Some Interesting News From Quest Detectors

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

If a phone as controller makes no sense then neither does what XP does with all the wireless everything. The basic concept has nothing wrong with it at all. It will happen, mark my words,

Don't know that saying the approach has more downsides than upsides means that I was saying it "makes no sense". But I definitely own that I am a Debby Downer on the whole concept of dedicating your phone as a MD processing and interface device.  Not because it can't be done but because of the inherent limitations I describe below.

I have thought about it some more and I am not posting this to be argumentative, but just to better put my thoughts and, yes opinions based on control system design experience, down in writing.  There are obviously no cut and dried conclusions because we can't predict with certainty where Quest will go with this.  And I reserve the right to be completely wrong on this.  

On to my TL/DR ramblings...

I agree, the basic concept could be technically done because, of course, it HAS already been done (despite some glitches) with the first iteration of the Kickstarter version which several backers now have in their hands (except George). 

But really the question for me is how far can a manufacturer take the platform beyond the basic concept.  I say that from the standpoint of the limitations in ultimate capability that can be achieved utilizing non-purpose built hardware by bolting it to a muktitasking Swiss army knife device with constantly changing specs, unrelated apps, and interfaces that the detector designer has little control over. 

From my perspective, XP is an apple to this Quest/AMD orange as XP has purpose built all the hardware and software of the platform and by exerting that overall control can fully and continuously integrate, tweak, and optimize the platform's capabilities within the constraints of wireless technology and the signal processing limitations associated with the chosen hardware and in-house developed software.  XP doesn't have to worry about whether APTX is getting phased out in favor of BT LE or whether an incoming text, phone call, GPS sync, or Yahoo sports notification will interrupt target ID processing or tge user interface. 

Of course, XP is asking WAY MORE in terms of cost vs the AMD platform (even accounting for the cheaper Deus Lite and Orx configurations).  And one could make a valid argument against XP in terms of "value" (bang for your buck) vs. a competently capable 300 Euro Quest AMD wireless machine.

Regardless, the more interfaces that are introduced to the designer for which the designer has little to no control over (even if some of them are determined by capable high-end industry standards such as BT LE), then you start impacting optimization and cost.  You have to worry about sharing that non-dedicated device's processing with non-related applications and tasks, then you introduce a myriad of variables including processing latency and interruptions. 

It's kind of like the argument over whether multiple selectable frequency detectors can ever be as optimized as single frequency detectors on a specific detecting task (e g. gold prospecting).  The Jack of all trades, Master of none adage.

No doubt Quests' partnering with its established business, technical, manufacturing infrastructure will help with distribution of the existing design. The question is whether Quest can, will (and should) tweak it technically beyond where AMD took the platform (i.e., after at least fixing the advertised functionality that does not currently work).  Or instead just sell it as an entry level detector to non-MD-hobbiests (and as a novelty to curious MD hobbiests) who are comfortable with the cell phones and curious about treasure hunting enough to make the impulse buy without realizing the hobby entails more than just strapping your phone to a stick with a coil.  

But part of the appeal is that it theoretically should be cheaper than a purpose built machine with similar capabilities because the manufacturer just has to provide an app and not a control head since the phone serves that purpose. But so far, the recent detector wars have driven prices of much more capable detectors (Simplex and the ML Xterra Pro) to less than the mentioned 300 EU  Quest/AMD price point.

If Quest intends to simply fix the flaws of the existing AMD entry level detector design and market it to the those who might jump on it as an impulse buy or due to its novelty, then they may find a suitable market niche.  The kickstarter campaign attracted significant interest, after all.

While I definitely have my doubts about the platform's ultimate destination and relevancy, that doesn't mean I'm not going to be curious about and keep tabs on where it ultimately ends up.  Would love to be proven wrong by Quest taking the basic concept well beyond what I could have imagined such as a legitimate value competitor to XP.  (The equivalent of what Nokta is to ML).

 

[phrunt]

This will be one of those topics to revisit in a few years and see the results.

If the phone is nothing more than an output device like a dumb terminal to allow them to adjust settings and see Target ID's and the guts is in the coil like XP it's not a challenge.  The audio could go direct from coil to output device (headphones or speaker)  Programmers can set process priority on their application so the operating system makes it a higher priority process than other apps running at normal priority  There is an awesome little bit of software for Windows that manages this as it detects processes using too much CPU lagging the system and lowers their CPU usage to keep the system responsive constantly adjusting priorities but in this case they'd want their Detecting App on say an Iphone or Android to have high priority so it doesn't lag.  You can set processes to higher priority for ones you don't want to be throttled like a game for example giving it higher priority than the operating system normally would thereby improving its performance.

You may find Process Lasso interesting,

https://bitsum.com/

In their other software section is CPU Eater, a program that purposefully uses 100% of your CPU power like a very demanding app and then you switch on Process Lasso and see how it resolves it to make your system responsive and lag free. 

https://bitsum.com/other/#cpueater

Either way, we will see with time, nobody is right or wrong yet, it's a wait and see what the smart people involved can do with it and I expect they'll be able to do something pretty good.

[Chase Goldman]

34 minutes ago, phrunt said:

If the phone is nothing more than an output device like a dumb terminal to allow them to adjust settings and see Target ID's and the guts is in the coil like XP it's not a challenge. 

Agree.  Something tells me though that XP has done something different on Deus 2 because there appears to be more stuff going on in the remote/master puck in Deus 2 than in Deus 1.  One thing is that Firmware updates now bypass the coils completely and custom program setups used to reside with the coils but now, with Deus 2, solely reside on the remote/puck which indicates to me the remote/puck is doing a portion signal processing heavy lifting that resided only with the coils on Deus 1.  But point taken, Quest could theoretically fashion their unit to behave like the Deus 1 and if they can prioritize their app it should work no worse than how a phone can display real time biometric data from a watch or chest strap.