iron_buzz

PWM all the way.  I tried square and high square, but keep coming back because I feel that I'm missing too much information.  I don't want my Deus to sound like a Manticore or Equinox anyway... I ended up selling both of those, and one big reason was that I was constantly having to check the VDI because the sound didn't tell me enough.  (the Manticore, by the way, added a sound profile to make it sound like what they think the Deus sounds like.  It is nowhere near the same, though)

You also got an organ reed (top, right) that was almost certainly from an organ that the school teacher played when teaching music.  Cool!  (it may be stamped to indicate the note it played)

 

Yeah, I've never had any of the plastic hinges break, but I figure its just a matter of time.

Maybe we need to initiate a letter-writing campaign to XP about their charging clips.

Something made by XP that only costs $10?  I'm shocked, I tell you... shocked!

3 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Some do, some don't. I have a couple of longer ones that do, but when I was updating my headphones they did not work, I had to use the XP cable.

If you're just looking to charge your devices you should be ok with most. Get 'em from somewhere you can return 'em. 🙂

I think on the white cord, the metal part of the plug plug is just a little bit longer, and apparently that is needed to make the data connection that is necessary for updates.  It seems to charge OK with a shorter one (shorter metal part, I mean).

Why they didn't include that instead of the MI6 plug on the 3 plug cord is beyond me.  Even if everybody had an MI6 (I don't), headphones need charging more often.  And mostly... why did they make the entire thing so short that you can't charge the coil and the RC at the same time without breaking it down into pieces?

I love XP's engineering... most of the time.  But there are moments.  (I'm speaking to you, recharge clip designer and recharge cord designer)

19 hours ago, midalake said:

Ugh. What does that do??? 

Fixes a bad design. 

If you've been using a Deus for any length of time at all, chances are that you have had the plastic spring break on your charging clip.  You probably cursed, and then ordered a new one.  I was getting tired of that, so instead I made a trip to my local hardware store and fixed the problem once and for all.

54 minutes ago, d1v1n said:

I agree it wasn’t too bad on the battery on the phone or the Deus remote or coil. Now I just have see how I can mount the phone. 😆

I have a phone mount that was designed for bicycles that should work.  I haven't got a rugged enough case for my phone to do that, though.

This isn't it exactly, but its close enough to give you the idea (not an ad, nor necessarily a recommendation... just communicating an idea):

https://www.target.com/p/insten-360-universal-bike-cell-phone-holder-mount-for-motorcycle-bicycle-compatible-with-iphone-12-12-pro-max-11-samsung-galaxy-android-black/-/A-78260364

This summer was awfully dry in Minnesota, too dry to be digging grass, and the farm fields I like to hunt were in crop, so while I had tinkered a bit with fresh water hunting, I got more serious about it this summer and being new to this group, thought I'd post a few of my better finds here.

This first one was not a water find... this came from a pasture that was used as a small golf course in the 1920s.  It is a 15 gram 14k Yellow Gold Masonic 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Ring.  Others were all fresh water hunts, mostly at old beaches that are now just shoreline.

 

34 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Your profile doesn't have any info,

 

I just remedied that.

3 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

I see you're as experienced with this detector as I am. 🙂 bought mine in March 2022. 👍 Since then I've used it for everything but prospecting.

I wasn't trying to be insulting, and if I was I apologize. Your profile doesn't have any info, and you didn't do a Meet and Greet so I had no idea what your experience is. Nice discussion about disc vs. notch BTW.

Push would be much better to use for sure, and it would be nice to know what program (and coil) you used for the duration. I use the 13" for most of my field hunting, and find it adds high tones to iron if detected on the edge of the coil, so every time I hit an object that did it I made sure to center the target to get the most accurate "dot".

However, one of the things I do when scouting permissions is to look for concentrations of iron, and I think Auto would be good for that - if I had a different cellphone. 😀 Close the Z-Flip and it doesn't record even if the app is live. Doesn't fit in my deep pocket open with a backup battery!

Have you looked at OnX Hunt or OnX Backcountry? 

 

Yeah, sorry if I was too sensitive in that post about sensitivity. I've been detecting for 7 seasons now, mostly with an XP Deus.  I've owned several others (Garrett Ace 300, Fisher F75, AT Pro, Equinox 800 and most recently, Manticore.  Sold them all) but I speak Deus, so Deus it is. 

Funny you should ask... I just got OnX hunt a couple of days ago.  My main detecting partner has had it for a while now.  By the way, it took a bit of work, but I finally got one of their support people to pass along to developers the need to be able to link from a landowner's address to Google Maps.... or at least to be able to copy the address to the clipboard.

I had the 11", 9", and HF Elliptical for my Deus I but found that the 9" was the Cinderella coil for me, so that's all I have for the Deus II.  I am heading to England for my first ever detecting trip next fall though so I may get the 11" for better coverage and a backup.

On 11/19/2023 at 5:21 PM, F350Platinum said:

If you read my posts you'll know I badly dislocated my left shoulder last Sunday. Then XP released the Go Terrain app, so I had to try it out. I held off until today, and just took a minimum of gear with me, I dug my targets with @kac's excellent Devil's Tongue digger.

The ground in the field in front of my house is littered with corn trash, at least they turbo tilled it.

This is from the app, I set a detection zone, and started tracking. It was late in the afternoon so I only covered about a third of my zone, but I tried everything. Yep, right out in front of my house. 😁

First off I'll say the app is cool, and I sure don't mind paying 10 bucks a year for it. Instructions are pretty easy to follow, and it does what it says it will do.

It records your finds after a selectable number of swings,  I picked 8 in 10 seconds like the excellent instruction video.

I was easily able to pair the coil, just search for it and swing the coil over a find until it registers. Everything worked very well.

It recorded my path ok, GPS accuracy isn't all that good due to lots of military aircraft testing in my area, so it kinda fluctuated, creating the squiggly path. At first I didn't have path enabled, and if you forget it enabling it later will turn it on. I even tried going away from a target without digging it and went back, found it fairly easily and dug it. I also went out of the zone many times and it vibrated the phone as expected. 👍

I paused and restarted the app many times in order to dig my targets, you have to remember to start it again, and if you don't pause it, it will keep registering the target especially if it has varying IDs, which lots of targets will. I had to pinpoint and use the MI-6 a lot as all I had was a small digger.

Iron targets are recorded as black dots unless there is some falsing, a few times I re-registered targets because I knew the reading was false, if you have big iron on the edge of the 13" coil that is what happens until you are over it. "Null" targets - those that come up with -- on the display - will not be recorded. With my program this means anything below 1.

These are my finds, mostly stuff I would throw out. The lamp wick raiser was about 8" deep, tough to get with a hand digger in this dry soil, but the ID was accurate.

Ok, now my thoughts about this app:

I have a Samsung Z-Flip 4 that I can fold and keep in my pocket with a battery that keeps it going all day. However, that is a problem. Unless the phone is on and the app is running in the foreground, it will not record targets. 😵 It will track but that's it. Folding the Z-Flip shuts the screen off.

The screen doesn't "follow" or move when you have it zoomed in, so you have to keep hitting the location icon to see your present position. This could be fixed by making your "sprite" move the screen. 🤔

The detectorist in the video made it look very cool using the app, in reality not so much. You'd have to have your phone running live in a pouch and whip it out when you want to see anything, or you'd have to have a chest harmonica rig to see it all the time 😏 I'm not one of the Blues Brothers, so this ain't gonna do it for me. 😎 To get the vibrations when you leave your detection zone you'd have to hold it, putting it in your pocket or a pouch renders that feature moot.

The app is very cool, but not well conceived for us dirt pirates, maybe it's cool in Europe to walk around all day with a cell in your hand, but not with a detector in one hand and shovel over your other shoulder. I still haven't found a shovel clip that stays together for even one day. When you close out your hunt it takes a long time to upload it to the server, at least with my measly 3 bars of 4G.

I might use it now and again for fun, but really OnX Hunt still does it for me. It runs and tracks all the time.

At least I got my thank you for coming prize after I put the phone away, this really interesting Civil War relic that I cannot identify 🤣

I looked for it on the Internet and did find a similar relic found in Culpeper VA, about 60 miles away:

I don't think the seller knew what it was either. 😏 If any of y'all know please help. 🙂

Your thoughts are very much the same as mine after trying it a couple of times now.  Today I tried it in "Push" mode because of the sensitivity problem we discussed previously.  But I think after you hit the middle button that you have to get your phone out to accept it, and you certainly do if you want to enter any information, take videos, etc.  I may still use it for tracking, on occasion, but basically I'm not impressed with the reality of it.

1 hour ago, F350Platinum said:

Maybe, but if your sensitivity is too high, you're getting iron wrap and digging way too many false IDs. 🤔 Try 87-90, if your reactivity is right you won't lose any depth.

I'm not a novice at this, but thanks for the advice.  I was running what I felt was necessary for the site.

39 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Good choice, either sensitivity is too high or you're in a trashy area or both. 🙂 The farm in front of my house isn't too bad and I'm running sensitivity at 90.

The old farm field home sites that I detect are always extremely trashy.  I'm not going to adjust my sensitivity just so the app will work.  Maybe the app itself needs a sensitivity setting that is independent from the detector setting.

3 hours ago, ColonelDan said:

Great review Bob.  Thank you.  I too thought it would be impossible for me to carry my detector in my left, the scoop in my right and my phone in my "third hand". 😅

I see the value for me being registering my finds with time, date, lat/long, depth, TID  and photo.  Having said that I'm still more than a novice with this new tool right now.  More later.....

I'd like it if they would add the name of the program being used to the information it passes.

I tried the app out yesterday and it was going crazy sending me constant notifications and dropping target pins all over the place.  I was running on Auto mode, but I think next time I will have to set it to Push (hold down on the middle button to register a target).

17 hours ago, Rattlehead said:

Very nice coin. Congrats! I’d say it’s probably a little bit of both. Blocking out the noisy range AND using an alertive audio that makes target tones jump out at ya. I like using pitch for that very reason.

I've taken to using Relic (and Gold) programs for the same reason.  I do notch up to about 40 in most places I detect because there is little in that range that I would want anyway.  I set IAR to 5 to minimize the iron.  When I do get a tone, its almost always a "dig".

On 11/17/2023 at 6:17 PM, Chase Goldman said:

I tend to agree, regarding the other tracking apps.  But one thing this one does that the others don't is that it automatically records target IDs even for the targets you don't recover, so it makes a good tool for quickly surveying a site and automatically recording target hot spot areas.  Unfortunately, GPS accuracy limitations may not be up to the task.

I tried using it for a while yesterday and it went WAYYYYY overboard on recording targets!  I had it on Auto mode because I don't want to be pulling my phone out of my pocket to confirm every target, but if there isn't some way to tame this down, there is no way I'm going to be using it. 

I installed it out of curiosity and will give it a try on my next outing, but I'm skeptical.  For one, I can't see that it will help me find anything more, but more importantly, when I'm detecting, my phone is in my pocket,  I have rubber gloves on my hands, a shovel in my left hand and the detector in my right.  If I have to put the detector and shovel down, and take my gloves off to access the phone... even if the gloves are not caked in mud, as they often are... it ain't gonna happen.

Where I do see that it may help a little is in showing areas that maybe we missed, but there are already apps out there that will map your path.  Nothing new about that, and no subscription needed to use them.

7 hours ago, Mirda said:

Any success with connecting Deus to Google Pixel phone? They claim it will work only on Android devices with Snapdragon or Kirin processor?

Like WTF?!?!?!?

It synced up with my  Pixel 7 Pro, but I did have some problems.  Not sure if this is what fixed it, but the last thing I tried before it finally worked was switching from Push to Auto in the Options/Setup/Go Terrain menu.

8 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Two thumbs up for mixed mode and tones only! I guess it comes down to the difference between those that see the audio feedback as noise and those of us who hear the machine talking to us. I hate gagging my little buddy since he might not tell me something I want to know. 

The Excalibur was deadly because it had no meter and so forced the user to learn full tone detecting. The 17 tones soon meld into a few, with that sweet jewelry tone stopping the experienced hunters up short. Unfortunately it and its users were too good, and they cleaned out a lot of what was out there before it came along.

I had a Manticore... for about a month.  I've owned a Deus for 7 seasons now, and found that with the Manticore, I was constantly checking the screen to read the TID.  About the only time I check the screen on the Deus is when I already know that I've got a pretty good target. 

It dawned on me the other day that the Deus audio is almost like tapping drywall to locate the studs... you can hear the tinniness of aluminum vs the solidness of a nice, thick brass artifact.  I did not have that with the Manticore.  I sold it.

8 hours ago, Geotech said:

This is called "surface blanking." It has been featured on a few detectors but I don't recall the specific models. Garrett did it years ago, and I think either Compass or Discovery as well.

I guess it didn't work out to well, then.

19 hours ago, Geotech said:

Yes, both magnitude and phase are calculated from the response vector, but only phase is used in disc and notch. Magnitude is used for the depth meter and audio loudness.

 

 

Which brings me to another, related question... Gold and Relic in the D II use Iron Amplitude Rejection instead of tradititional discrimination (although notching is still available, which I use often with those programs to make them useable).  The idea, if I understand it right, is to reject ferrous targets with the highest magnitudes.  I have wondered it it would also be possible to apply that same logic to non-ferrous targets for detecting in places where you want to ignore shallow coins and pulltabs and such so you can focus on the deep targets.  Of course, it would have to be used with the caveat that you could be missing important stuff on the surface but there are situations where that might be OK.   Is my thinking sound?  Could and should this be done?

1 hour ago, midalake said:

There are a few people that think running the notch rather than discrimination to your set point on a D2 has some secret sauce.
For instance, I start my Disc at 22 for beach hunting. Some seem to think that notching to 22 is better?  I don't know. Never experimented with it much but going to do some testing this year.   

Yeah, that is a major part of my reason for asking about this.  I don't know, but I do suspect, that a lot of the things we hear about discrimination may be holdovers from the days of analog processing.  I did some testing on my own to see if discrimination affected depth, and I was satisfied that it does not. But when I posted that finding to my local MD Facebook group, I got blasted with claims to the opposite, but not one who actually tested it themselves.

20 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

 

And since everything in the digital world affects time cycles and bytes

 

That is not necessarily true, though, in all cases.  For example, I hear a lot of people claiming that the higher you set your discrimination, the more you limit depth, but to me, as a retired computer programmer, I would assume that the discrim level you set is simply a parameter passed to a function.