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Homemade Battery For Impulse AQ Ltd


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The Impulse AQ will come with an external NiMH battery good for 3.5 hours. Spare waterproof extras may be costly. I am certain one of the first thing some of us will do will be to make cheap non-submersible versions, and probably extra life hip mounted versions. This would be really great if we ever got an 8” coil. Battery on hip... super light swing! The battery cable that comes with the AQ is way too short to use for a hip mount, so the other job is sourcing the connectors and making longer cables. Lithium Ion will be an obvious home brew alternative to the NiMH, which was a late change by Fisher.

The connectors are not proprietary and so will be easy to source. Making a dry land cable with a 12 hour hip mount battery should not be too hard, or a Li-Ion under elbow version with more capacity but not much more weight. Too bad it’s 15V or we could just hook up a GPX battery. Since the Impulse is derived from Eric Foster designs perhaps higher capacity batteries made for the TDI will work?

Another side project would be a headphone dongle to employ alternative headphones including wireless boxes.

fisher-impulse-aq-nimh-battery.jpg
3835-IMG0773 (2).jpg

fisher-impulse-aq-ltd-batterty-cables.jpg

 

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Really like these projects of yours Steve,sometimes i get more of a buzz from these types of conversions than actually detecting.Look forward to the indepth write up and pictures describing the conversion.

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Since a couple of months I'm evaluating this battery format to make a secondary power source on the TDI.

Way less bulky than 18650 type and higher Ah 

Cheaper than Panasonic stuff too!

Li-ion 3.7V 5000Mah...

I think 4of them in series will do a good job for at least 4 hours more at full power. (As a swap battery).

That bridge audio/power cable is already giving me little of headache, however...

Is funny to think about the hardwired stuff against connectors (talk about TDI)..What about now? How many connectors can You count there?What about the rock solid threshold caused by less of them? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

The will to modify my BH is rising to the stars!I want connectors and multiple coil options...Noooow😁

IMG_20200530_103020.jpg

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I think one thing that has to be considered is the current draw from the battery pack. If you make a longer cable from battery to detector, you have to keep the voltage drop low, by using thicker cable.

Your suggestion that two wires are power, two are audio, may be true, it is a simple solution. But only one wire is truly needed for audio, as the battery -ve ( or +ve ) could in principle be used as the earphone ground.
This then creates a few other possibilities:
Double ground wires for a more solid connection ?
Using a wire for digital data transfer to a security chip in the battery, to stop aftermarket battery manufacture?
Adding a temperature sensor in the battery would be one way of allowing the battery to be fast-charged ( in addition to the common voltage measurement method ) , this could be connected to a pin on the battery connector, but obviously wouldn't be wired to the main detector.
The audio amplifier may be located inside the battery pack, much like the Fisher F75 / Tek T2, and some of Minelab's gold machines.
There's also the possibility of future stereo audio, so perhaps two audio wires could come from the detector to the battery. ( Would some type of mixed-mode, or other stereo technique be useful in the prospecting variant ?)

As a way of giving me more future options, I would have designed with a 5 pin connector from battery to main detector.

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This will be interesting to follow to see just how the box can be modified.   Hopefully there arent more surprises like a unique M8 or something like was mentioned inside the box.   Its going to be difficult for me to do between 4 and 5 hours of hunting..... and just how this battery will hold up to being drained.  I thought Alexandre said they had fixed that with a 10 hour battery.   If not..... ya i suspect those pods arent going to be cheap but WILL BE necessary for several of us unless Lith can be used.   This isnt a plus IMO for what seems to be one heck of a machine.  

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Hi folks,

I am an old Belgian Engineer who is  related to the Impulse Series projects being part of what is named the EUROTEAM as Senior Consultant. However, not at all on the  payroll of FTP

I am delighted to find a forum with such  reasonable contributors (with a few exceptions😢) and such a good administrator!!

I volunteer to help answering some of the many questions occurring on this topic and on all the topics of this very forum related to the Impulse Series.

That does not imply that I am a detectorist in any way, I just have a good experience with archaeological work using scoop, brush and sweat but also, accessorily,  metal detectors.

 

When you put your hands on this unit, you should not attempt any opening of the enclosure nor the battery pod, they are completely sealed with hard EPOXY. This guarantees their watertightn'ess. If anyone would insist doing it, there are very good chances that some non repearable damage will occur.

Nothing mysterious about those M8 connectors. Not proprietary at all. Alexandre can surely publish the internal connections if asked politely😉.

You just need to replicate the connections of the power cable if you want to replace it for any good or bad reason

Make sure the polarities are correct otherwise,  BAAAMMM!!!!

It is even possible to extend the length of the  power cable in order to mount the battery packs at the hip.

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I personally have no desire to open the battery case for any reason, and would not risk its integrity or warranty by doing so. I also see no reason to complicate a simple project by worrying about numerous unlikely scenarios. I don’t see FT making some super complicated battery, just the opposite in fact. If not told the spec, get the detector, measure the battery output, make another, and make a cable. M8 connectors - thanks Willy. Perhaps the battery end connectors at least could be replaced with something that has more waterproof integrity than the M8 connector in a homemade setup. Too bad the Garrett PI connectors are proprietary and hard to get; they would easily solve this problem.

impulse-aq-diy-battery-prototype.jpg

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On 5/30/2020 at 3:45 PM, Willy said:

Hi folks,

I am an old Belgian Engineer who is  related to the Impulse Series projects being part of what is named the EUROTEAM as Senior Consultant. However, not at all on the  payroll of FTP

I am delighted to find a forum with such  reasonable contributors (with a few exceptions😢) and such a good administrator!!

I volunteer to help answering some of the many questions occurring on this topic and on all the topics of this very forum related to the Impulse Series.

That does not imply that I am a detectorist in any way, I just have a good experience with archaeological work using scoop, brush and sweat but also, accessorily,  metal detectors.

 

When you put your hands on this unit, you should not attempt any opening of the enclosure nor the battery pod, they are completely sealed with hard EPOXY. This guarantees their watertightn'ess. If anyone would insist doing it, there are very good chances that some non repearable damage will occur.

Nothing mysterious about those M8 connectors. Not proprietary at all. Alexandre can surely publish the internal connections if asked politely😉.

You just need to replicate the connections of the power cable if you want to replace it for any good or bad reason

Make sure the polarities are correct otherwise,  BAAAMMM!!!!

It is even possible to extend the length of the  power cable in order to mount the battery packs at the hip.

Bienvenue!!!!

 

 

RR

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16 minutes ago, danielbecerra said:

Hello, I have only one question, if everything is epoxy-coated hard, why only 1 meter? I imagine it would be for the electronic part outside the battery?

The electronic circuits in the enclosure are also well protected by EPOXY filling.

 

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