MX-Z Rebreather - Adjustable Heads Up Display (HUD)

MX-Z Rebreather - Adjustable Heads Up Display (HUD)

A head up display, or HUD, has become an extremely useful tool in displaying PPO2 to the diver and teammate quickly and efficiently. The HUD is positioned on the left side of the diver’s mouthpiece and is adjustable so the diver can see it through the bottom of the mask.

With the Shearwater HUD, we tried to find the best of all worlds. It displays the PPO2 only, which makes it a re- dundant PPO2 meter. Since it uses three LED’s simultaneously, it can display them quickly. A typical 1.3 takes about 2 seconds to read. After a few dives, many divers have said that they do not need to consciously “read” the displays; they look at the display and their brain recognizes the number of flashes.

When there is a problem with a sensor, it is noticeable immediately as one of the LCD’s flashes different from the others. As the diver knows what to expect, when something different happens it really jumps out at them.

The Shearwater HUD does not display continuously; there is usually 5 seconds between the displays. Also, as the PPO2 gets farther from 1.0, the light DENSITY gets higher. If you are more than 0.50 away from 1.00, the power is turned up to the high intensity LED’s; so they get brighter! At 0.20 you have three very bright red LED’s flashing just about continuously in the corner of your eye.

Periodically throughout the dive a diver should double check the HUD information with the Primary PPO2 monitoring system that is installed on the MX-Z configuration.