Improving the Tracker IV

[kt315]

Here's the Tracker board stripped of chips so you can see the etches. Now I can pin it out fully.
But I'm not going to re install this board so why do that?
[ATTACH]30036[/ATTACH]

Now lets see where is that bandito board?...

can you sell me this board? or exchange on a bare board of Delta Pulse?

[Silver Dollar]

Sure I'll trade that board for Delta. PM me.

Here's some new front panel's one metal one plastic;

[kt315]

Silver Dollar, I HAD sent DP board TO YOU. your step?

[Silver Dollar]

OK thanks I'll send the Tracker out tomorrow!

[Silver Dollar]

Opened up the Tracker Coil today to get rid of the TX cap.

Running it on the Bandito gives 15.2 khz and 9.2V P/P.

The SMT Bandito will fit right in the Tracker case and
use the same batteries. It gives an airtest of 9" on gold
and silver and 7" - 9" on coins. It could be little better
but certainly acceptable as it a bit better than I was
getting with the original setup...

[Silver Dollar]

Well with a bit of experimenting I found 13 khz works the best with the Bandito Board and Tracker coil.

Now to finish the new front panel and package it up!

The threshold didn't seem to do much so I'll set it with a fixed resistor on the board. So we'll need Disc,
GEB, Sens, PP Switch and headphone jack on the front panel. The machinest at work said if I sketch something
up he'll make a panel and label for me!

[Silver Dollar]

Well the best setup appears to be 12.5 khz with 9v Peak to Peak TX
via 70nf cap in place of the 47 nf in the original Bandito Schematic.

A 50 nf RX tunes the RX for this frequency.

I get

12" on a Silver Dollar
10" on a Gold Ring
7" on Penny
8" on Nickle
8" on Dime
8" on Quarter

It fully rejects ferrite but not in the middle of the GEB pot.
The null signal out of the first opamp is 800 mv peak to peak

So it looks good to box up and try out.

I was ready before but cleaned the flux off the board and broke it! It will still
oscillate if the sens is turned up too far but is a bit better. At some frequencies
it would run on or continue to oscillate after the target is gone.

I matched the resistors and caps in the filters but am not sure if that was a good idea?
Mismatched ones might reduce oscillations. One TLC2262 died from being shorted so I
am using a LM358 for the threshold op amp it seems to work fine...

I still may try some fine tuning but have to be careful not to ruin anything. While
messing around I changed one 1 meg resistor for the original 1 meg and gained 1"!
Some seem to be 1003 and some 1010 even thought they are 1% so tiny changes can
make big changes in this circuit.

Now what to call it? Bandit Tracker? Trackito? Backer IV? SDBT? I need to find a catchy name...

[Silver Dollar]

I picked up the Tracker IV's older brother yesterday at the flea market. $7! A bargain!
It doesn't make sounds though but has a nice 7" coil. The circuit looks similar to the IV
only in through hole.

Anyone know the frequency for a Bounty Hunter Tracker ID - 505 ? The coil has the same
inductance on TX (2.67 mh) but 8.7 mh on RX. It seems there is a cap on the TX in the coil
so I'd have to make an oscillator or open it to cut it out to use a different frequency...

[kt315]

Silver Dollar, put DVD-ROM you got from me in your PC. open a folder #miscellanea, then open a file frequencies_of_detectors.txt
you have to see a diggest of freqs of all md's.

regards

[Silver Dollar]

Thanks! There's a lot of info on that disk!

I powered up the Tracker ID board. It doesn't sound but the oscillator works so
I found 6.5 khz and 21.5v P/P. I tried it on the Minelab oscillator and it works
at 5.99 khz and 22V P/P but draws 15 ma! That's as much as the whole Bandito
board! I don't have tiny board to use to make the BH JR into an awesome detector
anyway...

[Silver Dollar]

The SMT Bandito board is done and I'm working on putting it in the housing.
Using the Tracker Coil (with the TX cap removed) I am running at 12.5 Khz
with a 10.2 volt Peak to Peak TX. The residual RX is 280 mv. The board draws
15 ma when not sounding.

I gained another 1" by using a CB radio speaker. It allowed more sens.

So I get about 9" on coins 11" on a gold ring and 13" ona silver dollar in the air.

The original Bandito tested at the same time got 7" on coins, 8" on the gold ring and 9" on the silver dollar.

Here's some pictures;





It is loud with that CB speaker too! I need to figure a volume control...

[sinclairuser]

The SMT Bandito board is done and I'm working on putting it in the housing.
Using the Tracker Coil (with the TX cap removed) I am running at 12.5 Khz
with a 10.2 volt Peak to Peak TX. The residual RX is 280 mv. The board draws
15 ma when not sounding.

I gained another 1" by using a CB radio speaker. It allowed more sens.

So I get about 9" on coins 11" on a gold ring and 13" ona silver dollar in the air.

The original Bandito tested at the same time got 7" on coins, 8" on the gold ring and 9" on the silver dollar.

Here's some pictures;

[ATTACH]30466[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]30467[/ATTACH]

It is loud with that CB speaker too! I need to figure a volume control...

thanks SD, the speaker idea may be usefull for other projects here, users here are allways asking for good loud speakers, and those are standard radio speakers, cheap as chips and easy to get hold of, excellent job.

[Orbit]

Whether some scheme has this detector TRACKER 4 -Teknetics Bounty Hunter Tracker 1-D/505 ? Thank you ...

[Hannu]

Here is part list of my Pioneer 101.

tracker iv part list.pdf

[amtech2005]

Great Work Silver Dollar and everyone !! Trying to take notes on this very interesting project !!

Best Regards............Eugene