Controls Are Dangerous, Keep Them Off Detectors

[Chase Goldman]

52 minutes ago, phrunt said:

yes, I wasn't going into finer details like the control buttons which is obvious and screens, I was meaning the PCB running the detector is very likely the same between models with different firmware running on it so if they designed the housing to be upgraded by firmware to an Equinox 800 the existing 600 PCB would likely be suitable. Obviously this was never their intention so they didn't factor in the design to be upgraded between models.

It's extremely common in manufacturing electronics that circuit boards are shared between lower cost and higher priced models to save with manufacturing costs. 

Yes.  In fact, if ML is not using the exact same internals on the Equinox 600/800 (I would even bet that the unused User Profile membrane switch pad actually exists on the 600 board) I would question their design for manufacturing IQ.  I was mainly pointing out that if you are going to design for the firmware as a paid upgrade path model, the current Equinox 600/800 physical interface design differences somewhat precludes a smooth implementation of that model at this point (Minelab apparently was not envisioning this model  at the conceptual start of the Equinox design).

[Cal_Cobra]

On 3/5/2022 at 1:16 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

On Equinox, a newbie can’t even get to the Iron Bias control, without knowing exactly where it is hidden. No such control actually is visible on the detector.

 

Nokta did the Salt Sensitivity setting like that in the Legend, which I'd consider an advanced user setting.  Go to the Recovery setting, push the PinPoint button and it goes into the setting, adjustable from 1-5.  I'm sure the Iron Bias control will be similarly accessible to advanced users wanting the most out of the detector, or that may have adverse conditions the default modes would do better at if adjusted to meet whatever challenges one faces. So while there was some kicking and screaming involved from a multitude of angles, the good news is that it is getting implemented.  Not only that, but far quicker then it took Minelab to improve/fix their Iron Bias settings update (which I applaud them for!).

 

[Cal_Cobra]

6 hours ago, phrunt said:

I'm confident adjusting my iron bias to F2-0 over the default FE setting is giving me my desired result when gold prospecting, I would not like to be stuck in the Legends default setting when looking for small nuggets.

I'm confident that the Iron Bias update and subsequent setting of Iron bias to F2-0 resulted in me finding a rare date U.S. $1 gold coin at a site we've been hunting for ten years and for sure over that exact little swath of ground multiple times with multiple metal detectors.  That little area has been highly rewarding not only in rare low mintage silver (and now gold) coins, but also a killer assortment of relics from the 1700's to c.1900, doesn't get much better that that where I live.

[Cal_Cobra]

7 hours ago, Geotech said:

 ...many of those complaints came from dealers who were so uncomfortable with the detector they often wouldn't try to sell it*.

You know I'm guessing a lot of the dealers were old school and this was bleeding edge to them?  Let's be honest, it really was bleeding edge if you got into the advanced settings and the COLOR analytic displays and SMF, wireless headphones eons before it was a thing. 

The VX3 had a good solution that was never carried through. It is hardware-identical to a V3i but features were pared way back. But it actually has 3 more skill "levels" that can be activated with passwords, which incrementally add more features until it becomes a full-blown V3i. The idea was to sell these as e.g. $99 upgrades people would buy when they were ready. It was never offered.

So Carl, ah, I assume this password[s] still exist, somewhere, is there godmode on these things?

But it does beg the question: If you could buy, say, an Equinox 600 today for $700 and later upgrade it to an 800 for an add'l $300 would you find that to be a distasteful business practice?

This is already highly done in the industry I work in, where additional features and/or services are enabled, typically (but not always) as a subscription.  Need IPS, sandboxing, DNS security, DLP, no problem.  SASE/SD-WAN is done this way by leading edge vendors (even bandwidth can be easily upgraded by just applying an upgrade license, no need to roll a truck or waste your valuable time stuck in a phone maze.  Super common, come on over to the 21st century buddy ?

 

[Cal_Cobra]

6 hours ago, phrunt said:

The iron bias setting on the Nox is well hidden, it's actually easier to find on the Vanquish, their beginners detector where you can have it on low/high.  Minelab thought it was not such an advanced feature when they applied it to the Vanquish.

To be fair, they have a 50/50 chance they'll get it right ?  It reduces the variables the operator can fine tune to the point where it's not longer an advanced user setting.

[burlguy]

8 hours ago, Geotech said:

 

 I still don't know how the V3 ever made it out the door.

 And some of us will be eternally grateful that we got to have such a detector that still is barely rivaled 14 years later. Why the new detectors dont show multi frequency strengths during pinpointing to allow determining of potential targets leaves me stupefied.
 Silver quarters, dimes and clad quarters and dimes along with copper pennies always hit strongest on 2.5, bottle caps nearly never. When hunting trashy sites with lots of targets this really makes things easier as the iron can break up identification but, "frequency strength + VDI" is a 95% benefit. Damn them smashed crew caps thought.

Using the above scored me a 10" dime last night and every one of my coins for the last 10 years.

[GB_Amateur]

Although I missed the controversy as it occurred before I got back into detecting, wasn't there a rather no-win situation with the Fisher F75 in the first few years after its rollout?  If I recall (from stories I've read) it was noisy, possibly due to EMI, but maybe it was more than that.  So First Texas released an upgraded version with something they called Digital Shielding Technology (D.S.T.) to take care of that noise issue.  Problem solved, right?  Well, not to those who claimed this 'improvement' cost performance.  My unit (built in 2017) allows you to turn off D.S.T.  OK, surely now the problem is solved.  But I remember reading that some people claimed this retro fix still didn't take the detector back to its original performance level.  A typical case of "damned if you do; damned if you don't."  (I may have inaccurate details here.  Possibly the D.S.T. on/off capability occurred with the initial solution rather than in a subsequent step.)

I'd be curious to know if turning off the D.S.T. in the newer models really did take things back to the original.  We all learn after being here a while that just because someone claims something is true or false, and no matter how loudly, repeatedly, or authoritatively they make that claim, there's still sometimes a reasonable chance that they are fooling themselves and effectively trying to fool us in the process.

[☠ Cipher]

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Although I missed the controversy as it occurred before I got back into detecting, wasn't there a rather no-win situation with the Fisher F75 in the first few years after its rollout?  If I recall (from stories I've read) it was noisy, possibly due to EMI, but maybe it was more than that.  So First Texas released an upgraded version with something they called Digital Shielding Technology (D.S.T.) to take care of that noise issue.  Problem solved, right?  Well, not to those who claimed this 'improvement' cost performance.  My unit (built in 2017) allows you to turn off D.S.T.  OK, surely now the problem is solved.  But I remember reading that some people claimed this retro fix still didn't take the detector back to its original performance level.  A typical case of "damned if you do; damned if you don't."  (I may have inaccurate details here.  Possibly the D.S.T. on/off capability occurred with the initial solution rather than in a subsequent step.)

I'd be curious to know if turning off the D.S.T. in the newer models really did take things back to the original.  We all learn after being here a while that just because someone claims something is true or false, and no matter how loudly, repeatedly, or authoritatively they make that claim, there's still sometimes a reasonable chance that they are fooling themselves and effectively trying to fool us in the process.

My memory is that the non-DST mode did not turn it off, just down to a minimum level and did still cost depth to those in low EMI environments. 

[☠ Cipher]

15 hours ago, burlguy said:

 And some of us will be eternally grateful that we got to have such a detector that still is barely rivaled 14 years later. Why the new detectors dont show multi frequency strengths during pinpointing to allow determining of potential targets leaves me stupefied.
 Silver quarters, dimes and clad quarters and dimes along with copper pennies always hit strongest on 2.5, bottle caps nearly never. When hunting trashy sites with lots of targets this really makes things easier as the iron can break up identification but, "frequency strength + VDI" is a 95% benefit. Damn them smashed crew caps thought.

Using the above scored me a 10" dime last night and every one of my coins for the last 10 years.

It does seem that the V3i not being quite as popular as it could’ve been has caused many to throw the baby out with the bath water. Multifrequency spectrograph and multifrequency pinpoint were great ideas then and great ideas now, but when this was discussed with NM for example, they were reluctant to mimic anything about the V3i because of its reputation for complexity and feature “overload.” Another reason you may not ever see these features again is because metal detecting manufacturers would then have to get honest with us about how many simultaneous frequencies they are actually using. You can’t have 3 frequency spectrograph and pinpoint on a machine running 2 frequencies at a time, for example. But boy is that multifrequency pinpoint no motion effective in commingled sites. It made up for the slow recovery of the machine overall, and was actually an amazing tool for determining where one item ends, and another begins, as well as their composition. For those who love the V3i there has been and likely will be no equal anytime soon. I plan to keep mine alive as long as possible.