Who Makes The X-coils? Who Sells Them?

[Jonathan Porter]

On 7/3/2019 at 10:57 AM, Jin said:

Would you say the coil is still usable though JP? Or it displayed no benefit over using the gpz19 

I was just re watching your treasure talk video (below) and it quite clearly shows that General/Difficult is the go to setting in your ground when using a larger coil 

Im a little concerned if your 22x21 displayed problems in general/difficult as im getting that coil. 

As the Russian manufacturer is only building two 22"x 21" coils (as far as im aware of) i doubt much improvement has come about since making your one .......

The quote below mentions salt as being a problem once a coil become to large. Was this one of the problems you encountered with the 22x21? Possibly saturation also?

 Hopefully not to many questions JP and you are in a position to answer some of them if you have time.

Edit: No need for a reply to this post JP,  I found you have answered most of these questions in previous posts. 

Is your coil a tradional wound one or a Spiral wound one? 

GPZ is suspectible to salt signals, as such an increase in size will conversely increase salt signals if salt is present. The key to the larger coils is to not lift or raise the coil during the swing, get the swing speed and range of motion right and they can be amazing.

The issues I had with my X coil was mainly around Touch sensitivity due to the spoked design, every edge surface was causing vibration feedback back to the windings which then sounded like interference. I have to use Difficult in my areas and as such with a large coil I do not see the point in using High Yield as I’m chasing something big and solid at depth, General is BAD for touch sensitivity, it is also more prone to EMI but less sensitive to Salt. 

The key to any GPZ success on DEEP gold is Range of Motion, I can’t stress this enough, you move the coil because you need to get the receive windings to move through the plume of the target, this plume will be very weak at the sides and concentrated over the dead centre, to manifest a deep signal properly you need to bring the coil into the ‘Lead In” then through the dead centre of the target plume and then out and clear of the “Tail Out”, the speed and “Range of Motion” of the swing especially with the larger coils is what manifests the signal of a deep target to be recognisable. Repeatability needs to become your mantra paying careful attention to what the Semi-Auto GB is doing to prevent tracking out or reducing an edge of detection deep target. I will play with a suspect target for ages, feeling around the edges of the response working out the size of the plume, focusing on repeatability and the way the audio is reacting as the coil traverses the zone.

Hope this helps

JP

[flakmagnet]

?

[Reg Wilson]

Seems a few posts disappeared "Like straw in the wind" (The Steel Woods) A bit one sided.

[flakmagnet]

Yeah, it's a shame someone has to actually remind us to respect each other.

[Aureous]

Re coil patents, the DDO design is an old one, both Fisher and D-Tex had DDO designs for certain back in the 70's and 80's. And, the Russian dude isnt the only one who has made GPZ coils. At least 3 other technicians/companies have made prototypes within the last 2-3 years....

[jasong]

Thanks Aureous, I thought it had to be something like that based on the rather conspicuous lack of patent complaints regarding DOD during this discussion. So, the chip in fact protects no IP at all. 

What it protects is the ability for Minelab to regulate and profit from a coil aftermarket. An aftermarket which they never let materialize for reasons yet unknown.

Well I'll say this: X Coils is about to create a lot of patched GPZ cables. So there might be a market for another coil maker now, and they won't even have to ask users to cut their cables, it will already be done. A patched GPZ can run any coil just like a GPX can. I'm guessing the spectre of that idea is moving along the approval process for whatever 3rd party coils are currently being held up on chip licensing for "standards" reasons.

[Aureous]

17 minutes ago, jasong said:

Thanks Aureous, I thought it had to be something like that based on the rather conspicuous lack of patent complaints regarding DOD during this discussion. So, the chip in fact protects no IP at all. 

What it protects is the ability for Minelab to regulate and profit from a coil aftermarket. An aftermarket which they never let materialize for reasons yet unknown.

Well I'll say this: X Coils is about to create a lot of patched GPZ cables. So there might be a market for another coil maker now, and they won't even have to ask users to cut their cables, it will already be done. A patched GPZ can run any coil just like a GPX can. I'm guessing the spectre of that idea is moving along the approval process for whatever 3rd party coils are currently being held up on chip licensing for "standards" reasons.

Big tip for anyone considering making GPZ coils: once the patch cable is made, a sensor probe can be attached and the chip info is easily seen being transmitted from coil to the motherboard....those with the right equipment can determine what kind of data needs to be flashed onto the coil chip....I expect thats what our Russian friend has already done if he's making chipped patch cables for general sale...

[jasong]

Wait, the chip code is broadcasted unencrypted? Are you sure?

Man, I'm gonna have to go download a firmware update and see if it's unencrypted out of curiosity. If not, I can just disable the chip authentication myself without cutting a cord. I seriously doubt they would have made that big of a mistake though. I'm not even sure how to go about figuring it out since a compiled program just looks like gibberish anyways in a text editor but anything can be found online I suppose.

 

[jasong]

The link to download that program doesn't work. I did however take a peek at the GPZ update in a random hex editor off Google. It does appear to be showing some sort of X86 assembly code instructions in a "disassembly" window when I click line by line. Am I mistaken in saying that means this GPZ firmware appears to be unecrypted then? 

It can't be that easy. There has got to be like some checksum to validate the update or something. Man, for my own good I hope I can't just decompile this into something easy like C++ because I'm going to fall down a rabbit hole of modding the crap out of my detector as far as the software will let me and eventually breaking something inside. 

But a thought occurs to me, even if we could disable the chip authentication, the connector containing the chip (and plugging into the GPZ) is still some weird non-standard larger connector. At least it's larger than the typical coil connector. So unless that connector is commercially available, a coil would still need cut.