Ultra Cheap Depth-Meter

[lisabeeren]

G'day,
What is the cheapest way of measuring the depth of a dive (short of a float and a string). I was looking at depth meter watches on ebay for $50, but they are 'water resistant', which I think means 'not really water proof'.
Anyone had any experience with these?

I was thinking of getting a length of tube, maybe 200mm long (~8") and 10mm in diameter (~3/8") and putting a one way valve in it. I could swim down, swim back up, and the quantity of water inside (that which had compressed the air and pushed its way inside) would be proportional to the depth. Once calibrated, I thought it would make a pretty good poor mans depth-meter.

 

[trux]

When I was student and started with scuba diving and freediving some 25 years ago, in my country it was very difficult to find diving equipment, so we constructed a lot of things ourselves. Depth-meters were the simplest to do.

You can do a cheap capillary gauge very quickly and easily and at no cost. You do not even need any valve. Take a rigid PE capillary tube (inner diameter around or less than 1mm), close one end, turn and fix on some round support that you can put on your wrist, and you are done. You only need to calibrate it - the best it is done in the place you plan to dive, because the temperature profile (changing with the depth) can influence the preciosion.

The preciosion decreases with the depth, and as I wrote it is influenced by the temperature too, but at depth to some 15m it is pretty sufficient. Deeper you would not see the value anyway, since you need quite good eyes and light to see the water level in the capillary at all - that's about the most important disadvantage.

You can also find such depth-meters in stores, for example this one at Scubaland.fr for just 19€ (I bet you can find them even cheaper on the Internet):

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[marginatus]

or just buy a swatch scuba 75€. you'll have depht, time and a whact with style

 

[Yogaman]

Hey Trux,

That gauge is super-cool! I like it's simplicity. I've been looking for something like this for a while in South Africa. I think I'll have to order one online or something!

 

[sheepeck]

This one is also quite cheep and ok - about 30 Euro

 

[Ricochet]

You can get a swatch fun scuba for around 40-45€ at ebay.

# Depth Gauge: Up to 40 m
# Waterproof up to 200 m
# records and displays the duration of the last dive (up to 90 min)
# Displays the dive profile for short dives (freedives)