Elite meter seems S-L-O-W to respond

[Art (NWOH)]

Seems to me that my Elite meter responds much slower than my old XS2 meter.

Anybody else see this???

The response acts like there is a capacitor that needs time to get charged up before it comes up to the correct reading. This makes it look smoother and more stable than the old meter, but won't let me see the instantaneous small ID changes worth a crap.

The two meters have different innards.

What do you think??

HH

 

[Rick(ND)]

The one thing I notice and I am sure a few more did when we got the Elite was the meter was more stable that the ones we had before. I have always thought the the older one for the XS2 would vary so much on the numbers and was harder to calibrate to the 550 numbers causing many numbers to overlap. I think this was why many would put a kit in them to rescale to the 180 numbers. Now when the Elite came out I remember many saying the number were more stable on the meter than the meters made before and why there was a difference in some of the resistors in the kit to rescale them. There is a difference in these 2 meters I am sure of and actually the Elite one should be more stable with numbers varing only a few versas the 5 or 6 numbers of the older XS2 meters.
Now a slow response I never notice, just a more stable meter.

Rick

 

[Art (NWOH)]

What I mean by slow......

I can sweep over iron, then a coin. The meter takes about a second to get done counting up. I can watch it.

This is fouling me up because I can't watch the numbers run with the coil movement the way I could with the XS meter.

The meter is more stable, and seems less prone to noise pickup problems. Probably because the meter is responding so slowly that the little glitches and noise spikes are too quick to register, where with the XS meter anything would show up.

This is making it tough to wiggle and look for a momentary good reading in trash or on weak targets. Have to rely more on tone and less on meter in this situation. Meter is simply not following coil movement.

Wondered if this was typical, or just this particular meter.

Thanks for your input. Always appreciated.

HH

 

[wildherre]

I have always thought the same thing Art. The old XS2 meter gets to the correct number much faster..wildherre

 

[Art (NWOH)]

I might unsolder c3 on the board to see if that speeds things up.

There is one cap marked c5 on the front board that I might try too.

Would really like to see if it is possible to get about the same response speed out of this meter that I have with the older one.

Later, Ken..

HH

 

[funkyoldude]

I built a meter that uses LED's instead of LCD's and it responds almost instantaneously to changes in conductivity. Like the LCD meter, it is a commercial DVM panel meter, but I think that the auto-ranging is simply faster. Perhaps because of a faster A/D converter. I noticed that one of the things that slows things down is the fact that the meter measures a large negative voltage for a Null/Threshold voltage before reading a positive target voltage. I was thinking of installing a blocking diode in series with the signal voltage to reduce the voltage swing to the meter, thus preventing the negative voltage which the auto-ranging circuit must over come, and improving the response time. The negative voltage reading (-509 on my 180 meter) has no meaning to me, but I have noticed that it will read -511 if the sand is really dry.
Just one of those things I have been thinking about, and thought I might pass along.

fod

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Thanks F.O.D.............

Be careful with diodes....could cause non-linear response curve or become more subject to temperature drift. Just a couple possible side effects.

Really want to speed this mutha up because the slowed down averaging effect is costing me info, and necessitating seriously modified target ID procedures for me.

May just have to live with it. Don't like the idea of swapping meters all the time.

HH