themartaman
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Sovereign Meter New
- Thread starter themartaman
- Start date
labeachbum
Member
that's Interesting
muggsc said:Wonder why you can't pole mount it?
As a lefty, this made perfect sense to me. On the older sovereigns, the detector housing hangs under the search rod just in front of the 'S' portion of the search rod. Since the meter fits in place of the speaker on the right side of the faceplate, the view of it would be blocked from your vision by the handle area if you are swinging the search rod on the right side of your body. If you swing on the left side, you have a better view of the speaker area. When used as a hip-mount, it is right there in front of you.
Rich (Utah)
Critterhunter
New member
Very cool little VDI display. Not only are you cutting down on the extra mess/weight of cables and the meter being on the shaft, but this just looks cool rather than like some after thought add on like the regular meters do. What I'm curious about is the decimal number that comes after the normal 3 digits. He makes slight mention to using this to better identify targets. I wonder if this extra digit can help identify some coins from each other, such as a clad dime or quarter versus silver ones. I would guess that you might be able to calibrate say 180.0 for a copper penny and then a clad dime might read 180.2, a silver dime 180.5, a clad quarter somewhere in that range, and then a silver quarter at maybe 180.8 or .9? If it is possible to see slight differences in coins it would be worth it just for that feature. The price seems a little high, though. I'm guessing that parts would be well south of $10 (unless he's having that voltage display custom made). Figure $80 labor you could still keep it below $100 maybe.
Somewhere I thought I heard of DIY Sovereign meters using a standard voltmeter, as that's pretty much what these meters are, though I don't know how much more electronics they might require to work and tune properly. I might check into this as a homemade project. I would guess you could get a tiny little voltage display like that fairly cheap, like south of $10 online somewhere. If I can piece together enough information from the DIY meters I thought I ran across in the past to properly setup/tune a little display like this I'll post some plans. I would figure that since the Sovereign is passing a voltage signal back out of the box and to the regular pole mounted displays for them to read, it would be a simple matter to tap into the right cable pins inside the control box for the unit to read.
Gives me a few other ideas...You could mount one on some flexible spiral cord extending out of the box and mount it where ever you wanted based on how you had the box mounted. On the face plate like that if chest/hip mounted, on the top or side of the box if it's mounted under the shaft like on the GT, or perhaps mounted between the armrest and grip off to the left for real easy viewing.
If anybody has a link to the DIY Sovereign meters please post it. I'll start sifting through that and see what I can figure out for something similar in a homemade project. The fourth decimal number shouldn't be a problem either. Most cheap voltmeters will display the deciminal out to two digits anyway. Might even be able to find a unit with backlighting, or just add a little LED close to the display. Simple matter to run a power lead directly from the GT's battery input for that seperately.
Somewhere I thought I heard of DIY Sovereign meters using a standard voltmeter, as that's pretty much what these meters are, though I don't know how much more electronics they might require to work and tune properly. I might check into this as a homemade project. I would guess you could get a tiny little voltage display like that fairly cheap, like south of $10 online somewhere. If I can piece together enough information from the DIY meters I thought I ran across in the past to properly setup/tune a little display like this I'll post some plans. I would figure that since the Sovereign is passing a voltage signal back out of the box and to the regular pole mounted displays for them to read, it would be a simple matter to tap into the right cable pins inside the control box for the unit to read.
Gives me a few other ideas...You could mount one on some flexible spiral cord extending out of the box and mount it where ever you wanted based on how you had the box mounted. On the face plate like that if chest/hip mounted, on the top or side of the box if it's mounted under the shaft like on the GT, or perhaps mounted between the armrest and grip off to the left for real easy viewing.
If anybody has a link to the DIY Sovereign meters please post it. I'll start sifting through that and see what I can figure out for something similar in a homemade project. The fourth decimal number shouldn't be a problem either. Most cheap voltmeters will display the deciminal out to two digits anyway. Might even be able to find a unit with backlighting, or just add a little LED close to the display. Simple matter to run a power lead directly from the GT's battery input for that seperately.
Critterhunter
New member
That meter mod does look awesome. Most people would rather send their machine in and pay to have the work done, and I'm glad he's offering that service to the public. For those who'd rather save a few bucks and do it yourself check out what I found so far on the net. Just doing a search for "round voltage meter" I found this on the first page...
http://www.martelmeters.com/products.php?cat=16
Looks like the same unit. Don't know what he might have had to add to calibrate it properly to the Sovereign. I'm going to try to dig up material on the DIY meters to figure out what might be needed, if anything. I quickly found a price somewhere for like $60. I'm sure if you looked you could find those cheaper, or another meter with the same functions at a lower price. If you aren't happy with it how about the one with glowing LED numbers, or the rectangle shaped meter. Heck, I even saw small analog units that would probably fit right into the speaker hole if you wanted to mount it there. I'm kind'a fond of the glowing LED numbers on the second one, though. This will be my next project, I think. Details when I have them.
http://www.martelmeters.com/products.php?cat=16
Looks like the same unit. Don't know what he might have had to add to calibrate it properly to the Sovereign. I'm going to try to dig up material on the DIY meters to figure out what might be needed, if anything. I quickly found a price somewhere for like $60. I'm sure if you looked you could find those cheaper, or another meter with the same functions at a lower price. If you aren't happy with it how about the one with glowing LED numbers, or the rectangle shaped meter. Heck, I even saw small analog units that would probably fit right into the speaker hole if you wanted to mount it there. I'm kind'a fond of the glowing LED numbers on the second one, though. This will be my next project, I think. Details when I have them.
Critterhunter
New member
Did a little surfing on the net and here's what I have so far. The Sovereign outputs a 0 to 2vdc signal via the coil cable to the external meters. Since you wouldn't need to break into the cable to gain access to the voltage source with the meter being mounted on the box it should be an easy matter to tap the right pins right where the cable connector is inside the control box. I haven't looked up the pin layout yet. A nice feature about mounting the meter on the box is that many of the external homemade meters are tapping the source through the coil's cable, preventing you from switching coils without modding each one this way.
What I was mainly interested in was whether there was a special function of the meter to hold the last target signal's number until you come across the next one. Some volt meters will lock the display at the last voltage read until another reading is taken, while most meters won't do this. From what little I've read so far it appears that the Sovereign is constantly outputting the voltage (conductivity) of the last target seen until it runs across the next target, so there is no need for the meter to freeze the screen on the last target for you. That's good news because now it sounds like a simple matter of wiring any old volt meter able to read 0 to 2vdc up to the source pins inside the unit. So long as the meter has a calibration pot to tune it it should work fine. I do wonder about the sensitivity of the tuning pot on some of these units. It might take replacing that to really fine tune it properly, at least if you wanted to get the decimal after the three digits to something very precise. But then again there is no proof yet that you can split hairs on coins with that extra digit anyway.
I have only skimmed over this stuff so far so don't by any means take my word for it. There are tried and true homemade Sovereign meter instructions out there on the net to go by. I'm in the very early stages of confirming what I think I've read so far.
What I was mainly interested in was whether there was a special function of the meter to hold the last target signal's number until you come across the next one. Some volt meters will lock the display at the last voltage read until another reading is taken, while most meters won't do this. From what little I've read so far it appears that the Sovereign is constantly outputting the voltage (conductivity) of the last target seen until it runs across the next target, so there is no need for the meter to freeze the screen on the last target for you. That's good news because now it sounds like a simple matter of wiring any old volt meter able to read 0 to 2vdc up to the source pins inside the unit. So long as the meter has a calibration pot to tune it it should work fine. I do wonder about the sensitivity of the tuning pot on some of these units. It might take replacing that to really fine tune it properly, at least if you wanted to get the decimal after the three digits to something very precise. But then again there is no proof yet that you can split hairs on coins with that extra digit anyway.
I have only skimmed over this stuff so far so don't by any means take my word for it. There are tried and true homemade Sovereign meter instructions out there on the net to go by. I'm in the very early stages of confirming what I think I've read so far.
Critterhunter
New member
By the looks of that picture it looks like you've got your meter hip or chest mounted too? Even looks like they make a special bag for that. Never heard of this. I'd be interested in trying that to lesson the weight of the shaft even more. I think the meter would probably fit perfectly in the front pocket of the current leather utility belt I have my GT box hipmounted in. Thanks for the idea.
Critterhunter
New member
Took the time to dig into the product brochure and data sheet a little for this meter. The unit can be set for two separate input voltage ranges in order to operate- 3.5 to 6.5V or 7.5 to 14.0V. This is the input power to pins 0v and V+ to actually run the unit, and not the voltage source that it