We are a couple of Master Scuba Divers fortunate to live in Florida where we enjoy a wide variety of diving options, including many excellent shore dive sites. Shore diving in particular made us face a common dilemma: What do we do with our expensive car key fob while in the water?
As we searched for a solution, we saw some good options for surface-based water sports but could not find anything that we would trust to take down to any real depth with us.
For a while, we carried our key in a surface float but got a real scare one day when the float sprung a leak. Another time, the rope broke, and I had to surface and swim after the buoy as it headed for the boat channel.
We would regularly see other divers hiding their keys in the bushes, on a tire, or leaving their cars unlocked. The question of what to do with your key while scuba diving was a recurring one on various dive forums and we finally said, “That’s it…we’re going to create a product to solve this problem!”
After designing and building various prototypes in 2020, we converged on a solution that was precision machined out of rugged anodized aluminum. We had the design and protos tested successfully to recreational dive limits in early 2021 and we started using these first devices ourselves with growing confidence. Other divers would see us using them and ask us what they were and where they could get one.
We then knew we had something that we could share with the dive community and DRYFOB® was created.
We had Dive Lab, a Florida based scuba diving equipment Navy test facility, test DRYFOB to 200 fsw. We even created our own pressure chamber where we left DRYFOB at a simulated 260ft depth for 24hrs successfully with no leaks. We were now taking it on every dive with us and no longer worried about leaks or stressed about our car keys.
One year after the initial product release (May 2021), we introduced two new sizes for both larger car key FOBs and PLBs (personal locator beacons). We had all of our DRYFOB models and sizes recertified by an accredited lab with an IPx8 rating of 330ft (100m). This depth was not a product limitation, but simply the testing depth we requested for the certification.
To this day, every single DRYFOB we ship is personally inspected, assembled and packaged by one or both of us to ensure quality. We test units from every production batch in our pressure chamber to verify that they meet our specs. We never go diving without our DRYFOB, and no longer have to worry about our car or about getting back home!
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each DRYFOB goes to causes that enhance or protect dive environments. Thank you for supporting our small business and the things we believe in with your purchase of a DRYFOB.
Nathalie and Jaan