Two Divers. One Mission.
Scott and Cindy Fontecchio didn't start DiveRobotix because it made business sense. They started it because they couldn't stop diving — and because every time they went underwater, they came back up with the same feeling: this place needs protecting.
Between them they hold PADI and SSI Master Instructor certifications, with Scott logging 17+ years of professional dive work at Lake Tahoe including commercial diving, ROV operations, mooring inspections, and scuba instruction. Cindy earned her PADI Divemaster and Emergency First Response credentials, and became the operational heart of everything DiveRobotix has built. Together they co-founded the company with a simple idea — use the best underwater technology available to do work that actually matters.
Why We Built DepthPlanner
Every diver remembers fumbling with dive tables. The RDP wheel. Trying to figure out repetitive group letters at a dive shop counter while your buddy is already gearing up. It's a skill that takes practice — and the tools available online are mostly outdated, ad-heavy, or locked behind accounts.
DepthPlanner is our answer to that. DiveCommand runs the exact same Bühlmann ZHL-16C algorithm as your Shearwater, Garmin, and Suunto dive computer — validated against 11,184 independent tests with zero discrepancies. NavCommand puts validated U.S. Navy Rev 7 tables in a browser-based commercial supervisor workstation, with ADCI/OSHA-compliant dive plans generated in one tap. And IncCommand is purpose-built for fire departments, sheriff dive teams, and search-and-rescue units — ICS role manifest, Rescue vs Recovery mode, chain-of-custody evidence logs, and one-tap incident reports straight into the case file.
All three tools work completely offline on any device — desktop, tablet, or phone. No download, no account, no subscription. Built for working divers, instructors, commercial supervisors, and public safety dive teams who need to trust their numbers.
"We built the software we wished existed when we were learning — and made it accurate enough to stake a dive plan on."
All three planners are free to try — no account required, no credit card, no commitment. Buy once when you're ready and own it forever, including all future updates.
If DepthPlanner doesn't make your pre-dive prep faster and more confident within 30 days, we'll refund every cent.
Mastering Buoyancy: The Internal Ballast Tank
Before DepthPlanner, before the ROV work, before DiveRobotix — there was the problem that every new diver faces: buoyancy. Scott spent years watching students wrestle with it, and eventually sat down to write the guide he'd always wanted to hand them on day one.
The Internal Ballast Tank
The skill that separates good divers from great ones — demystified. Scott's guide cuts through the theory and gives you the mental framework and practical techniques to achieve neutral buoyancy faster than any course alone will teach you. Written from 17+ years of watching students struggle with the same thing, and finally figuring out what actually works.
📖 READ FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITEDAvailable on Amazon Kindle — free to read with Kindle Unlimited, or a few dollars to own. If you're working on your buoyancy between dives, it's a quick read that will change how you think about weighting, breathing, and trim.
Why We Made a Plant-Based Defogger
It started with an uncomfortable truth: almost every anti-fog product on the market contains alcohol. Alcohol works — but it damages coral reefs, irritates eyes, and washes off your mask directly into the water you came to experience. For divers who care about what's down there, that's a hard thing to ignore.
Scott formulated an alcohol-free version, combining coco glucoside, a coconut-derived surfactant, with 98% distilled water to create something that had never existed before: a genuinely plant-based anti-fog solution with no harsh chemicals, no reef toxins, and no eye irritation.
"We wanted something we could use on a reef dive and feel good about. That turned out to be harder to find than it should be — so we made it ourselves."
That formula became DeFROGGER / SwimDefog — available at defrogger.com and on Amazon. Works for dive masks, swim goggles, snorkels, and anything else that fogs. The only plant-based defogger we know of anywhere.
What the ROVs Have Done Down There
It started with the MSLED — Micro Submersible Lake Exploration Device — a custom ROV Scott helped develop that went through the ice in West Antarctica and returned high-definition video for scientific analysis. That same spirit of purpose-built underwater exploration eventually found a home on Lake Tahoe, with NASA backing the Tahoe Drifter project to study the lake's thermal dynamics and water clarity as an analog for extraterrestrial ocean environments.
Lake Tahoe sits at over 6,000 feet elevation and drops to nearly 1,650 feet at its deepest point. Most of what ends up on the bottom stays there — until DiveRobotix began deploying ROVs to reach those depths for debris recovery, AIS zebra mussel surveys, and mooring inspections.
What the manipulator arms have pulled up over the years reads like an archaeological survey of human carelessness: bikes, hundreds of tires, sunglasses by the hundreds, and fireworks debris that had been sitting undisturbed on the lakebed for decades.
One of the largest operations in DiveRobotix history was a 100-ton coordinated lift — thirteen 6,000-pound lift bags raised simultaneously, with ROVs providing live video of the entire operation so the surface team could monitor every stage of the ascent in real time. Thirteen bags. 100 tons. One shot to get it right.
"Thirteen 6,000-pound lift bags, one coordinated signal. The ROVs let us watch every inch of that lift from the surface — that's the difference between a clean recovery and a catastrophe."
The most significant environmental project came when an international story broke about a buried AT&T telecommunications cable abandoned on the floor of Lake Tahoe for over 80 years. Lead sheathing. Leaching into one of the clearest, most pristine alpine lakes in the world. AT&T sued the company that went public with the contamination findings — and in the middle of it all, DiveRobotix was hired to conduct the underwater survey: 10 miles of cable, documented by ROV, with physical sediment sampling carried out by divers.
"Ten miles of cable on the bottom. Eighty years of lead leaching into Lake Tahoe. That survey mattered — and we were the ones who could do it."
That kind of work — precise, documented, legally defensible — is what DiveRobotix was built for. From Antarctica to the bottom of Lake Tahoe, the mission is the same: go where the work needs doing, and bring back something useful.
The Full DiveRobotix Suite
Three professional dive planning tools, a book on buoyancy, and the only plant-based defogger on the market — one mission, five tools.