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Where did that ultimate SOV Accessory go?

D

DonNWF

New member
About a year ago there was some guy on this forum touting A "SIGNAL ENHANCER", something like that. . I know on DOC's Page they have something similar for gold machines. If I remember this guy was going to send one to RICK for an evaluation. Anyone know about this item or similar.? Considering all the other ADD-ONs for the SOV/GT I'm wondering why a signal booster tool has not been developed. I believe the one I'm referring to used the internal power of the detector.. But I would be happy to hang a battery pack on my belt if necessary. Considering the price of accessory coils a booster for say two hundred would not be unreasonable. Just the thing for my Christmas list :cool:
 
Don,
I think you are referring to my sovereign amplifier. It is a amplifier that boosts the signal going to the coil so you get a larger magnetic field which can detect objects deeper. This is different than a signal enhancer that just amplifies the return signal from the coil. It uses a external battery for power and will last around 6 hours. If the battery is not connected the detector will work normally so you dont have to remove the box if the battery runs low. I did send one of the early prototypes to Rick for testing. Unfortunately there was a flaw in that early design and it didn't work for very long. Since then I have resigned the amp and now have a working stable amplifier. It has been tested extensively by forum member, Bob LI. We have been through many versions of the amp and it has taken about a year of testing to get it working but we now have one that works great. Bob has agreed to write a field test and post it in this forum when we have completed the testing. Thank you very much Bob for all your help. I am in the process of putting together a few more so it can be tested on the various versions of the Sovereign. If all goes well I should have it ready to hit the market this spring. The target price is $289. If anyone is interested in one before then please let me known. If there is enough interest I will try do a small production run this winter for those of us who are not snowed in....

Shaun....
 
Shaun,

Refresh my memory please. What it is you are boosting, the BBS frequencies?
 
I was hopping you were still working on it as I felt it was going to work great after the bugs were out. The little I was able to use it I found it did what it was said to do and some of the weaker signals with the amp on I heard were not heard when the amp was off.

Good Luck with the project and keep us informed when it will be available.

Rick
 
joecoin said:
Shaun,

Refresh my memory please. What it is you are boosting, the BBS frequencies?
Click to expand...

Joe,
The signal that the detector uses to drives the coil is a square wave that varies in frequency. If you are interested I can tell you much more about this signal and what it looks like. The whole BBS thing is Minelab's way of describing the how the processor in the detector analyzes the signal returning from the coil when a object is detected. There are not 17 different frequencies in the drive signal but the detector's processor uses special signal processing to analyze 17 different frequencies to gain information about the object being detected.
This coil drive signal is normally a fixed amplitude, meaning the detector is always putting the same amount of power into the coil. My amplifier gives the user a way to vary the amplitude of the coil drive signal without changing any properties of the signal except the amplitude. As the signal amplitude gets larger, more current flows through the coil creating a larger magnetic field. This larger field will penetrate deeper into the ground and find deeper and smaller targets when compared to the fixed amplitude signal with out the amp.

Hope this helps

Shaun.....
 
Hi Shaun and fellow detectorists,

I'm no writer but I'll give you all this short report. After 100's of hours of testing on many different amp versions, I must say Shaun is on to something here. I will not go into detail right at this time but let me just say that Shaun's latest amp is a winner. Most all my testing has been on the beach, and as soon as it warms up I would like to hit some dirt to give a more of balanced report if I may. So for now lets just say so far so good! More to come........

Bob LI
 
Shaun,

Thanks for the explanation. Did you have any difficulties with saturation or over driving with the stronger return signal?

Joe
 
Joe,
I ran into many problems along the way. At first I was trying to put to much power into the coil, this resulted in excessive noise (saturation) and a few blown up coils.... After I decreased the power to the coil things got better but I still had noise problems. I went through at least 5 power supply designs before I had something that did not degrade the return signal and cause unwanted noise. I also experimented with amplifying the coil return signal, this did increase the depth but caused problems when detecting mineralized areas. To deal with detecting in mineralized areas I put in a adjustable gain so you can very the power to the coil from about 1.2 times more than the detector normally puts out, up to 3 times the normal signal level. This give you the ability to use the amp in a wide variety of detecting conditions.

Shaun....
 
Yes you can use a meter and a probe. You need to make sure that they are connected between the amp and the detector and not between the amp and the coil. The higher voltage put out by the amp may damage the other devices. The meter reading may be slightly different when the amp is on but only by a count or two.

Shaun...
 
This definitely sounds like an interesting device.

Any update Shaun ? I'd love to be able to beat those Explore and E-Trac guys with a Sovereign :devil:
 
Im still working on it. My latest revision is working good but its not ready for prime time yet. My testing has been slowed down by the winter weather but I hope to have it ready in a few months. I will let everyone know when it is ready. Many thanks to Bob LI for all his help....

Shaun....
 
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