screen washouts/blackouts in hot sun

[jas415]

Happened to me today, 97 and humid. Hunting in the sun for about 3 hours and I started to notice the numbers fading into the background, sort of all numbers either very lightly on at the same time. Could not make out any VDI at all, tones were good though. Went in the truck in the AC and in about 30 seconds it was ok. Went back out and after about 5 minutes it started again. so I went under the trees in the shade. I think I have a solution, an umbrella, one of those new 80 Volt Lithium batteries, maybe 2 of them, and a couple of small AC units piped to blow on the 800.

Is there any rumor of a 'fix' or do we live with it in the South Texas heat!

Also a total stupid story! For the last month or so I have been struggling a bit with finding silver coins. I usually get 15 to 20 a month. It seemed that the 25-28 signals were jumpy, short, erratic and hard to pinpoint. I think I found the issue. Somehow I had disced out 25-28 on Field 2! Noticed it this afternoon when I was testing the small coil on some coin and it was struggling to hit a silver dime. I looked thru all the other programs and found three with disced out areas! I think i did that when setting up the bins 5 months ago.

 

[dewcon4414]

Has anyone tried attaching an external battery supply to the machine when it does that?

 

[jas415]

I will try to remember to do that as I have one of the 2.5a portable power packs. Do you think that the battery is getting hot and somehow sending different voltages to screen?? Could plugging in a charger when it is hot and doing this washout, cause a major failure?? I think I will email Jamie (the savior of Minelab customer service) to see what she says. All anyone had posted previous was to cool it off.

 

[dewcon4414]

Unless ML has an answer and isnt saying......its worth trying. Sometimes the simple solution is the answer. It shouldnt do any damage equalization of power at best.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

LDC displays fade at higher temps.

 

[pasttom]

Mine blacked out at 111 but stayed clear at 106, go figure. I had to go to Nevada for this to happen.

 

[lytle78]

If the screen blacks out and the detector keeps running, I suspect that that’s a bad thing. The total heat load in that small sealed case can’t be a good recipe for long life of the electronic components. Now that I am back in 100 degree country, I’ll have to try mine, and take the temp of the case.

 

[C&RHunter]

Before retiring, I used a handheld data collector for surveying as well as a HP calculator. They both had LCD screens that, on sunny hot days, the screens would sometimes fade to black and be totally unreadable. We found that it wasn't so much the heat, but the direct sunlight on the screen. It was a matter of turning the screen out of the hot direct sunlight for the screen to return to normal, not taking the devices somewhere to cool off. This may or may not be the same or the Equinox.

 

[ki4dog]

It could actually be the LCD fluid. The voltage threshold of the fluid changes with temperature. LCD fluid can get wonky above 122F. Different fluids have different temps. No idea what ML uses. Too much heat can permanently damage the LCD if it builds up too much pressure between the plates displacing the fluid. If the EQ uses a reflective LCD temps could be quite extreme in direct sunlight.