Battery Controversy?

[Onus]

I have been following a battery controversy regarding the Safari on another forum. I haven't seen much here. I have had a lot of problems adapting to my Minelab Safari since I got it about 6 months ago and have posted about it here on this forum as well. But not much has improved and I got to noticing a lot of discussion about battery types. The consensus as I see it as of late is that the Safari doesn't like rechargable batteries. I have invested quite a bit of money in the Eneloop rechargables and have been using them exclusively. Several people have posted that they have had no luck at all with any kind of rechargables, end of discussion! But several have posted favofably about the Eneloops specifically, saying they work wonderfully. I know mine hold a charge as long or longer than the top dollar alkalines I have purchased, and they don't tend to discharge when put on the shelf for a long period. I can't say that about some other rechargables I have tried. But I am not having a very good time with my Safari no matter what I have tried and there have been several dozens of suggestions from knowledgible persons as well as one trip back to the shop to be checked out. I'm at the point where I am ready to defect to another brand. Maybe this machine just doesn't like me,? But the feeling is slowly becoming mutual. I am giving it one more try with premium alkaline batteries before I give up and then we'll see what happens. And yes, I have nearly memorized Sabach's book. Onus

 

[geordiefred]

Hi Onus"
I agree with you the safari certainly eats alkaline batteries compaired with other detectors, I always use the rechargeable battery pack & use that till its dead before switching to the AA battery holder as a back up. The rechargeable pack is enough for a full days hunting & I usually take it out the next day to use up whats left before popping in the AA holder, with me the alkalines are used as a backup only till Iv recharged the battery pack. ( I might buy a spare one & use only the rechargeable packs all the time? ) apart from your problems with the batteries everything else with the safari ok?
good luck & good hunting from UK
cheers
Fred

 

[wyohunter99]

I use the 1800 rechargable pack and mine works great and it holds a charge for a long time....I dont understand what your having problems with????? How much do you want for the detector????

 

[bigolhorns]

I use a cheap NI-MH called "Ultralast Green' in my Safari and they work great. Just as good as any alkaline I have tried. I don't have any issues (including batteries) with my Safari.

 

[Prep1957]

First place I do not believe there is a battery controversy I bought enercell from Radio Shack 2500 ah(not cheap either) and have run through about 4 sets of alkaline have had many detectors over 30 years of hunting although this brand of detector is made in Ireland I have seen no loss of depth in test plots with any type of battery.But whatever battery you are using when they get low watch your recovery time in high trash from a good target or mask will not recover as fast sometime it may take a whole sweep to get back to threshold I change out batteries when it gets to one bar.Are you digging deep junk square nails,Zinc food jar lids,Canned food metal keys,Buttons,Tobacco cans very deep.If so there is probably nothing wrong with your detector.I have not read Andy's book but I ordered it from Kellyco last Sunday and it came today.I bought the Safari for the fact it was finding targets close to junk and the junk it was finding fruit jar lids and pocket tobacco cans, deep coins were nice bonus also.As far switching brands.I hunt with another name brand at a virgin site because I am use to it it is quieter and a lot faster to take 90% of the goodies off because the Renter said I could hunt on Monday and the landowner may tell you to leave on Wednesday I follow up with the Safari if the site is worth it and time permits.I hunt in high trash,CJ mode or couple clicks lower,sensitivity auto.The minelabs are very good detectors but are very time consuming but find the deep keepers.

 

[Onus]

Believe it or not, I have read at least a dozen posts on two other forums saying that rechargables don't work well in the Safari. Now if you had been using premium rechargables and having problems with your Safari singing like a fat lady in church, (pun intended), wouldn't you be just a little bit concerned? I tried new Energizers on some air testing yesterday and couldn't tell any difference than using the Eneloops. I realize air tests aren't actual in the ground tests, and I will hang on for yet another month or so before bailing out. But it's hard to keep using a machine that you don't have confidence in. It may be for sale soon. Onus

 

[Marty224]

Hi Onus, i purchased a new Safari in january, after my first 4 or 5 outings i was getting very frustrated with way it was eating batteries. I tried the Minelab 1600mah slimpack first (fully charged of course), it was exhausted after approx 5 hours use! i then tried some top end alkalines which exhausted even quicker. So i THEN purchased 2 sets of good quality 2100mah nimhs, again i was only getting around 4-5 hours detecting out of them. By this time i felt like throwing the towel in, however, at the time i was in the midst of modifying a brand new pair of KOSS UR-29 headphones(by fitting the speakers etc into a top quality pair of ear defenders). It dawned on me that it could be possible for different types of headphone to have a varying effect on battery drain. As soon as i had finished my new phones i charged my Minelab 1600mah slimpack fully & set off out to give them a go, i noticed a difference straight away as after 3+ hours detecting i still had all 3 bars showing on the battery level indicator. After 7 and a half hours i still had 2 bars showing. I went out again the following morning & got another 5+ hours use without recharging my slimpack. This information is based on my own 1st hand experience, the only thing i had changed was my headphones & nothing else whatsoever, there is NO other explanation as to why my battery consumption improved that much. I did question on this site whether headphones would have a varying effect on battery drain but had a very poor response, so tried it myself. I would urge you to beg or borrow a couple of different sets of phones to compare your battery consumption with the ones you are currently using. I would be very interested in your findings as no one else seems to have taken my case seriously. I'm really happy with the Safari now, it's a great machine although i didn't think so before!!

 

[Prep1957]

I rarely use head phones,getting about 10 hours per charge went out tonight for 2 hours did not feel like digging a lot Disc first 22 bars dug 4 new pennies and 1 old token and about 10 pieces of junk had a small barb wire ball 10 inches down I swore was a coin read 36 in both directions cracked a little but was repeatable fooled again.

 

[wayupnorth66]

Ive heard and read in the manual that....individual rechargeable batteries are not to be used in the safari.....warranty issues and they are not the same output as non rechargeables. ?

 

[Onus]

The Eneloops are one of the ones that are recommended. I phoned Minelab and was told it was OK to use them. But my problem hasn't been battery life. My Safari is so slow in recycling on a target signal that I can pass over a really strong signal because it is covered up by the weaker signal. For instance: I will be hunting in the coin mode and I get a weak iron signal at approximately 6 inches. I will keep getting that same weak iron signal for several seconds. But if I wait a bit and go back over the same site I may pick up a strong coin signal right next to the weak iron signal that I first got. I have learned to slow down quite a bit, but it takes me forever to cover a small area with any confidence I am not missing something. I have read that the Safari is an improvement over the Quattro in speed, and it is one of the selling points, but not so on mine. I can't imagine the Quattro being slower! But Minelab checked my machine and said it was OK. I don't think it is and last time it took six weeks for them to tell me practically nothing. So, therein lies the problem. I am not a novice and have tested dozens of suggestions from the "pros" to no avail. Hope I made my explanation clear. Onus

 

[bigolhorns]

Ive heard and read in the manual that....individual rechargeable batteries are not to be used in the safari.....warranty issues and they are not the same output as non rechargeables. ?

Huh, From my Safari manual: "NIMH or NICAD batteries may be used but must be charged seperately"

 

[Prep1957]

Lithium batteries cannot be used higher voltage will void warranty.Ni cad and NIHM OK.

 

[Prep1957]

You are in high trash mode.I had a day where I left it in low trash and in old yard thought machine was broke hunted about 4 hours before I found what I did.My Safari will do what yours will do. You really have to get threshold to come back I have posted before that I have went a whole sweep that was masked out.There is times that I am in junk a may spend as much as 5 minutes on a single sweep checking signals doing the mine lab wiggle to sort out target.If you think it is not working sell it no way would I spend time in the field with something that I had no confidence in.Minelabs are very time consuming with the playing around with programs and search speed but they go deep.I read on another post somewhere there Safari went nuts sounded like bird in blender mine has done that 2 times now shut down and restarted seems to be OK should not do that processer stuck.Buddy let me have his E-trac for a week he was not using it went back to his old detector I set it up it responds about the same as safari just with a whole bunch of more toys in program.

 

[Onus]

I gues I just don't have the patience to make those 5 minute sweeps while others around me are digging?

 

[Crazy-Texican]

I bought the safari thinking it would have a faster recovery speed than my Quattro but once i took it to the park where there is a lot of trash , it kept doing same thing as the quattro , i have to swing very , very slow otherwise everything nulls out like iron and will miss a lot of the good targets but once it detects something goes very deep.. I use Energizer AA rechargeables and don't have any issues.. ..

Crazy Tex.....

 

[edjcox]

Here's the thing

Get a simple ohm meter and connect it in current mode to your battery back and safari. Read the current drain and run the detector for a few hours normally then hook up the detector and meter again and read the current drain.

Your meter should read fairly consistently as far as the current being drained by the Safari.

Now get another Safari and do the same thing hook it up with the meter in ciruit and read the current drain.

Compare these reading to the ones from your unit. If they are not close or very similar and if your current drain is considerably higher I would say you've go a bum Safari that's using more current than it should. This then needs to be TS by a Minelab tech. You can tell him the readings so he will concentrate on trying to determine which component in your safari is puling more current than it should.

I've used my Safari for a year and a half now and get about 10 hours of solid use from my rechargeables. I also use alkalines and hey work for considerably longer.
NIMH batteries should stay up until you discharge them by use for at least 6 months or so. Unlike the old NICAD's NIMH batteries havn't memory problems or slow discharges at the rate that NICAD's do.

Anyways putting the meter into the circuit in series will allow you to read current flow. You might need some alligator clips to make the connections as he battery pack can't be in the unit for the test. While your doing this you can try various functions of the unit and note the current drain changes for pinpointing, scanning, etc.

Good luck

 

[The Fog]

Onus I know I've asked you a ton of questions about your machine and I can't remember if you ever popped your coil cover off and cleaned any debris out. If you have some sand and dirt in there your machine will sometimes act whacky. I sent my safari to minelab shop to replace the screen, there was a line of dead pixels, and I was getting a lot of falsing. They replaced the screen and the logic board. When i got it back it was falsing still, I popped the coil cover off and it was loaded with dirt, pebbles, sand etc. Cleaned it out and it worked like a charm, they never even checked under the coil cover at Minelab service dept. evn though I had asked them. just a thought.

 

[halfstep]

Hello Everyone.

I wanted to give some input to this thread. I recently bought 2 safari's at the same time. One for me and one for my girlfriend. Both safari's are running fine but on hers, the batteries didn't last long and have been replaced while mine still has the original batteries and has all the bars still showing. Both detectors have the same amount of run time. She used the pin pointing feature a lot and I didn't but that's the only difference. I have just purchased a couple headphones and see if this does anything to her battery life. We haven't had a chance to use them again but as soon as we do, I will post and let everyone interested know. Her batteries didn't last 3 hours. I wanted to run another set through them and see if it was the batteries or the detector. Both detectors batteries were used from the same pack.

As for recovery speed, what I noticed is that the sounds recover quick when going from target to target but the ID screen is slow to recover. When I hit a target, I left the coil straight up about a foot or so and come back down on the target. This seems to reset it and the ID screen reads accurately. If you are hunting in a fairly clean area, the screen seems to keep up but if it is trashy or just has a lot of targets, the ID screen can't keep up and may show the last targets ID. When this happens, try the lifting trick and see if it helps.

 

[acasto]

This does not have anything to do with batteries, but have you seen this?

http://www.mlotv.com/view/463/minelab-safari-recovery-speed-test/

 

[reltolbert]

acasto,

Very informative link showing how the Safari can pick up a coin right beside iron
plus the recovery speed is good.

Thank you for this link.