Tweet
Hiya Dom,,,Thanks for the insight. I'll do as you've suggested and try it 'In Circuit'. Where would I place the Oscope probes to work out the frequency?,,,I have a lot of scrapped detector circuits here as well,,,a 2ft square box full of them,,,lol,,I do the same as you,,if I'm in need of parts I just reach for the box and see if there's anything to salvage before I go for new parts. I've kept a few 'Faulty' detectors aside though,,I've got a faulty 'Mirage' and an 'MPP Reve-D' put away for when my Electronics knowledge and Fault-finding skills get better, then I'll pull them out and have a go at fixing them. My first 2 Mirage's and 2 MPP's were successful straight away,,,mind you, Andy (Silverdog), taught me a lot and it was he that actually fixed the faults on my first MPP Reve-D,,,,great bloke! Hopefully my parts will arrive tomorrow then I can start my build. I'm going to start documenting all my builds now in the hope it helps others on Geotech. I've made several Surf PI 1.2's and never had one not work from scratch, but a lot of people who have strugled to build it have been disheartened with building one without a Build file,,like there is with the Barracuda and TGSL,,so I thought about ordering some PCB's from Silverdog and re-build them all and make build files for them,,I never had any problems building the IDX (Made 4), or the TGSL (Made 2), but had only one problem with the IGSL - I made mistakes regarding the 4.7uf Bipolar Caps,,,but I got it sorted and working. So that's another project for myself,,re-do all the builds I've already done that haven't got Build files and document them myself so they're easy for others to follow. Thanks again Dom. Regards. Marty
-
-
Hiya Dom,,,Forgot to ask,,,When you have the time, you mentioned about building the Oscillator stage separately for testing purposes,,,is there any chance you you could tell me how to do this please? It would help me a lot in learning more about electronics and I'd be really grateful for the help. Thanks again. MartyComment
-
place the scope at the 560pf capacitor its the output that goes into the amp stage, with this detector i am still trying to fix a minor instability problem, mind you eddy's original had the same problem often goes into random beeping, the extra gain makes it hard to test on the bench any metal objects close by cause a problem in the field would not be such a big deal you will find it needs tuning more often but but does work well. if anyone can offer any advice would be helpful if it is a software fix then thats not my thing I am not into the chip program.
I built the surf PI years back bit disappointed in its performance didn't think it was anything special, as i said i like to try and improve detectors i think there is a lot of room for that just wish some of the people would spend more time on making them better rather than just reverse engineering them or just upgrading to newer parts.
i have built IDX my self but am going to add a tone discriminating VCO circuit to it before i finish it, I made it from a post i found on here using 4046 works well designed a nice little board so i can add it to any detector with discrimination I brought up the VCO thing on here a few years back glad they did something with it thats what the minelabs use.
just solder in the parts on the board that are part of the oscillator then put about 3.3v to it if you do not have all the power regulator parts and watch on your scope the good thing about building in stages is you can see how the parts work together then when you build the amp stage you can see the effect on the signal.Comment
-
Hi Dom,,,,,It's great conversing with someone as knowledgeable as yourself and it's great you have the kindness and consideration to give your time and help to people like myself and others on here,,,,and a fellow Australian too!,,Really appreciate it,,you're a Gent! I've taken notes on the Oscope instructions and should be able to start building this tomorrow or Saturday when my parts arrive,,thanks for the guidance. Let me know when you're deciding to finish your IDX Mods,,,,I have 2 more boards here and I'd love to add your mods to it. Regarding the Surf, the most depth and sensitivity I ever got from it was about 12" inches,,,no matter what coil I tried with it,,I'd love to know how to get the 15us delay on it down to 10us,,I use a 3DSS Coil with that too,,It worked better with one of those than other coils and it didn't need shielding. Thanks again for all the help. Regards. MartyComment
-
Hi Dom44,
good job!
Just one small thing R4 should be connected directly to the battery . Eddy use pin 5 on PIC controller to check power source voltage.
https://ibb.co/GcxCXXX
Cheers!Comment
-
thanks Bai Borko don't know how i missed that will fix it. on the PCB had it right but the circuit was wrong.Comment
-
Hiya Dom,,,,,Is your last layout OK to print off or does the 3K resistor need altering on it? Thanks. MartyComment
-
the PCB is correct no problem just left the connection out on the circuit all goodComment
-
Thanks Dom,,,,,,I'll get it printed off then and etched,,,,my parts should arrive tomorrow. I got to put my Vacuum Former project on hold for a week or so,,,I went to order the Plywood today and the guy at the lumberyard said they had been robbed!,,lol,,unbelievable!,,They must have had it planned to a 'T', and they must've been really strong guys cos' the only way they could've stolen an estimated £6000 worth of plywood was for at least one of them to get over the 8ft steel fence (Spikes on the top and CCTV every 10ft) and slide each piece, one at a time, through the 3" inch slot between the steel rails. Brazen sods!,,lol,,He told me I would have to probably wait a week if I was just ordering one sheet of 12mm x 8ft x 4ft ply,,,so I told him I'd be back in a week or so with a bigger order. I was going to have a crack at the coil last night but I ended up having to sort other things out and didn't get to bed till 8am this morning,,,my partner wasn't too pleased!,,lol. I'll try again tonight,,Anyway Dom,,thanks again for the help. Regards Marty.Comment
-
sounds like a conspiracy to stop you from the vacuum table they must be watching the forum...
I was wondering if anyone out there has built the Russian Terminator VLF detector well at least one version of it there seams to be quite a few was wondering how it performs I have a bunch of unbuffered 4069's lying around was thinking of trying it out?.Comment
-
Hi Dom,,,,,HaHa!,,,Hope not!,,lol,,I've got a bit of wood left to play with till they replenish,,,,I've got some folders on the Terminator, I think there's Terminator I, II and III,,,anything I come across on Detectors while I'm surfing the net always gets chucked in a folder and labelled,,,,I can post you what I have if you like. Regards, MartyComment
-
Hi Dom,,,I've just checked my 'Terminator' folder,,it's quite large,,just over 20mb. I have a microsoftw word document about Terminator 3,,one problem, it's in Russian. But on the parts list is a HEF4069UBP,,,in fact I think it uses about 6 of them,,,So I don't know if that's the one your'e looking at? Let me know if you'd like all the files though,,,I could split them into separate folders so they're smaller to post. MartyComment
-
so far i have found
Terminator 3
Terminator pro
Terminator Trio 2 tone
Terminator Trio prospector
and still looking think there are more
this is the prospector version with VDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4bjlM35rrUComment
-
Hi Dom,,,,I've just been checking out that 'Microsoft Word document on the Terminator 3',,,it's really good,,,every bit of information in it to build a working unit. Full schematics, parts list, full explanation on how and why it works, and a very detailed run down on how to build and tune the coil for it with diagrams and photo's. It also has all separate 'Voltage checks' for each individual HEF4069BUP as well as the other IC's ,,testpoints etc,,,I know it's in Russian but if you have Microsoft Word, when you open the document you can highlight the text you want then 'Right click' the text and click 'Translate',,,really good!,,and the translation is near as damn like proper English unlike some Translator engines on Google etc,,,I think the documents editable but not 100% certain. It's very detailed,,shall I post you the document to look at? MartyComment
-
Hi again Dom,,,,Forgot to mention, the Word document is 7.45mb,,,will it upload on here at that size? Thanks. MartyComment
Comment