LoRa Diver Tracking · Surface Awareness for Dive Boats
Know where every diver is
the moment they surface
DiveMesh puts each diver's live surface position on the skipper's phone — and lets a diver signal for pickup with a single tap. Purpose-built for dive boats, with no subscriptions.
When pickup matters most, a DSMB is hardest to see
Waves, sun glare, fading light, or a current that has carried a diver off the ascent point all make a surface marker hard to spot from a moving boat. Exactly the conditions where finding your divers matters most are the ones where scanning the surface fails you.
Commercial diver-tracking systems answer this with expensive, proprietary acoustic hardware and subscription services — complex, fragile, and well outside the budget of a club dive boat. DiveMesh takes a different path.
DiveMesh transmits each diver's GPS position straight to the skipper's phone — so you navigate to a coordinate instead of searching the water. Off-the-shelf hardware, no subscription, and nothing for the diver to do but surface.
Three boats, one problem: where's my diver?
DiveMesh is built around a single moment — the one where a diver is on the surface but the boat can't see them. Here is what that moment looks like across three kinds of operation.
Drift dives & end-of-dive recovery
On a drift dive — or at the end of any dive — divers surface scattered down-current, often out of sight of the boat in chop or fading light. DiveMesh puts each diver's GPS position on the cox'n's phone the instant they surface, so the boat motors straight to a coordinate instead of scanning the water. One tracker per diver, and nothing for the diver to do but surface.
Surface-supervisor awareness in strong tide
Scallop divers work in strong tide and routinely surface away from the boat — the situation behind many of the sector's most serious incidents. DiveMesh gives the surface supervisor continuous awareness of where each diver is the moment they are back on top, so recovery is immediate rather than a search. Fewer lost-diver incidents means fewer of the costly, disruptive HSE investigations that follow them.
A supplementary awareness aid that supports your existing diving safety procedures — it does not replace them.
Duty of care for guests you don't know
Running paying guests on unfamiliar drift sites means keeping track of divers you have only just met, on water you cannot always read. DiveMesh shows every guest's surface position on one screen — turning a tense headcount into a glance, and giving you a visible, demonstrable duty of care that reassures customers and insurers alike.
Surface awareness, built for dive boats
It runs on a long-range, self-healing LoRa mesh — and can ride existing public mesh networks such as Meshtastic to reach far beyond any single radio.
Live surface positions
Every diver's GPS fix appears on the skipper's map the moment they surface — colour-coded by how fresh the signal is.
One-tap pickup signal
A diver double-taps their tracker to say I'm here, come and get me — the skipper's phone alerts with sound.
Range beyond line of sight
By opting into a public LoRa mesh such as Meshtastic, packets relay through hilltop nodes and gateways — reach proven to ~230 km in testing.
No subscriptions, ever
Designed to run with no monthly fees, no per-dive charges, and no single point of failure — nothing to lock you in.
Three pieces, one map
A diver carries a tracker, the boat carries a gateway, and the skipper watches a live map. The mesh does the rest.
The diver surfaces
The tracker rides up with the diver's DSMB on a self-righting surface float. As soon as it clears the water it acquires a GPS fix and starts transmitting position over LoRa — no action needed. A double-tap of the button sends a deliberate pickup alert.
The boat gateway receives
A gateway on the boat — with a mast-mounted antenna, set up once — picks up each diver's packets directly and relays them through the wider mesh, then forwards everything to the skipper's phone over Bluetooth.
The skipper sees everyone
The app plots every diver on a live map, colour-coded by signal freshness, and raises an audible notification the instant a pickup alert arrives. Navigate to a point instead of searching the surface.
What's in the box
Three parts work together. Add one diver tracker per diver; the gateway and app cover the whole boat.
Diver tracker
A compact, waterproof tracker each diver carries. The moment it reaches the surface it acquires a GPS fix and starts transmitting the diver's position. A button lets the diver send a deliberate "come and get me" pickup alert. One per diver.
Boat gateway
A small unit on the boat, paired to the skipper's phone over Bluetooth. With a mast-mounted antenna — a one-time setup — it picks up every diver's position, directly and through the wider mesh, and feeds it straight to the app.
Skipper app
A purpose-built app for the skipper's phone. It plots every diver on a live map and colour-codes each marker by how fresh the signal is — green for a recent fix, amber for ageing, red for no signal. An incoming pickup alert raises a notification with audio.
Tested in open water off Dorset
DiveMesh isn't a slide deck — the core system has been run in real diving conditions off Swanage Bay, with moderate chop and tidal current.
A gateway on the boat discovered 30 distinct mesh nodes across southern England in a single session — relaying through a public LoRa mesh (such as Meshtastic) from hilltops above the dive site to nodes up to ~230 km away.
The pickup workflow worked end-to-end: a diver surfaced, acquired a GPS fix, double-tapped, and the alert propagated through the mesh to raise an audible notification on the skipper's phone. Diver trackers came online and transmitted the instant they cleared the surface.
Next up: a self-righting surface float that keeps the tracker reliably above the waterline through ascent and chop, taking the system from manual pickup signals to fully passive, hands-off tracking.
Interested in DiveMesh?
Whether you run a club RHIB, a scalloping boat, or a dive charter — or you're just curious — get in touch and we'll keep you in the loop as DiveMesh develops.
DiveMesh is an early-stage project, shared to raise awareness and connect with interested clubs, skippers, and collaborators — not yet a commercial product.