Deteknix Xpointer Pinpointer Coil

[keith777]

Hi all.

does anyone know the specifications for the coil on this pinpointer. the amount of coil winding's ferrite rod size etc.
i have a working board and it's casing. just i need a coil to go with it.
i tried attaching a coil off one of them cheap and nasty GP Chinese copy pinpointers. it worked fine but the depth was only half the distance of what it should of been, but this was just a test.
any help would be so much appreciated......

[keith777]

Hi again.

i have tried to make a coil with a ferrite bar that i have. and i am getting know were. no sound pickup. nothing. has anyone any idea how the coil wraps would probably go for this coil. has anyone got a diagram are photos that they could possibly show me for doing the wraps as i must be doing it all wrong.

thanks in advance.

[Skippy]

Give me a little time. I have one, that I was contemplating making a larger coil for, sort of like the Pulse Dive / Quest / Vibraprobe dive detector. I'll will dig it out and see what I can find out.

[keith777]

thanks skippy. that would be so much appreciated....

[keith777]

i was looking around on youtube searching for people taking pinpointers a part etc. then all of a sodden. some pinpointer came to mind that i bought five or more years ago. so i went hunting them out. these things. pics bellow. if i remember one works fine and the other two. one falses and the other one the sensitivity dial has snapped of and is missing. also if i remember they had quite good depth pickup on them.
i think i will try and take one of them apart. try to see if i can get the coil out and have a mess about with that to see if i can get it to work on the xpointer. then at least i mite can see were i am going wrong with the coil wrapping.

[keith777]

well i managed to get the board and coil out of its casing. the board just simply pulled out of the back. but the coil had to come from out of the front of the tube. the bottom of the tube only had a small hole half the size of the width of the ferrite rod. the ferrite rod was not glued in or anything like that. there was just about 1mm of clear resin in the opening of the tube cover by the clear plastic cap. also the ferrite rod was moving a few milometers freely up and down in the tube.
i tried the coil on the xpointer but got no detecting at all using it. so still no wear with the xpointer. well at least i now know what the inside of Metalprobe pointer looks lik..LOL
here is some photos of the board etc.

[Sean_Goddard]

Is that a CS209 based probe or one of the PIC12C508A based ones?

[dbanner]

Is that a CS209 based probe or one of the PIC12C508A based ones?

From what could be seen, it does look like 8 pin dip package, which would fit with the CS209, but also any standard opamp.
Using a pic chip on that awful board would be like putting a daisy in the middle of a cesspool! What a horrible PCB.

[keith777]

i know nothing about these pinpointers to be honest. i just saw the on ebay some years back as a small joblot for spare and repairs. and bought them for to have a bit of a tinker about with.
to me the way that the have been built they may have been some kind of prototype pointer. someones project. something like that. if you put the pointer facing up in the air or on its side. then adjust the sensitivity knob to where it starts to constantly beep. then back it off till it stops beeping. you get maximum depth, but as soon as you turn the pointer over it just starts to constantly beep. so you have to adjust with the tip of the pointer facing to the ground then adjust as mentioned before, but you loose loads of depth. all there pointer do the same.
i dont know what you lot make of that but they are rather crap really.

[Skippy]

Sensitivity to the earth's field is one problem I came across when tinkering with a CS209 based pointer. It seemed to depend on the particular ferrite that was used in the rod. Some rods made a great linear compass. Some seemed to give yes/no target response, with noticeable hysteresis, but didn't obviously respond to the earth field.

[keith777]

Hi again SKippy. did you manage to find that pinpointer......
also what does a CS209 based pointer mean......

[Skippy]

Not found it yet, just the box, with the spare rubber tips and lanyard inside, but no pointer.

Cherry Semiconductors CS209 metal detector IC. Now obsolete and hard to find ( cheaply ) , used in some cheap pointers like the Sherlock DTS and the Merlin.
It can give decent performance, but has the disadvantage of having the threshold/sensitivity control, easily damaged, and with obvious waterproofness implications.
I had a Sherlock, that's what I was using for my experiments. And, true story, I accidentally left it on the river Thames foreshore late one evening as the tide came in. It spent all night underwater, until I recovered it at 6 am when the tide went out. Rather full of murky slightly salty water, with some obvious corrosion. But after a good clean and refurbishment, it worked just fine. So its simplicity has some merit.

[walkman]

CS209 metal detector

[keith777]

Not found it yet, just the box, with the spare rubber tips and lanyard inside, but no pointer.

Cherry Semiconductors CS209 metal detector IC. Now obsolete and hard to find ( cheaply ) , used in some cheap pointers like the Sherlock DTS and the Merlin.
It can give decent performance, but has the disadvantage of having the threshold/sensitivity control, easily damaged, and with obvious waterproofness implications.
I had a Sherlock, that's what I was using for my experiments. And, true story, I accidentally left it on the river Thames foreshore late one evening as the tide came in. It spent all night underwater, until I recovered it at 6 am when the tide went out. Rather full of murky slightly salty water, with some obvious corrosion. But after a good clean and refurbishment, it worked just fine. So its simplicity has some merit.

i have always wanted to do some mud larking on the river Thames, but i live way up north of the country. i was surprised when i read that the pointer came to life again after being left in the water. plus i am surprised you even found it again.

[Altra]

CS209 metal detector

Thanks for posting these files.

I have a tube of 47 CS209A's that I purchased in the late 90's. If international shipping wasn't such a pain, I would develop a kit. Great little chip.