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Greetings,
I would like to say thank you for everyone involved. I purchased the kit from Silverdog and it arrived quickly. The board quality is great and to me it is a great deal to get the board and all the parts together. I cannot imagine the time I would spend trying to chase them all down myself. I am following the directions step by step. I am not an EE and purchased this kit to practice my electronics skills and teach my kids how to solder.
Observations:
I like this kit due to: mature design, high quality board, complete parts for board, the step by step instructions, and the high amount of geotech forum activity.
It is great that the minipulse plus instructions have text, pictures, schematics, parts list, and testing for each stage. The board design appears to be very organized. The first general note is that some of the parts like the resistors are labeled and easy to identify. Some of the capacitors labels are more difficult to decipher. I would not complain if the capacitors were labeled like the resistors. Another idea is for the parts list included part label information to help identify the parts. I would encourage builders to have plenty of light and a good magnifying glass to help with part ID, some of the manufactures part's marking was extremely faint on transistors and IC chips.
Step 1.
No problem. I like how Fig. 2 shows the meter wire polarity to confirm -5V at U8.
Step 2.
No problem. Measured voltage at TP2 and got +5V.
Step 3.
I do not have an oscilloscope, I hope to take my board over to my EE friend and test it on his scope. Figured out that C6(47nF) is boxlike polyester capacitor labeled 47nJ100 and C20 is a ceramic capacitor labeled 101. I used a earbud headphone as described and easily hear the high pitched tone. Music to my ears.
Step 4.
Question 1: Is it beneficial to mount D10 as high off the board as stock leads allow?
I want to confirm details about monocoil design. My first coil that I wound to at least perform basic testing with is simple speaker wire. I am following the design found on: http://www.adrianandgenese.com/blogger/ for a Surf PI. He twists the left and right wires together at both ends. He then connects the combined inside leads to the plus on his Surf PI and the combined outside leads to the minus.
Question 2:
If this wire design will work, does it matter whether the inside or outside it the TX vs the RX?
In Fig 14. the chassis coil plug for the mono coil is shown. My understanding this is the solder pins of a standard 5 pin connector that fits commercial coils. Pin 3 is the connection for the screen that can shield a mono coil from effects like wet grass. Pin 5 energizes the coil (TX) from the middle pin of PL2 and Pin 1 of the connector sends received signal back to the middle pin of PL4.
Question 3:
My understanding is the detector will function without a shield on the coil but may false with things like wet grass. I understand that shield should be conductive, insulated from TX and RX, and have a gap to avoid appearing like a shorted coil.
Question 4:
In Fig.7 and 14 it shows Pin 1 and Pin 5 connected at the plug connector. My first impression is that this shorts energy from energizing the coil. Can someone clarify why these pins appear to be connected at the plug?
Once I get the board working I would like to experiment with mono, balanced, and basket weave coils.
My understanding is that at the end of step 4, headphone (earbuds) that not connected to anything should pick up a high pitched tone that is similar to step 3 tone.
Thank you in advance for any information,
dbcooper
I would like to say thank you for everyone involved. I purchased the kit from Silverdog and it arrived quickly. The board quality is great and to me it is a great deal to get the board and all the parts together. I cannot imagine the time I would spend trying to chase them all down myself. I am following the directions step by step. I am not an EE and purchased this kit to practice my electronics skills and teach my kids how to solder.
Observations:
I like this kit due to: mature design, high quality board, complete parts for board, the step by step instructions, and the high amount of geotech forum activity.
It is great that the minipulse plus instructions have text, pictures, schematics, parts list, and testing for each stage. The board design appears to be very organized. The first general note is that some of the parts like the resistors are labeled and easy to identify. Some of the capacitors labels are more difficult to decipher. I would not complain if the capacitors were labeled like the resistors. Another idea is for the parts list included part label information to help identify the parts. I would encourage builders to have plenty of light and a good magnifying glass to help with part ID, some of the manufactures part's marking was extremely faint on transistors and IC chips.
Step 1.
No problem. I like how Fig. 2 shows the meter wire polarity to confirm -5V at U8.
Step 2.
No problem. Measured voltage at TP2 and got +5V.
Step 3.
I do not have an oscilloscope, I hope to take my board over to my EE friend and test it on his scope. Figured out that C6(47nF) is boxlike polyester capacitor labeled 47nJ100 and C20 is a ceramic capacitor labeled 101. I used a earbud headphone as described and easily hear the high pitched tone. Music to my ears.
Step 4.
Question 1: Is it beneficial to mount D10 as high off the board as stock leads allow?
I want to confirm details about monocoil design. My first coil that I wound to at least perform basic testing with is simple speaker wire. I am following the design found on: http://www.adrianandgenese.com/blogger/ for a Surf PI. He twists the left and right wires together at both ends. He then connects the combined inside leads to the plus on his Surf PI and the combined outside leads to the minus.
Question 2:
If this wire design will work, does it matter whether the inside or outside it the TX vs the RX?
In Fig 14. the chassis coil plug for the mono coil is shown. My understanding this is the solder pins of a standard 5 pin connector that fits commercial coils. Pin 3 is the connection for the screen that can shield a mono coil from effects like wet grass. Pin 5 energizes the coil (TX) from the middle pin of PL2 and Pin 1 of the connector sends received signal back to the middle pin of PL4.
Question 3:
My understanding is the detector will function without a shield on the coil but may false with things like wet grass. I understand that shield should be conductive, insulated from TX and RX, and have a gap to avoid appearing like a shorted coil.
Question 4:
In Fig.7 and 14 it shows Pin 1 and Pin 5 connected at the plug connector. My first impression is that this shorts energy from energizing the coil. Can someone clarify why these pins appear to be connected at the plug?
Once I get the board working I would like to experiment with mono, balanced, and basket weave coils.
My understanding is that at the end of step 4, headphone (earbuds) that not connected to anything should pick up a high pitched tone that is similar to step 3 tone.
Thank you in advance for any information,
dbcooper
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