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XP Deus 2 Vs Minelab Equinox 800 High Mineralized Soil & Emi


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14 hours ago, longbow62 said:

It was super frustrating when you know your not going to find anything very deep because of EMI.

 

14 hours ago, longbow62 said:

There was one spot I had to turn all the way down to a sensitivity of 10 just to get it quite, and you could still tell it was not liking it.

In those situations, I usually just bite the bullet and see if I can maintain decent detector sensitivity by going to single/mono to fight the EMI.  No need to keep trying to make SMF work or significantly reduce my detection capability by hanging on to SMF.

That's why I think SF should be an option on any modern SMF detector going forward. 

SMF doesn't really increase detection depth over SF (if anything it is a wash or less depth due because of transmit field power division or EMI susceptibility).  SMF brings improved ID stability and accuracy at depth, improved target range coverage (for targets whose detectability is highly frequency dependent), improved ground/salt handling, and better mixed ferrous filtering (e.g. iron bias). 

I am willing to give up on all those non-essential niceties if I need to go to single/mono to lower EMI and regain sensitivity. 

At this point, getting the edge in detecting means managing signal to noise ratio.  All those nice SMF feature things don't matter if I can't crank sensitivity to a level where I can at least hear an iffy signal. 

Just like you can't detect a target if you don't get your coil over it, you also can't dig a target you can't hear/see (VID).  So if SF allows me to at least get an iffy signal that goes away in SMF because I had to crank sensitivity down, I'm going with SF.

Of course there are situations where your limited SF options don't help stem the EMI or you're stuck with a high frequency that limits depth.  In those cases you have to make some judgment calls on whether SMF or SF is the right option or think out of the box and pull out additional desperation tricks like heavy disc or bin notching.  Anything to give you a fighting chance to detect your chosen EMI nightmare site (as long as the site's potential for good finds makes it worth the hassle).

Just my personal philosophy on SF vs. SMF detecting.

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14 hours ago, abenson said:

The Deus 2 in my city has a real issue with EMI, more so than the Equinox. It's going to be tough using it in a park around here. Might just be the 11" coil, I hope. Looks like Paystreak has the same EMI issues with the 9" coil as well.

This commentary and more on EMI issues gives me real pause. EMI is indeed a huge issue to deal with in engineering a SMF detector. I know because I was on the forefront of that in the Equinox design effort. It’s an extremely complex issue, and can only be alleviated, not eliminated. The main lesson I got was in how poorly designed, and how “leaky”, our electrical grid is in the U.S.

My main hope and use of the Deus 2 was going to be urban park use, but I do have serious EMI issues near to home. The Equinox was tuned to some degree for my environment, and so I know how to handle it as well as can be done, and am pretty satisfied with what I have. I’m a bit concerned now about what testing may or may not have been done, as regards the Deus 2 and EMI in the U.S., as testing in Europe alone would not be sufficient to deal with our electrical grid.

I’m going to have to ponder this at length. I’ve never needed a Deus 2 since day one, and in many ways it will just be a distraction I don’t need this summer. I still have time to cancel my order, and put the money aside for what I really want, which is a another PI someday. I’ve cleaned house of excess detectors recently, and the last thing I need is another detector, that I’m just going to have to turn around and sell. I guess I’m getting over the need to “buy just to try” thing.

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13 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

This commentary and more on EMI issues gives me real pause. EMI is indeed a huge issue to deal with in engineering a SMF detector. I know because I was on the forefront of that in the Equinox design effort. It’s an extremely complex issue, and can only be alleviated, not eliminated. The main lesson I got was in how poorly designed, and how “leaky”, our electrical grid is in the U.S.

My main hope and use of the Deus 2 was going to be urban park use, but I do have serious EMI issues near to home. The Equinox was tuned to some degree for my environment, and so I know how to handle it as well as can be done, and am pretty satisfied with what I have. I’m a bit concerned now about what testing may or may not have been done, as regards the Deus 2 and EMI in the U.S., as testing in Europe alone would not be sufficient to deal with our electrical grid.

I’m going to have to ponder this at length. I’ve never needed a Deus 2 since day one, and in many ways it will just be a distraction I don’t need this summer. I still have time to cancel my order, and put the money aside for what I really want, which is a another PI someday. I’ve cleaned house of excess detectors recently, and the last thing I need is another detector, that I’m just going to have to turn around and sell.

Very interesting take on the EMI issue that seems to be surfacing on occasion with the Deus II.  I'm curious if the testers who worked with XP noticed this and if XP was/is aware of the issue.  Not being an engineer of any sorts, is this something that can be addressed by a software update or is it hardware related?

On another unrelated front, I find the hard wire requirement of the Deus II when submerging the coil to be a bit "goofy" for lack of a better word.  Since as a beach hunter I most often search from wet sand into the water and out again, it seems to me that if I get a Deus II it will be hardwired almost all of the time.  I am a bit puzzled why Deus didn't come up with a coiled wire that would be inside of the shaft, perhaps with the ability to quick connect to the coil and control box.  The Gigmaster rigged up his own setup running the wire through the shaft and it looked pretty solid.  

 

Bill (S. CA)

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5 minutes ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

Not being an engineer of any sorts, is this something that can be addressed by a software update or is it hardware related?

It’s a hardware first, software second issue. A big enough problem in hardware, can only get a bandaid at best through software. There is no “solution” per se. It is simply an issue that gets juggled as best as is possible, and all “fixes” can involve performance trade offs. So how much do you give up here, to fix that there? Of course XP was aware of it. They cannot have been not aware of it. Only time will tell how good their testing and applied solutions were. Just like Equinox, some of that will come via end user experiences and ingenuity, not XP itself.

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5 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

This commentary and more on EMI issues gives me real pause. EMI is indeed a huge issue to deal with in engineering a SMF detector. I know because I was on the forefront of that in the Equinox design effort. It’s an extremely complex issue, and can only be alleviated, not eliminated. The main lesson I got was in how poorly designed, and how “leaky”, our electrical grid is in the U.S.

My main hope and use of the Deus 2 was going to be urban park use, but I do have serious EMI issues near to home. The Equinox was tuned to some degree for my environment, and so I know how to handle it as well as can be done, and am pretty satisfied with what I have. I’m a bit concerned now about what testing may or may not have been done, as regards the Deus 2 and EMI in the U.S., as testing in Europe alone would not be sufficient to deal with our electrical grid.

I’m going to have to ponder this at length. I’ve never needed a Deus 2 since day one, and in many ways it will just be a distraction I don’t need this summer. I still have time to cancel my order, and put the money aside for what I really want, which is a another PI someday. I’ve cleaned house of excess detectors recently, and the last thing I need is another detector, that I’m just going to have to turn around and sell.

The coil on a metal detector is an antenna. The more sensitive the antenna the more emi affects it. It's not just the power grid, It's everywhere. One way to shield yourself is distance from the source. alternative methods would be to use shielded cables in the power grid which isn't going to happen. Power is transmitted on uninsulated cables for 100s of miles. Frequency is 60 cycles in the USA and countless harmonics. Power is flowing through the earth and creates potential differences between points in the ground. It seems that metal detectors are designed from 4 to over 60 HZ so they are basically designed to be bothered by this frequency. through no fault of their own. Just like driving a car with the AM radio on near a overhead power line. Receivers are just that designed to receive. If you turn on a TV and have no signal you'll see the white fuzz and hiss. That's the sound of the universe that the receiver is receiving and interpreting as a picture. It's never going away. Just have to tune the sensitivity down or change the frequency of the receiver to an acceptable workable level.

Or move!

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7 minutes ago, Johnnysalami1957 said:

The coil on a metal detector is an antenna. The more sensitive the antenna the more emi affects it. It's not just the power grid, It's everywhere. One way to shield yourself is distance from the source. alternative methods would be to use shielded cables in the power grid which isn't going to happen. Power is transmitted on uninsulated cables for 100s of miles. Frequency is 60 cycles in the USA and countless harmonics. Power is flowing through the earth and creates potential differences between points in the ground. It seems that metal detectors are designed from 4 to over 60 HZ so they are basically designed to be bothered by this frequency. through no fault of their own. Just like driving a car with the AM radio on near a overhead power line. Receivers are just that designed to receive. If you turn on a TV and have no signal you'll see the white fuzz and hiss. That's the sound of the universe that the receiver is receiving and interpreting as a picture. It's never going away. Just have to tune the sensitivity down or change the frequency of the receiver to an acceptable workable level.

Or move!

The Minelab PI detectors deal with electrical storms hundreds of miles away, and even compensate for the earths magnetic field. A jet flying overhead can mess with you. I can tell the difference from solar and borealis activity. The more powerful the detector, the crazier it gets.

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5 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The Minelab PI detectors deal with electrical storms hundreds of miles away, and even compensate for the earths magnetic field. A jet flying overhead can mess with you. I can tell the difference from solar and borealis activity. The more powerful the detector, the crazier it gets.

It's like the better they get the worse they get! 

 

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  • The title was changed to XP Deus 2 Vs Minelab Equinox 800 High Mineralized Soil & Emi
7 hours ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

On another unrelated front, I find the hard wire requirement of the Deus II when submerging the coil to be a bit "goofy" for lack of a better word.  Since as a beach hunter I most often search from wet sand into the water and out again, it seems to me that if I get a Deus II it will be hardwired almost all of the time.

Just a point of clarification, it's not "hard wired" at all  The near field waveguide (antenna), just provides a means to enable the wireless signal from the coil to propagate to the remote control because water attenuates RF much more than air, there are no hard galvanic connects nor is current flowing from the coil to the remote in any situation with the Deus/Deus II.  As such, the waveguide antenna just clips onto a spoke on the coil and onto the top of the RC case to facilitate the installation.  For security, you can add an elastic band or zip tie to keep the coil clip in place while swinging the coil.

7 hours ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

I am a bit puzzled why Deus didn't come up with a coiled wire that would be inside of the shaft, perhaps with the ability to quick connect to the coil and control box.  The Gigmaster rigged up his own setup running the wire through the shaft and it looked pretty solid.  

Because people would complain about that configuration vs. external wrapping as it would potentially interfere with the ability to extend and retract the shaft.  I address why XP is never going to please all the people all the time with this waveguide thing in this post in the thread where barryny, who came up with the idea that gigmaster uses, described his waveguide mod.  This antenna thing is not universally used by the majority of Deus users who do not submerge their coils in water.  It's just a fact of life that when you provide a versatile swiss army knife almost do-it-all type detector, everybody is going to complain about some aspect of the thing that is sub-optimized.  Just comes with the territory.

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52 minutes ago, Johnnysalami1957 said:

The coil on a metal detector is an antenna. The more sensitive the antenna the more emi affects it. It's not just the power grid, It's everywhere. One way to shield yourself is distance from the source. alternative methods would be to use shielded cables in the power grid which isn't going to happen. Power is transmitted on uninsulated cables for 100s of miles. Frequency is 60 cycles in the USA and countless harmonics. Power is flowing through the earth and creates potential differences between points in the ground. It seems that metal detectors are designed from 4 to over 60 HZ so they are basically designed to be bothered by this frequency. through no fault of their own. Just like driving a car with the AM radio on near a overhead power line. Receivers are just that designed to receive. If you turn on a TV and have no signal you'll see the white fuzz and hiss. That's the sound of the universe that the receiver is receiving and interpreting as a picture. It's never going away. Just have to tune the sensitivity down or change the frequency of the receiver to an acceptable workable level.

Or move!

You're mostly spot on here, but can't help myself to clear up some technical details.  VLF Induction Balance metal detectors are designed to operate from less than 4 khz to above 60 khz (not HZ).  And the coil as an antenna is not the sole source of EMI susceptibility on a detector.  A lot of near field EMI from cell phones and nearby wifi transmitters (as opposed to power line noise) and even emissions from the coil (in really poorly designed detectors) leaks into the micoprocessor electronics from poor case shielding.  This is especially true of the Nox which doesn't like a cell phone in the vicinity of the control pod.

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1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

No need to keep trying to make SMF work or significantly reduce my detection capability by hanging on to SMF.

I will be detecting a beach with EMI most of the time, so I need the SMF to counter the salt. Catch 22 for my situation. I guess nobody else will be able to deal with it (emi) either so nobody will have an edge. It will be a competition of  who can tune it the best. 

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