouroboros. This unit is the military
prototype, the consumer unit will be 4 inches shorter
and minus the back cover. The backup display, powered by one AA battery and is
backlit, which reads PPO2 or millivolt output of the 3 Teledyne
At first glance, the unit is quite large, but when
placed along with all the other units being dived here at ZG, it really is not
overly big. One thing about the
prototype that might need to be addressed is that it wont
sit vertical on its own. The prototype is quite heavy but will be weight
trimmed for production units, no specific production weight numbers yet. The machining work inside this unit is super
clean and neat, its obvious that many hours were spent making the unit elegant,
some very neat engineering went into this
Some of the features are labeled in the pic below,
such as…
Back of the unit minus the cover.
Snap in mounts for the gas cylinders, this is a great
idea, the body of the cylinder snaps in to the top (labeled) mounts and the
neck of the cylinder snaps into the lower mount, no fumbling with hose clamps,
Velcro or cam bands. The regulators,
which are both Poseidon X-Streams and are fitted with overpressure relief
valves, are in the base of the snap mounts and high pressure SS braided lines
connect to the DIN valves of the cylinders, keeping the regs
well protected.
The central round pod is the setpoint electronics, on
the top is a set of wet contacts that will turn the unit on when they hit the
water, the unit will also automatically turn on at 1.5 meters as measured by
the depth sensor, there is no master power switch, so no jumping in with the
unit turned off, of course you must crack the valve for the oxygen, but there
is a pre-dive menu that covers that, more on that later. Also on the electronics pod is a buddy
display with a PPP2 readout in large digits, great if
your buddy is above or behind you, but not much use if you are diving side by
side. The pod also has two Fischer ports, one will allow connection of a stainless steel depth
transducer, required for saturation diving, and another port for data download
or telemetry to send
The unit is provided with an ADV shutoff, reachable
through a cutout in the shell, see illustration.
The solenoid is mounted in its own enclosure, not in
the breathing loop and is user replaceable.
The surrounding philosophy that Kevin has in his
design is “no tools required”. The time
he has spent in very far away places working on rebreathers has ingrained this
important point into this
Another perspective of the
unit minus the outer shell, photo by Stefan Besier at DEMA ’03. Thanks Stefan for providing the pics I didn’t
get.
DSV/mouthpiece,
notice the threaded hose attachments.
DSV/mouthpiece in circuit.
A shot showing the mushroom valves and spider.
The
ability to plumb off board gas into the loop is a mark of an expedition level
rebreather and the Ouroboros is no exception.
The unit is fitted with a gas block and outboard connection for the
Diluent and Oxygen. The stem on top of
this pic is the off board connection, these blocks hang down on the divers left
and right sides near the shoulder straps.
The scrubber is a radial design and has 2 sizes with a
possible 3rd . 3 and 4.4 kg are the current
designs. The scrubber also requires no
tools to load, the top lid is spring loaded by 8 springs and is designed to not
require any tamping to fill properly, wont that be a
time saver? If there is any settling of
scrubber it will be at the top of the unit and still not allow any channels to
form. The design of the scrubber bed is
such that it will maintain a gas path even if mostly flooded. Other flood resistant features include “one
way” moisture drains around the sensor pod, that help prevent moisture from finding
the sensors even if the diver goes inverted, and an over pressure/water drain
valve in the bottom of the exhale counterlung.
The counter lungs are back mounted, just inside the housing, very close
to the divers back, and in front of the scrubber canister. I haven’t dived the unit so I
Sensor pod, with 4 th position for backup computer or future development
of a CO2 sensor. Quickly
removable to keep in a kinder environment between dives.
The unit has 3 batteries, all C cells and any C size
cell will work, including rechargeable, alkaline or lithium. One of these is tasked to the main
electronics, the other two for the solenoid, but there is a power share circuit
that will divert power where it is needed.
Expected battery life is 60 dive hours.
HUD
Now here is a nice, easy to understand HUD.
The A is a general alarm, when it flashes, there will
be a corresponding message on the main display, as well as a vibrating alarm,
which can be shut off via the menu, if the fault is corrected, the vib off resets so if that same alarm returns the vib will return too, no forgetting that you shut off the vib alarm, a very nice feature. A critical design parameter includes alarms,
and menus for shutting them off, so if you decide to dive with something out of
normal, like, for example, an empty diluent cylinder and are in a cave where
you can’t very well fill it, you may shut off the alarm so it doesn’t drive you
crazy. Uwatec could learn something
here, nothing more frustrating than a divers computer
beeping incessantly. The general alarm will flash/vib for all
faults, as well as HP dil or Oxygen being low, or
leaking. The deco LED has four modes,
off for no deco, slow flash for below deco stop, solid for at stop depth and
fast flash for above stop depth. There
is a blue LED to show when the solenoid is firing, it is wired to a transducer so it
will light only when the solenoid has actually fired, not just show when power
is sent to the solenoid. The last LED is
a set point LED to show when the unit is at, below or above the setpoint, based
on the sensor readings.
Display,
looks a bit like a V
There is a pre dive menu that includes turning on
gasses and then verifying them with pressure readings on the display screen, also a scrubber stack timer to show how much
time you have remaining. The usual
calibrating menus are in the pre dive check also. One nice feature of the main display is that
it mirrors the V
A pic of
the buddy display and wet contacts on the top of the electronics pod, which has
a cutout In the rear cover of the unit. Pic taken by Stefan Besier
at DEMA ’03.
There are quite a few design features pulled from
earlier
The planned release dates will depend on CE testing,
which is supposed to begin soon and be complete by the end of the year, but the
unit will be at DEMA ‘04 and is expected to be available for sale by around the
second quarter of 2005. Cost is expected
to be around 8000 British pounds. Not
cheap by anyone’s standard, but for an expedition level breather, on par with
the Cis-Lunar and Mk 15/16, which Kevin is aiming at, there will certainly be
some folks out there who want the best and care little how much it costs.
Complete specifications for the unit are available here. CCRTECHNOLOGIES
Thank you very much, Kevin, for sponsoring ZG and
taking your time to show and tell your excellent
At last chat with Kevin on 30 Sep 04 the