Select your DiveTracker™

Use

Model

Everyday Diving

DiveTracker Scout:  The receiver is the size of a magic marker. Clip it to your BCD, to get a quick bearing from anywhere back to the boat.  

Limited Visibility Diving

DiveTracker Sport:  With it's low and high gain selection switch,  it gets you within about 6 feet / 2 meters of the transmitter without signal overload.  For the Scout, it's about 20 feet / 6 meters.  Place the transmitter on the ascent anchor line and get back to it in poor viz. 

For Teaching (or use as Rent Equipment)

DiveTracker Sport: The intuitive LED bar graph, and more narrow/defined beam angle of the SPORT receiver makes it easier to operate for students and first-time users. A number of dive facilities and boats are purchasing DiveTracker Sport to rent out to customers. 

Best Battery Availability

DiveTracker Sport: You can get the six ‘AA’ batteries for the transmitter and the 9V battery for the receiver just about anywhere. The SPORT transmitter can have a continuous use up to 2 weeks, while SPORT receiver has a continuous use of 8 hours. The SCOUT transmitter uses a 9V battery, but the receiver uses a SAFT 14250 3.6V 1/2 ‘AA’ cell and is harder to locate. Fortunately, the Scout receiver battery does last for about 100 hours of diving.

Operating over very long distances

DiveTracker Sport: The more defined beam pattern of the SPORT receiver (30 degrees for SPORT vs. 90 degrees for the SCOUT), the stronger transmit signal and an extra high gain setting through an internal switch give the SPORT a much greater range potential than the SCOUT (1000ft / 300m max. for SCOUT; 4000ft / 1300m max. for SPORT). However, be careful. In many cases, the maximum range is limited by environmental factors such as ray bending, path blockages and background noise. For general diving, we find the range of both SCOUT and SPORT to be sufficient.

For Frequent Divers

DiveTracker Scout:  The much smaller receiver means you can carry it on all your dives without it getting in the way.

Marking Underwater Equipment for Recovery

DiveTracker Sport: The SPORT transmitter has a battery life of about two weeks in the slowest ping setting. This compares to about two days for the SCOUT transmitter.

Diving in Harbors, Ponds, or other Confined Locations

DiveTracker Sport:  Echoes and generally strong signals can be a problem here. The ‘low gain’ setting of the SPORT receiver helps you reject many of the echoes and improve performance in confined dive sites.

Operating in a Swimming Pool

These systems are designed for open waters, and therefore will not be effective in a swimming pool. Since this system is based of acoustics, the signals and echoes will be just too strong. A large, Olympic size pool might be the exception. We recommend the SPORT here, always operated in its ‘low gain’ setting. If interested in operating the DiveTracker in a swimming pool, please fill out a product inquiry.

Least Probability of Flooding

DiveTracker Scout:  Has the advantage here, flooding is unheard of. This is because the housing is so small, and it’s O-ring is relatively thick in comparison to the housing diameter. This makes the SCOUT a very forgiving mechanical design. With SPORT, we do get the occasional flooded unit for repair. The O-ring is the same thickness as in SCOUT, but the housing does have a greater diameter. That means you need to pay greater attention to make sure you don’t have any O-ring contamination. Still, for both units incidents of flooding are low.