Take your iPad underwater

Tablet computing could be about to go underwater if the iDive waterproof housing comes to fruition.

We’ve seen plenty of potential housing ideas for smartphones touted around the internet over the last couple of years, but relatively few for the Apple iPad.

But here’s one: it’s called the iDive (what else?) and is said to be watertight down to 100ft, or 30 metres.

watertight down to 100ft, or 30 metres

You may be wondering what the point is. After all, most iPhone housings promise to turn your mobile into some kind of dive computer, or at the very least allow use of the inbuilt camera. An iPad, on the other hand, is rather unwieldy to say the least.

In fact via the iDive your iPad has great potential underwater as a research tool. The waterproof housing was developed in the Red Sea Research Center at KAUST to provide scientists with better ways to record data while diving.

One key issue to overcome was the touchscreen interface. The team behind iDive has successfully managed to crack it, meaning the iPad can potentially be used to the full while underwater. Pretty neat, huh.

This is still a prototype product but the makers anticipate first examples could be on sale before summer 2013.