Chase Goldman

Experimentation is the key. I got different results at two different "full bar" mineralization sites. Seems soil and mineralization type (or perhaps soil moisture content) makes a difference as I lost about an inch of ID depth at one site vs. the other (a couple hundred miles apart from each other). Even though both sites just pegged the mineralization strength bargraph on the D2, I don't think one site was more mineralized than the other because the results flipped in different ways for different detectors (i.e., Nox beat D2 at one site and it was just the opposite with D2 beating Nox at the at the other hot soil site with the performance difference between D2 and Nox being about an inch...weird). Just different mineralization/soil constituents, I suppose, causing the different detectors to behave in different ways.

Did the same thing, but I was wondering why NM didn't do that in the first place.

Yeah, jumped in here a little late. There are a couple of issues with what folks are suggesting here. First, the WS6 cannot be used as a Master (for TID indication and coil control) with the RC acting as a slave whose sole purpose is to run the bone phones Just no provision for that setup whatsoever from what I can tell, and I did look into tge possibility of doing that.. Second, even if you could fashion a home-brew adapter to enable the Bone Phones to be terminated with a 1/8 inch plug, one must be mindful of the fact that XP has implemented the bone phones to be optimized solely for use with the RC using the dedicated "bone phone" audio pins on the multipin connector that are separate from the "standard" audio pins. These pins appear to "hard key" the bone phones to shift the RC into "bone phone" mode which keeps the user from selecting PWM audio on the remote and it appears the remote also likely shifts into higher audio amplification and/or impedance matching as evidenced by the increased power drain when using the bone phones. By fashioning the the bone phones to plug into a 1/8 jack off the WS6 or via the 1/8" jack adapter plugged into the remote control, that hard keyed limitation is effectively bypassed and I am not sure of the downside to using the bone phones in that manner (e.g., poor audio fidelity, insufficient bone phone amplification). Who knows?

Well as others have said in this thread, you are unlikely to break the battery out of the gate if you simply follow the manufacturers instructions on charging and usage. Breaking-in the battery is not for preventing damage so much as to optimize capacity (run time). Short term damage can only really occur if you charge the battery under freezing conditions, allow it to overheat, or discharge it to the point of zeroing out the terminal voltage (the latter two issues being practically impossible to achieve because of the built-in charge control and protection features of the battery controller chip supplied by the detector manufacturer). Even if you treated it like your NiCads, the protection circuit would prevent significant damage and all you would be doing is slightly reducing the usable lifetime of the battery by at most a few months or weeks depending on how frequently you use your detector. Usable battery lifetime is determined by the cumulative full range charge/discharge cycles available until the battery capacity at full charge degrades to less than 80% of its rated capacity. So the goal is to limit the cumulative full range charge-discharge cycles as much as possible, but of course you also need to utilize the detector and hope that you can get several hours of usage out of a single charge so your ability to fully control charge-discharge cycles is limited by how frequently you use the detector and how long you typically use the detector on a given outing. Under normal to light usage the battery should last 5 to 7 years or more, if properly maintained. 3 to 5 years under heavy usage.

Doubt Bob could get them stable in the wet sand, though, so he would be limited to the dry sand in that case. Gotta love those juice bottle round foil freshness seals, heh Bob? They ring up as a suweet sounding solid 7 on the Nox. But get used to disappointment. Lol. Because there are a heckuva lot more of those around than the sweet 7 reading gold rings you wish they’d be…someday. I feel and have felt your pain. OK, Bob, time to quit fooling around picking up beach trash in GA and get back up to Virginia and do some “real” detecting with me for relics and old silver where even the old trash is historic and interesting. Wishing you guys safe travels back home.

Sorry, Ken, that information is not quite accurate. Modern LiPo is actually an advanced Lithium Ion battery technology that uses a microporous polymer separator material and electrolyte gel instead of liquid electrolyte as is used in traditional Li Ion batteries. As a result, LiPos are more power dense (higher capacity at less weight), can better accommodate flat pack form factors and depending on the case material used can be more rugged than liquid electrolyte Li Ion cells (though foil pack LiPos can be more easily damaged). LiPos tend to have a better ability to source higher currents in power demanding applications (such as RC vehicles). The down side of LiPos is that they are generally more costly than liquid electrolyte Li Ion cells of similar capacity. The charge parameters (charging voltage/current profile vs. time) for LiPo and Li Ion batteries of similar capacity are essentially the same. https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-206-lithium-polymer-substance-or-hype

Glenn - still trying to figure that out. It depends on my primary target of interest (e.g., High conductive coins versus mid conductive jewelry, relics, or nickels), my depth objective and how much modern and ferrous trash is present. Right now, if going as deep as possible regardless of target type, Deep HC is my go to. Followed by Relic and then General. I adjust reactivity consistent with whatever separation is needed, but keep it no lower than 1 to limit ground feedback. I’m partial to pitch tones but will often switch between pitch, full, and 5-tones to interrogate targets and for dealing with modern trash (e.g., can slaw reveals itself better in full tones). I tend to avoid the ferrous filters (BC reject, silencer) but do use disc (between 6 and 10 in pitch and multi tones, and between -2 to +2 in full tones (FT), though I may change that FT disc now that 0.7 has incorporated FT iron volume). I set IAR to 5 in Relic mode. I may change my philosophy on no ferrous filters (BC reject, silencer) based on the ver 0.7 tweaks to those filters. Basically, it is still a work in progress. With this approach I demonstrated reliable target ID on a minie ball target down to about 7.5 inches in Deep HC with full bars showing in the mineralization strength meter.

Ground ID on Deus does not necessarily correlate at all to ground mineralization level. Yep. Thanks. That is moderately mineralized ground alright.

Great point.

They most certainly do have an on-board controller chip, so let it do the work and just follow the manufacturer’s guidance for the detector and heed the other best practices noted above to keep the battery healthy. I don’t think you will do harm, but the reason the RC community is so meticulous about this is because minutes and seconds matter when it comes to run time otherwise the vehicle has to stop racing or land safely on the ground. They are also weight limited so the batteries are pushing the envelope when it comes to volumetric power density and volumetric capacity. Also, RC batteries are subject to wild swings in sourcing current due to changes in electric motor load. All these things combine to make every micro amp second of capacity matter which also means internal resistance optimization matters. Really not the case for a metal detector which is more or less putting out a relatively constant current demand. The margin for error on capacity before it actually makes a difference is huge and the RC optimizations don’t necessarily expand battery usable lifetime. In fact, as mentioned below, they may actually degrade the battery useable life which is definitely not where you want to go.

TLDR Yes the LiPo information posted here is technically correct for ACD optimization of battery life to the micro amp hour for high demand usage such as RC vehicles but IMO folks are seriously overthinking this for detector usage (and I’m an electrical engineer that deals with power delivery systems saying this) based on over 10 years of experience with use of Li Ion and now LiPo batteries for detectors and related accessories. Especially since you don’t have much control over the NM battery charging parameters for Simplex/Legend (and it is not removable, or user replaceable to enable use of a precision charging station). There is plenty of daily capacity unless your sun never sets and for the long haul, your battery will still likely outlast your detector lifetime unless you are using it 12 hours a day on a daily basis where you would be subjecting it to daily charge cycles from less than 25% to greater than 75% capacity. My advice is to trust the NM battery charge controller to do it’s thing to protect the battery during charge by limiting the charge current profile to avoid thermal cycling of the battery. And then there are some simple things you can do to preserve battery capacity over the usable life of the battery. Battery capacity will initially improve during the break in period if you don’t subject it to large/long recharge cycles by not running it much below 40% for the first 5 or so cycles. Avoid ever running it flat to the point the battery protection circuit shuts down the battery (ostensibly 0%, but the protection circuit keeps from truly reaching minimum capacity). A few times doing this over its lifetime won’t be noticeably detrimental, but don’t make it a regular occurrence. NEVER charge the battery if the battery has reached an ambient temp less than 32F/0C. You will almost assuredly cause some irreversible damage and capacity loss. This includes using the accessory “spare” outboard battery charging the built-in in cold temps (Note that you can safely operate these batteries at lower temps, you just should not be charging them if the battery has equalized to at or below freezing temps). Avoid significant thermal cycling due either to charging or large ambient temp swings during discharge. Observe the manufacturer recommended low and high ambient operating temps for the detector. Don’t “store” the detector for prolonged periods (several weeks or months) with a fully charged battery. Store it with the battery at 80% or less. Don’t need to worry about this for overnight storage or weekly/bi-weekly usage. GL

Not sure you absolutely have to revert. Just means BC reject is "stronger" (they gave it some adjustment headroom) so just lower the BC setting to 3 to avoid pushing non-ferrous into reject and you should still get excellent BC rejection.

More importantly,how many bars were displayed on the mineralization strength bargraph (see inset on the pic below)?

Sly - as someone who apparently has ties directly to XP or at least first hand comms, any perspective you can shed on whether the issues regarding visual target ID responsiveness and dependency on tone selection (i.e., target ID response on a given target varying due solely to whether a user has selected multi-tones, full tone, or pitch) as demonstrated in user videos and anecdotal reports have any validity and, if so, whether the issue is being evaluated by XP? There is some trepidation amongst users to loading this update due these reported issues.

Just awesome. Nothing like seeing that first glint of a gold coin partially sticking out of your plug. I’ve had the good fortune of experiencing that first hand for myself and also watched as a buddy pop one out as I was standing there (after I verified for them it was a bona fide “dig me” target signal). You will never forget it and the hope that lightning will strike again will keep you going for another 25 more years.

Welcome to the XP update process, which has changed little over the past 10+ years. Not that it makes it right, but this has been the case for XP updates since the Deus 1 first came out. Despite complaints in this regard ramping up since perhaps the last two major updates on Deus 1 (i.e., Ver 4.x and 5.x), at least, XP has decided to stubbornly continue with their update process basically wiping the memory clean as part of update process to better ensure the update is starting from a known, clean state (I surmise). Furthermore, even though this approach is less desirable to the end user, it does ensure that custom program settings are appropriately aligned to the latest feature set wherein new adjustable parameter settings ranges may be introduced or new adjustable parameters are introduced or eliminated. This approach ensures the custom program settings are never set up to be in an unknown or invalided state because they invoke settings that may no longer exist or reside outside of the valid range due to the most recent update (e.g., imagine if they reduced the iron volume adjustable range from 0 to 5 to 0 to 3 or if the eliminated the “silencer” feature) However, I am sure that there are more sophisticated ways to provide for program software integrity that does not necessitate wiping the user’s custom programs. It would be a welcome change if XP explored those avenues. At the very least, it would be helpful if XP is going to continue wiping custom programs that they provide a tool to enable custom programs to be generated and uploaded (and/or saved external to the remote) so they can be quickly reloaded onto the remote using a computer or phone interface as an alternative to the relatively awkward approach of using the RC interface to edit and save custom program settings. But to be honest, the most arduous aspect of XP Deus custom program entry is entering the custom program name. It’s one level below the hell of trying to send text using nothing but the numerical keypad on a flip phone or programming your early 1980’s vintage VCR. So if there was an easier way of designating the custom program name without having to enter each letter individually (i.e., using the preloaded source program’s name as the starting point) that alone would make life a lot easier. All we can do is continue to ask XP to consider adding this capability.

Great finds, but why torture yourself and run no disc? Let the disc work for you to better ID and filter the iron (using the horseshoe display). If you want to hear the iron you can still use iron volume WITH disc (except in full tones - in that case I try to run with disc between -2 and 0).

Looks like a ginormous earring with some sort of weight distributing stem mount. Bet they cried when they lost that one. Whoa!

It's more than just TID dwell/responsiveness, the video above by TNSS showed there was something odd happening with visual TID numbers depending on what type of tones were selected (full tones vs. pitch vs. multitones) despite all performance settings being constant throughout the test. That should NEVER happen.

One thing is that you will roll back to the “original” Jan-2022 ver 0.6 without the “big TID” feature because I believe they got rid of the 3-11-22 variant of ver 0.6 in the updater that had big TID. Not fatal, but if you became accustomed to and liked big TID, you might be a little bummed.

Interesting find and has me stumped. If you could show the fasteners on the back of that Eagle piece might be able to ID it for you. Seems too small and wrong design to be a CW era cartridge box breast plate. It looks like a military hat, cap, or collar device. Definitely pre 1902 (not the standard US Army Great Seal emblem). But I have not come across anything that has anything that resembles that specific emblem.

You took the words right out of my mouth. The features added in the update are fantastic: live/reactive threshold, iron tone level adjust in FT, 00 tone fix, BC reject and silencer filter enhancements, notch in GF and Relic and I like the big number display that was pushed out in the “updated” 0.6 firmware. I saw no need to mess with TID dwell and I am not sure if that is causing the tone-related TID weirdness or a combination factors, but hope they address it soon as I really want those other features. Gotta keep reminding ourselves that this is still really a beta SW build until we get to the ver 1.X final release.

It appears to have issues on TID being affected by tone selection. That should not happen. I’d wait until the dust settles on this update to see if the issue is real glitch that would need an update or a corrupted upload or…nothing. See this post… https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/18670-deus-ii-07-out-now-live-threshold-and-more/?do=findComment&comment=197588

Yep. Not touching that update until that issue is fixed. No way tone choice should be affecting visual target ID. SMH

It shouldn't dwell if the machine is acquiring another target, the TID should refresh immediately in that instance. Haven't d/l'd and tested the update yet but if it is behaving as described, that sounds like an implementation botch. Can you be a little more specific? Are you saying the visual target ID response (delay as discussed above?) is also affected by the tone ID option selected?