New British Diving Helmet IrDA-C.

iain-hsm

New diving Helmet using the Linux based IrDA-C master controller. This model summarizes some ideas and thoughts that were exchanged on the IrDA. It is not medically certified and whoever has better evidence or some more source of information is encouraged to contribute.
The IrDA spec says that the range of IrDA devices has been limited to 450m for reasons of eye safety. Another plausible assumption is that power consumption and IR pollution/crosstalk were reasons for this limitation. In principle there could be a danger, because infrared light is not registered by the eye, and thus the pupil won't close in order to protect the retina from bright IR light sources. This is the same situation as with UV light, which will cause snow blindness eventually, but in contrast to UV light, IR light contains much less harmful energy due to its longer wavelength.
The only legal restrictions and medical advices we were able to find on the web were concerned with infrared emissions of heat lamps or in the welding process and IEC 825-1 (CENELEC EN60825-1). But there is nothing for underwater welding. This suggests that IR light as emitted by IrDA devices will be harmless, since even the peak power emitted by strong IR LEDs (ca. 300mW) is several orders of magnitude below the power emitted by medical IR heat lamps (up to 500W). For these, however, you are supposed to wear protective goggles, so maybe if you are looking straight into 1.000 infrared LEDs flashing at once, you should do so, too. The effect of infrared light is mostly heat, though, and not an alteration or destruction of the biological cell structure, such as caused by UV light. The head up display will show all surface supplied info as well as the visual perameter of underwater objects in dark black water or when a military operation precludes the use of visual light.
As stated above, this discussion is only based on guesswork and common sense assumptions about the data found in IR LED and specs. If anybody with a better medical knowledge can comment on this, please do so!!!

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Ben Field

whats the date?

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Dominique

Thank you for the info. This is a very good looking helmet, would love to try dive a helmet like this.
I don't know anything about impact of IR. But I very surprised to see a diving helmet with a spherical view port.
I have dived with a Piel EP 200 from the 70's that also has a spherical view port, and it takes a good 10 to 20 dives to get use to the spherical distortion. The last helmet I have seen with a spherical view port is the famous Lama bubble helmet.

Thank you again and keep us posted,

You can see what the LAMA and PIEL helmets look like on my website.

Dominique
Frogman Museum

iain-hsm

Ha haha kill joy. OK Ben your correct, it was an April fool joke.
Write up was for a linux printer interface to a computer, Helmet was real though although it was 20 years ago, Ir controller the size of a brick I guess gave the game away LOL, next year. regards iain

caveseeker7

That is one sey looking helmet, though.
What's its history, Iain?

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iain-hsm

Dominique.

British humour on April 1st we take something serious and talk "bollocks" about it see if anyone can tell. Things like Penguins flying, that sort of thing.

The helmet was not new in fact it was designed 20 years ago for a navy project. Curved viewports were not unknown, the Royal Navy has had wrap arounds on the "Vista" mask and on the CDBA, and other units. They also had a requirement for the S10 NBC (nuclear biologcal chemical) mask modified for diving with the two separated glass bug eyes on a flexible mask, that really was a step too far.

I remember the LAMA and PIEL helmets very well in fact we discussed the LAMA in the forum 2 years ago. http://www.rebreatherworld.com/gener...a-scanuba.html

Dave Pelley also on the forum used to say nice things about it. When the LAMA came out at that time we were both working as divers in north sea and it was Alan Erdody and Jock Stewart who were getting us all to use the unit.

Also of note around that time was the La Spirotechnique EOP-5 helmet Now that was a very, very nice design.

I have a few more Royal Navy helmet designs and prototypes that have never been made public due to our 20 year rule. There pretty old now so if you like I guess I can post them. Regards iain.

osiris

Iain, please do post those if you can. Any more material on that and other masks would be most welcome.

Cheers

Dave