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Originally posted by ivconic
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what an ugly machine -
That would be quite disappointing!Originally posted by Qiaozhi View Post
Yet... as you know me from the past; i tend to suspect everything what's recorded and put on Youtube.
Hard to believe that nerds from ML would miss such flaw.Comment
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I saw the Vanquish Saturday, said the same thing. Annoying how they have black buttons that have the function marked into them so its invisible. The Vanquish red is really awful. I couldn’t figure out the interface - I’d have to read the manual or ask someone.Originally posted by daverave View Post
what I saw on that Gm1000 video was what I experienced with the equinox800. My CTX doesn’t do that. The video reviewers were all saying ground balance and power on were wrong. It would be good to prove it in another try. People are polarized on that machine.Comment
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To follow up on the X-Ray images of the Eqx coil, published on the MD-Hunter blog:
https://md-hunter.com/minelab-equino...lf-of-machine/
... there is another VERY similar russian blog, called MD-Arena. I've been looking at it, using Google Translate, and the same X-rays are posted there.
https://translate.googleusercontent....o-polovina-md/
There are comments from some 'Russian guys' who seem to know a bit, one seems to know the MARS engineer. Anyway, they think the mystery 10-pin device is an ADC, 16 or 18-bit, with serial interface. There's several devices that may 'fit' , one possible is the 16-bit ADS8318. So could the electronics in the coil be mainly an op-amp pre-amplifier, straight into an ADC ? Perhaps some PSU stuff ( the inductor may be part of a buck converter? ).Comment
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ADC device in the coil housing? Really??
Why not just a dual-opamp in a 10-PINFLATPAK?? Like the Texas Instruments TLV2453CDGS.Comment
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It is just educated guesswork, no-one has yet taken one apart to see.
But I think the 6-lead device (next to the 4 wire-soldering pads) is an op-amp. The 10-pin device could be a micro-controller, it would be odd for ML to not put identification/anti-copying tech inside the coil. There is no such device visible on the X-ray of the connector, so they haven't done what they did on one of their top gold-hunting machines. ( which smart folks realised was a way to fit aftermarket coils, cut the cable, join the new coil to the 'smart plug' and away you go ). But there are no obvious 10-pin microcontrollers out there. Notice the wire-bonds inside that device - there are more than 10 pads on the chip die. So it just may be a custom packaged version of a 14/16-pin device, for added hack/copy-protection.
It's interesting that MARS et al have not made an aftermarket coil yet. I suspect it's not going to be cheap to manufacture, if it's wound with Litz wire, and has a 10 Dollar ADC inside, and is perhaps hard to make with a good IB null over a 5kHz to 40+ kHz range, then maybe it's not economical to do it. Plus, customer reports suggest it's pretty good with the stock 11" coil, and the 6" / 16x12 coils add very little to performance. Maybe MARS see little demand for other DD's. There are no concentrics from ML, but maybe they don't work well on it, or perhaps they are just really hard to make?
The ADC mentioned:
https://www.digikey.com/number/en/te.../ADS8318/66004
I think 16 bits is not enough, myself. The Tek T2 has a 19-bit converter, for example.Comment
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Any other pics of what's in the main box? That could give a clue. Did you say that on one of their machines there was a micro in the connector? Would that be on the connector to the control box?
Are there any known coils out there where a micro-controller device or ADC is confirmed for sure within the coil housing??Comment
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If that was an ADC, there would be PCB pads for the serial data lines near the IC. And there doesn't appear to be anything like that.Maybe it is two opamps, or an instrumentation amp. The 6-pin device could be a microcontroller, as I postulated earlier in this thread. If you wanted to get the best out of an ADC, you would want to feed large signals into it, which would probably need two gain stages.
The XP Deus obviously has the ADC inside it's coil, so the tech is workable - but it may just convert demodulated 'DC' signals, no-one's looked ( not much point?). That has a dual opamp at the front-end, though I'm not sure how they are connected.
I suppose when I get time, I will have to make up a break-in cable for my Eqx, and see if there's analogue signal(s) on it.Comment
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The ML machine in question is the GPZ nugget hunter. The aftermarket coils are Russian-made, and known as "X-coils". You need to read prospecting forums to find out the details. Here's one discussion on Steve H's forum:
https://www.detectorprospector.com/f...elab-is-doing/
and:
https://www.detectorprospector.com/f...xcoils-in-usa/Comment
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Thanks for the info.
I'll have to do some reading. Those chips may not even be identifiable by labeling, they could be proprietry chips. The only way to know for sure is to teardown one of those coils and do intrusive testing. A rather expensive folly.Comment
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Transmitting digital data on a long line to the box is what is happening here???? Seems so.Comment
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It's not easy. If it's the security-related data, it's just two micro's talking to each other, so you're going to learn nothing. If it is ADC data, then it will be in a recognisable format. There will be an obvious speed difference, too. The ADC will have to run at 500 ksamples/sec, so that's probably 10 Mbit/sec data. The security data may only be read once, at power-on, and it can take seconds, if need be, so can be really slow data rates.Comment
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Hello everyone.
I made some coils for EQUINOX. Using a board from a donor coil. Lots of defective coils. Since the wire is used littsendrat. The veins are very thin, the insulation layer, respectively. The receiver coil is connected to the screen of the coil, and the coil sings songs. The usual story. I repaired the coils, for this I sketched the circuit board. Perhaps there are errors in it. But for the proshtra passage of the signals the scheme is fully suitable.
http://savephoto.ru/f/11ydm0s4id2wx18
http://savephoto.ru/f/11rt13x144vip18Comment
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Excellent work, sir !. I have just obtained a damaged but functional 11" coil, and I am slowly starting to do some reverse-engineering on it. But it took me a long time to get the coil, hence why I am a late starter.
I think the Equinox coil, and it's repair / copying etc needs a new thread of it's own, where all this information can be kept together.
Resistors marked 18A are 150 Ohms, a minor error I noticed.Comment
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Great work Foma. Thanks!Comment
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