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Meter on an Excalibur?

Z

ZOFCHAK

Member
Has anyone ever seen this done? Is it even possible? :shrug:
 
I would think you could do it and build a waterproof box for the meter. Old Beech Nut (OBN) on FMDF shows the connectors he used for a waterproof box that will work. You will have to cut a coil cable going into the Excal and wire on a female and wire on a male then build your box with another pair of connectors. The connectors are waterproof and they have inline and panel mounts.

By the way, thanks for the GT! Here are a couple of my recent finds with that old Sovereign! 2 14K, one silver and 2 junk stainless. So far 17 grams of 14K. HH buddy.
 
Nice treasure, Imlookin2


Was at one point thinking and working on it a few years ago, and it got close...but the project took a back seat for awhile............I do think it is very possible, like Imlookin2 said a molded/sealed box for the meter..check out the video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGBRiYhxRTM
 
Does the Excal have the electronics in it that outputs a target ID voltage that can be read with a meter (voltmeter)? It would seem odd that Minelab would bother to put that unused part of the electronics into it.
 
High,
I always thought that the meter just reads the voltage from the coil output BEFORE it enters the control box.
Naturally, the meter has to be powered from/by the md battery box, unless it houses its`own power supply, which would make it unnecessarily heavy.
Am I on the right track, or did I miss something important ?

HH
skookum
 
Guessing, but I would say the meter is setup to read the voltage of either since both machines are brothers.. No special internal parts on either? Will do a quick hookup before I start making, and video just to show if, or not ........next winter......my thing is reverse hunting, remote Pp button, and knowing the target history of the beach, you really don't need a meter. There is enough info from both modes one can determine just about every target. Now on a strange beach, one could use the extra help..but I found using the meter, AM and ferrious tones of the explorers series of ML, I dug eveything that was 15-03 and below, but it did help on the repeated junk targets though. Will open this post once I get video, should be interesting.........
 
Some Sovereign meters get their power from the TX coil outputs in the coil cable, while other meters have a battery to power themselves. However, the meter doesn't intercept the RX coil signal coming back from the coil. That signal is sent to the control box. The box processes the signal and then outputs it to the audio and a voltage level is also sent (I think 0 to 2V scale) back to the meter based on the target's conductivity. That's why I would think it odd that Minelab would have included the electronics in the box on an Excal to output a voltage when it was never intended to be used with a meter.

By the way, one of the perks about the Sovereign versus other detectors like say the Explorer is that the meter output is tied very closely to the audio output. What that means is that you instantly see what you hear, where as on some other machines the two (audio and VDI) are not tied as closely together, which makes a "lag" between what you are seeing and what you are hearing. That's one of the reasons why many Explorer guys like to pay attention to the audio (especially in trash) and not so much on what the VDI is telling them. You can hear one thing while the ID still still doing another. On the Sovereign the VDI (like the audio) isn't going through as complex of layers of processing, so you get a more "true" ID on targets at depth and such than on some other machines.
 
Along the same line but somewhat different, instead of a meter would it be possible to get a more dramatic tone separation. I dig everything above iron but the sounds all sound SO similar to me. Granted my hearing isn't what it used to be but I think a lot of users have less than perfect hearing.
 
What kind of headphones are you using? I hear good things about the Sunray Pro Golds. Headphones can make all the different. I tried the Grey Ghosts and they made all the tones sound very similar and like out of a tin can.
 
imalookin2 said:
I would think you could do it and build a waterproof box for the meter. Old Beech Nut (OBN) on FMDF shows the connectors he used for a waterproof box that will work. You will have to cut a coil cable going into the Excal and wire on a female and wire on a male then build your box with another pair of connectors. The connectors are waterproof and they have inline and panel mounts.

By the way, thanks for the GT! Here are a couple of my recent finds with that old Sovereign! 2 14K, one silver and 2 junk stainless. So far 17 grams of 14K. HH buddy.
Click to expand...

It's good to hear that the spring breakers left you more than empty beer cans! :clapping:





I have already set up one Excalibur to accept different coils using a Bulgin waterproof connector, so I figured running a meter in between probably wouldn't be that hard. Assuming the Excal has the ability to provide a signal to the meter it looks like waterproofing the meter is going to be the biggest issue. Given the insane amount of projects I have going right now, I think I may do like OBN and shelve this idea until this Winter.
 
I always thought and was told it is just SOV XS electronics.
So I would figure it could be done.
Waterproofing a Meter on the other hand could be a pain.
 
But the circuit board in an Excal is completely different. I would assume it's square in the XS like it is in the GT, while the Excal has a long slender circuit board to fit inside the tube. I'd be shocked if Minelab would re-design the board to fit in an Excal and still include the electronics to process and output a voltage signal for a non-existent meter to read. I would figure they'd want to save as much money as possible and not bother with putting that part of the electronics on the board. Then again, you never know...They may have put it in there anyway just in case they decided to make a Excal with a meter, or to use that circuit board in a land based Sovereign or something.
 
http://www.geotech1.com/forums/
This Forum gets into building Detectors so they may have info or Schematics on it.
They even have a Tesero Clone PCB Board so you can build your own Tesero golden sabre and also a PI Machine that clones the Surf Master if I am right.
Worth asking them if they have the Schematics for the minelab because they have been collecting others.
 
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