Karl´s Rebreather Page

Buddy Inspiration, the Rebreather from A.P. Valves

Oh, you spotted me..
I'm the diver with the Buddy Inspiration, the Diver on the left side of the picture is Harry, a German navy seal, wearing an IDA-71.

You wanted to see this, did'nt you ?

That is an inside view of the Buddy Inspiration.

On the left side is the place for the diluent bottle, on the right side for the oxygen bottle.

In the middle you see the cover of the lime and sensor housing. The body of that tank stays in the background on the right side, behind the lime cartridge.

In the right foreground you see the mouth-peace, to close it the white part is tuned down while fixing the hoses.

For many of us the Buddy Inspiration from A.P. Valves surely was the exhibit of the year at the Boot'98.
This device personifies the dream of soundless, long diving in nearly every depth. Of course no cheap business, the Buddy Inspiration is a computer controlled fully closed Mixedgas-Rebreather, it is run with "Breathing-Lime", Oxygen and, depending on the planed usage, Air or Trimix.
The limits are mainly given by the imperative redundancy, just think about the decompression time you need for a 4-hour 30m-dive.
The usage of a constant Oxygen-Partialpressure gives you some benefits:

a massive reduction of decompression times (40m 40min on this gadget mean less than 20min Deko)
easy Gas supply: the 3l oxygen bottle is the equivalent of 26 fillings of 10l 200bar Air-Tanks when you dive at 30m, so it is a good idea for remote locations. Ok, starting and ending a dive also costs some Oxygen, so one fill does not last for 26dives but 600bar*l of Oxygen should last for one diveday with 4 one-hour dives, when the maximum depth is in the 30m-range. Sure, safety first, you should start every dive with full tanks.
no oxygen caused depth- or divetime-limits
the necessity of a reliable control engineering, an unnoticed failure would have fatal consequences.

Some nice features of the Buddy Inspiration:

Two Setpoints, so you have no problem with ppO2-Spikes on descents or too much solenoid-fire on the ascent.
Setpoint change on the fly, which means you can change the values stored as the setpoints whenever you wish, this is done via a menue-system.
Where no pure Oxygen is within reach the Inspiration can be run as electronic controlled SCR.
Buzzer (you should never hear it except when you test it, watch the displays!)
If you wish you can fly the engine manually, the computer will not cry when you put him in the roule of a watchdog, while you for example decompress on pure Oxygen in 4m.
real good working, UW-dumpable, watertraps.
The Inspiration is also available with yellow counterlungs.

The Buddy Inspiration uses the following redundancy:

3 Oxygen sensors
2 control computers, the diver selects which one triggers the solenoid valve and does the lime usage-time control.
manual Diluent add (Air or Trimix)
manual Oxygen add (as redundancy to the solenoid valve)
both manual adds can be used to connect to other tanks (ie bailout in a rebreather-mode)
Bailout-regulator to breath Diluent OC
Easy reachable, fine tuning Tank-Valves (as Emergency-close if an add-valve does not close)

Naturally this complex technology requires divers who qualified for it, just like any other rebreather.

Improvements

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