jasong

This is a very cheap IR camera I found even cheaper on sale and decided I needed to figure out how to use thermal imagery in prospecting somehow, in mostly as yet to be determined ways. It wouldn't be good for a drone since no remote control, but it's an inexpensive intro thermal camera to learn with for anyone looking to dabble. You can see it's sensitive enough to see the heat left behind by my foot on the floor after I lifted my foot. The main experiment I want to try this summer is to look for large nephrite jade boulders buried in alluvium. Theory being the jade boulders retain heat longer than the soil. Or maybe vice versa depending on material and water content of the ground. Hoping a large boulder buried just out of sight will leave a subtle heat signature at the top of the ground such as you can see with the faint heat left behind by my foot.

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2021016649A1/en?assignee=minelab&scholar&oq=minelab&sort=new This is the most out of this world Minelab detector patent I've ever read. There is so much here, some very sci-fi like, I don't even know where to start. My takeaway is they seem to be positioning themselves for a drone based detector eventually (main details in this patent could be easily transferred to a drone based platform - IMU, GPS, magnetometer, heads up display, FPV, remote control, robotic/vehicle mount, etc) . That is 100% a guess. But in the meantime, there is some interesting, novel items in the pipeline that we might actually see on a machine in closer future? No clue if this is a coin machine or gold machine or if it's something they are actually working on right now or just trying to get control patents on such things for the future which may or may not arrive. One thing is for certain, Minelab is BUSY in the engineering department. A few of the highlights: Heads up display over glasses/head mounted display (aka augmented reality). Settings, target visualization, shading of detected/not detected areas (I asked for this specifically 5 or 6 years ago here, awesome to see it in a patent now). Plus a camera showing the coil (why would you need that if not operating remotely as from a drone?) The detector has a camera, IMU (accelerometer) and magnetometer to determine position with accuracy. The IMU tracks the position of the coil in real time in relation to both the ground and the target, and combined with the camera video feed will provide a "visual" of the target in the ground through the glasses/head display, as in form of a heat map which increases accuracy with each pass of a coil over the target. A GPS tracks the machine position to properly map the IMU/coil visual target data on the ground and let's a user see the mapping as they detect. This data is recorded for future historical use and can be shared. Centimeter accuracy with the visual target heat mapping. Potential operators/users include entities other than humans such as "robots" and "an AI (artificial intelligence) using a metal detector" and this line: "The metal detector may be handheld, mounted on a robotic arm of a vehicle or a robot." Wireless connectivity to computers and phones, transfer of files containing settings configurations from instructors or expert users Remote control of the metal detector through apps on laptops or phones Ability to upload maps, including detecting data, historic human activity, buildings, or other items that seem to indicate custom mapping capability Internet connectivity, potential control through the internet (again, why if not for a drone type device?) "Teamspeak" to other detecting members in the area wirelessly Visual/spatial discrimination Accurate depth measurement Synthesized audio mode, eliminating noise completely and allowing the detector to "recreate" a synthetic audio stream based on data from prior swings Delayed audio processing (enhanced audio) mode or real time audio mode, ability to seperate multiple close targets, reason for this I venture a guess why below ---> This patent actually seems to be describing a completely new method of RX in a detector. Which is actually similar in some ways to the wacky idea I had years ago of reducing EMI/ground noise by emulating a radio telescope array. But in this case they appear to be describing a fairly ingenuous method of doing something similar with only one coil by monitoring RX of the same target at different points in the swing (with the IMU tracking these points) and combining all those RX signals. In this way (and this is my guess, the patent doesn't explain this), you can form a sort of comparator, gradiometer, or interferometer to seperate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. If that's what they are doing, then I find it to be brilliant. If not, then I just gave them one hell of an idea to patent for the future. That probably sounds like jibberish to non-engineers. But I want people to understand the brilliance in simple terms. Consider this: EMI is random. At any given point in your swing you'll get noise here, but not there. So if you compare two points in the same swing, you will hear noise one point but not the other point because the "zap" already ended. But you might hear a good target at both points in the swing since it's not random like EMI, it's always there in the ground. So, you can effectively eliminate EMI by comparing what signal is not there at two very close points in the swing, and keep the target since it's always there. Similarly, with ground, the ground changes as the alluvium changes since soil is inhomogeneous. But a target is still the target. So, a similar method can be applied to the ground. In theory, you could use ideas like this to essentially get rid of the Difficult type timings and keep your gains boosted high, and deal with EMI/ground in this way instead which does not require reducing sensitivity. A totally new, novel approach to RX in a metal detector. The audio processing is very slightly delayed because they are using that time to compare measurements at a few different coil positions before letting the audio processor signal that there is a target present. That's my guess. If that isn't what they are doing, then someone else should patent that and thank me for it later when Minelab buys it. Either way, they have something totally new in the RX department here. And the future of detecting looks bright and interesting to me still.

I probably will try that hack at some point. It seems easier than trying to fool the altimeter. Anyways, just wanted to comment on that since the question was asked about using a drone in the mountains in AZ and the Rockies, that's the main issue I had. In AZ I've been able to find high enough launch points, but a few times I've had to use the optical zoom after hitting the restriction. In the Rockies it turns into a real limitation though where mountains with prospects can be 4000ft+ prominence above the highest launch point you can drive to without climbing the mountain. When I bought a DJI Phantom like 9 years ago there wasn't really any mapping programs available, and I bought it to do my own high res aerial mapping for a Geocommunicator replacement website I made at the time (now defunct) called Virtual Prospector, with the idea of providing up to date high res aerials of the popular goldfield areas, for free. But I gave up on it because hand stitching the maps together and then georeferencing them manually was beyond time consuming, plus the distance limitations made it incredibly limiting (even with tons of aftermarket mods I barely got 1 mile in wide open Rye Patch), and at the time I had to hand attach a GoPro to the drone and couldn't get rid of the fisheye'ing entirely which made accurate georeferencing impossible even with days worth of hand correcting in photoshop. But I see a post that there are mapping software available now, and with the longer flight distances of these recent drones and awesomely high res cameras built in today, someone may try to do that again. Like Mylandmatters. Hint hint.

Finally some actual measurements...thank you very much to these fellows! Add me to the impressed list as well, I think the 6000 had a better response on the big deep nugget with both coils, and clearly better response on the smaller, shallow stuff. Definitely curious how they both do in Normal and at high gains now.

That may be a rule, but there is an absolute height restriction of 500m from launching point on the Mavic 2 firmware, so it's not possible to stay 400ft above the ground when flying up mountains. Unless I'm missing some setting that disables it, but I tried and couldn't find one, thus I have to find the highest possible point to launch. The drone does not appear to have any capability to measure height above surface, only altitude from original launching point (it probably uses an altimeter, doesn't measure distance above surfaces). It doesn't care if there is a mountain under you increasing height as the drone increases height, it only cares about how high from your launching point the drone is now. So, I can be 20ft above the surface of the ground the entire flight travelling up a mountain, and then hit the height restriction halfway up and it won't let me fly any higher to get to the top even though I'm still only 20ft above the ground. 1600ft isn't much, that's a hill not a mountain, so it requires finding a high enough point to launch from, which ends up cutting into the time saved by using the drone.

There are these style that don't include the glasses, but still let your hear the environment too. Unfortunately not AptX either though... I stopped using headphones entirely because of rattlers and I like to listen for my dog in case he hurts himself. I dig the concept of having phones that let you hear the environment. I can see XP making something like this for some reason.

I have a Mavic 2 Zoom that I use in the Rockies and Arizona. It's been a real time saver scouting prospect, mines, and outcrop up in the mountains. I can see which have features that interest me, it's high enough resolution to tell the difference between ore piles and waste piles. Resolution is good enough that I can pretty easily identify outcrops. The zoom is actually surprisingly good too. The height limitation sucks around the high mountains, but I find a high spot to launch and combined with the zoom I've been able to see whatever I've sought. It hasn't been as useful to me in the desert flats. But I did use it to track thieves down, and you can see 2-tracks left by trespassers offroading around fences and see where they came from, or easily monitor thug compounds from the air, stuff like that. I've flown it almost 5 miles each way, so it's possible to cover quite a lot of land and distance as long as you have a line of sight between the control and drone (another reason I find a high spot to launch).

Ok, well thanks for taking the time to type that all out. It was reasonable for me to wonder that if with new and unknown GeoSense, a brand new DD "unlike any other DD", and fairly top of the line modern signal processing circuitry that there might be some gains over 6-15 year old technology. That was the basis for my question, and it was a reasonable question to ask. I'm sorry you took flak for the Equinox, but I definitely wasn't one of those people. Just to be clear there. I'll move on, no intentions on bringing anyone down.

Were you able to get a 6000 and get it into the field Steve?

Not all experts are created equal. Can't really compare a person like JP who detects for a living and has access to Minelab engineers to some of the Easy Experts in Arizona who advise people to run in Fine Gold and 8 gain in very mild places like Q and GB, or who don't seem to understand what the stabilizer does still after how many years... I learned how to detect by targeting the voluminous amounts of gold missed by the latter group, and I see many of them still saying the same things today that caused them to miss all that gold 13 years ago, which means they still haven't learned and I personally don't qualify that as expert. Experts learn from mistakes, do what it takes to fix them, and then improve, constantly over and over. That's how an expert becomes an expert, and those who simply repeat the same mistakes over and over will hardly ever improve. I wouldn't bother detecting behind a person like JP though, and I can think of 9 or 10 people on this forum (and I'm sure more I don't know) in the US who I'd truly regard as experts too in the same regard and not bother working ground they've gridded. That's expert level. Give me a new tool that hits gold which the old tech simply can't hear, no matter how expert the operator was, and it's game on again though. That's one way to open up the goldfields, the other is to find new places. The second one can be done with 20 year old PI's and VLF's, the first way requires the newest cutting edge technology. The 6000 appears to be trying to bridge the two concepts together and create a lightweight, fast prospecting machine that can also light up the old worked ground. Will be interesting to see how it does.

How wet is the soil out there now Rick? I want to jet out there for a week here soon.

That there is exactly why I'm still looking at how the 6000 does in the field. I could care less about a thousand tiny dinks, my GPZ and 8"/10" finds them smaller than I care to hassle with already. It's truly a waste of time in my mind to spend all that effort recovering a 0.02 grammer that I can barely see, unless I'm just looking for patch leads. And my GB2 and GM1000 are lighter and just as sensitive for hard rock stuff (plus have discrim) when I need that. I think the bulk of what's left for decent finds in old patches are going to be pulled out of places where salt and heavy mineralization are masking them (and trash, but we aren't there yet with discrim). I really can't believe there is no salt performance data at all on the 6000, or that I seem to be the only person on this forum asking for it or interested in it! 1000 dinks, bleh. 5" deeper on a 2 grammer in NNV alkali? I'd have been 1st on the waiting list with whatever dealer could get it in my hands first if I knew there was some performance like that to be had. Anyways, I think the 6000 will recover a metric ton of tiny dinks in the major goldfields, I know they are there because I was recovering them with my 8" in pretty much every patch I revisted. But 1000 0.03 gram dinks is only 30 grams, not even a troy oz. So, I think the 6000 will definitely be great for those who struggle to find stuff or just want a bit of color on weekend trips, but I'm still waiting to see the money with regards to the improvements in salt and bad ground where the paying finds are likely at.

Nice hunting and good luck with the move, with as good as you do down South I have no doubt you'll be making some nice finds posts up North in short time too!

Thanks for the links Steve, I was confused if I had missed something here. I don't follow many other forums these days and that place sure made me remember why after I browsed around on various threads.

Roof "pendant", different beast than a pediment. We have a few similar places in Arizona. Who owns X Coils now? Are they still Russian?

News to me too, who are the new owners?

Cracks me up how they say outright (accurately) that almost no one bothered to learn how to use their prior machines correctly: "For a product with multiple ground balance timings, multiple coils, and various other settings, it is usually assumed that the user fully understands the behaviour or characteristics of various timings, coils and other settings and has knowledge about the soil he/she is interrogating, and selects the proper timing, the proper coil, and other proper settings. The assumption is incorrect for most users." Salty, Minelab! But true. Just gave me a chuckle. Also: further evidence of this being for gold machines even though they used coins as a test is their depth result on an Australia dime was 18"+! Pretty sure the EQ/CTX range can't do that.

A potential look forward past the 6000 here. I just took a look at whatever Minelab had published recently in the patent arena and I thought I'd distill it down to a few simple paragraphs since these patents are quite complicated to read. (pdf direct download warning) Here's a real new one, just published basically last week. This one mentions gold nuggets specifically as targets, seems made just for gold machines, and concentrates on further decreasing the decay time in order to increase sensitivity to smaller stuff. It may be related to the 6000 (they say it can be used for DD coils), but the way it's written seems like it's intended for a new ZVT machine as the primary use as ZVT tech seems to be the focus. There is mention of nulling out (my term) salt/conductive soils. (pdf direct download warning) Here's another one, slightly less recent. This one has to do with depth determination and automatically altering controls/timings/ground balance based on depth determination target feedback as you detect, and sounds a bit like GeoSense except directly applied to maximize target detection depth constantly and showing the user exactly how each setting combination performs depth-wise on different targets. So, there is two components - determining depth via SNR, and automatically adjusting the timings/etc to maximize sensitivity and depth based on that info. A user is allowed to select different target types. Which makes me wonder if you can maximize gold, can you minimize sensitivity to iron? Or does the target type only apply to VLFs? This second patent appears to be general in the sense they say it can apply to ZVT, PI, and VLF. Though, the test targets used are coins in the graphs. But gold nuggets are also mentioned as a potential target. Also, they talk about giving the user the information directly to the screen to use manually (if I understand correctly), which means it's probably intended for a flagship level machine where users want a bit more control - since any lower level machines are eliminating controls and information right now. Careful coil design sounds fairly critical for some of this. ---- Distilled even further for simplicity: I think it could be likely based on these and prior patents, a new ZVT machine is on the way, and it (and maybe some coin/relic machines too) will be built to maximize depth via a GeoSense-type method, plus will provide real time depth information to the user on the screen to adjust settings manually or to simply monitor for information. Also, a newer ZVT machine may have some increased ability to deal with salt, as well as have increased sensitivity to smaller/speci gold.

With the Orx in that area? Best chance of finding gold with easy access is working newly exposed (drywashed) stretches of caliche in wash bottoms at 30kHz or higher on the GSSN claims. Might as well try the GPAA and MPA claims too if there is new digging there exposing runs of open caliche. Pains me to say since I do not personally agree with clubs, nor does the law recognize purely recreational use as a valid reason to stake a claim, but the clubs have pretty much everything easy access claimed up out there and they leave all their holes open, so your dad would have an easy time detecting them versus other areas. Most the gold is 0.15 grams or smaller. With a VLF you want to be able to hit stuff around 0.05 grams as that's the stuff people often miss there, so practice with a tiny test nugget. And the ground can be hot on a VLF. So the key is learn how to stay ground balanced and tell the difference between target sounds and hot rocks, and go slow and keep the coil to the ground so you can hear the tiny stuff. Try to find stretches people haven't detected already, probably 5-10% of what you will see walking around out there is unhit, or not very well detected. So consider that 9 out 10 stretches of caliche you try will have already been detected, as a rule of thumb. What I'm saying here is: be patient, believe the gold is there somewhere, and keep at it even when you want to stop. Every time I've gone to those claims with a club member to help them learn to find gold, I've succeeded. The key really is to learn how to hear the very tiny stuff, as most people out there seem to just pass it over. I've found stretches with 15 or 20 tiny little pickers with my GB2 that a member swore he had detected and found nothing on. There are some stretches of caliche out there which can produce a little picker every couple feet, and some with a picker every 15 to 30 feet. If you go more with no finds, then it's likely to be previously worked with hand brooms in the depression or someone already detected it, so the key is to look for very recently exposed caliche where the gravels they dug show no signs of disturbing back in the 1930's. The last part requires a very keen eye for subtle layering and gradiational changes in caliche coatings on the gravel with depth - even most drywashers out there struggle to make this observation and end up often working old disturbed gravels without knowing it and those stretches of exposed but previously worked caliche produce very little.

Yeah, Derrick is who lives here, I met him a long time back but at that time he said he wasn't going to do any TV, guess it changed. I haven't seen the Whitewater one as I more or less stopped watching or owning a TV 10 years ago. But I ran into an old closed claim in NNV that was staked by that Fred Hurt guy. Location of which made me think he must have been a gold detectorist at some point in the past, and the location also probably means someone on this forum probably knows/knew him at one point.

Just played around with MLRS again. The search box now basically takes the place of those insanely complex, clunky, and slow LR2000 search forms. Like, just type a name or claim number straight in and it pulls it up right away. You can search by T/R/S too but the section part is buggy still. Problem is that it only indexes filings new enough to be on the MLRS and not older LR2000 data. Anyways, still sooo much quicker, and going to be useful in the future as more gets filed on MLRS.

That Dodge family does (or did) do some real mining at one point. In a strange set of coincidences when I was looking for someone to mill a keyway into a shaft for me someone thumbed over towards a building and said the guy inside had a mill so I knocked on the door and it ended up being his brother's shop, oddly located in my town in WY despite no gold around. I noticed all the placer equipment in the shop yard and asked him about it since there isn't much gold here, and he explained who he was. Said his family has been mining in Canada for a long time and they own a bunch of claims up there which he works while his brother does the TV stuff here, but they don't show the real mining in Canada apparantly. I have a strange way of running into these guys. Someone had shown me some pilot that Dozer Dave guy did, and literally a day or two later while I was investigating an excavator I saw in the distance I realized I was exactly where they were filming. I sat around for an hour seeing if someone would come back to talk to, but no one did. I'm sure a lot of NNV people here know where that was but I guess it's never good to draw attention so I won't.

It occurs to me that the lighter shaft on the 6000 is going to shave weight in a critical area towards the coil end too, and that might just make all the difference (especially when I'm comparing weights to the GPZ in my head and how different coil weights on it feel), so I shouldn't just be considering the coil weight alone since the 6000 is bringing better carbon fiber shaft design to the table. But you two supermen are outliers. Most average detectorists used/still use a bungee on the 4500 and 5000 on anything around the 11" (800ish grams) or larger for all day detects outside of patches. Including myself.

Thank you JP, thats the kind of stuff we've been missing. Are you allowed to talk about all field experience now freely or still limited?

Biggest change is wireless headphones have built in amps. A big part of impedence issue is making sure the speaker is matched properly to the amplifier, which in the case of wireless units is done by engineers/designers and does not matter what device you attach it to. So, even though I'm not much of a headphone user, I think the most important thing with wireless phones would be selecting a product with both a well designed amplifier and a quality speaker element, and a company that cared enough to match the two. At least for products that have BT built in like a phone or a 6000. An external BT 1/8" transmitter itself for products without it built in might have the potential to introduce balancing issues though? The cheapo units probably sound bad because the amplifier is insufficient at higher volumes, or is over driving whatever cheap speaker element they use. I agree with what Tboykin said too. Pure tones are not really going to benefit from higher impedences in the same way as a complex audio signal with a wide range of frequencies like music will.