Equinox 800 Technical Questions

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

1. Has anyone connected one to a scope yet to determine if the transmit power is steady or if it varies depending on settings/modes?

2. Are there any electronic chips in the coil, specifically is the receive signal being boosted at the coil?

3. Anyone using wireless AptX headphones or earbuds? Is the AptX sound quality an improvement?

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

On 3. I found some wireless waterproof AptX earbuds online, for noise canceling at the beach I could cut the cord off an old pair of Sunray headphones I find comfy and wear them over the earbuds.

 

[dewcon4414]

Charles ....... Rick Kemp posed a link showing a Russian guy who Xrayed the machine and coil. Im not techy myself ...... i just put it in the water and learn what it does ...... one foot in front of the other (or one button at a time) lol. Ole school. Not quiet the learning curve of an Explorer and a fun light machine to use.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Charles ....... Rick Kemp posed a link showing a Russian guy who Xrayed the machine and coil. Im not techy myself ...... i just put it in the water and learn what it does ...... one foot in front of the other (or one button at a time) lol. Ole school. Not quiet the learning curve of an Explorer and a fun light machine to use.

Found the xray pics thanks Dew. There is indeed a small circuit board in the coil. I should be able to remove that board to build a custom coaxial coplanar HEAVY trash coil some day. Really nice coil construction. I see 2 leads for the transmit winding and it looks like ML is still using Litz magnet wire for the transmit winding. 2 leads for the receive winding, 1 lead for ground. Appears to be a length of wire used for fine balancing of the coil and a coil shield drain wire all pretty standard stuff.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Im not techy myself ...... i just put it in the water and learn what it does ...... one foot in front of the other (or one button at a time) lol.

If like the Explorer the Equinox always transmits at 100% power regardless of user settings, that will make the machine really simple for me to tune. But if the transmit power is adjustable as some posts I read suggest, I'll be scratching my head re-thinking a bunch of stuff.

 

[Architex]

I have tried 2 different and supposedly APTX LL earbuds and found that they are not as good as the HP's that come with the machine (800). Of course the speaker is the most responsive but not always acceptable to surroundings.

 

[bklein]

I posted some scope photos of the TX signals in various frequencies/modes on Geotech. There never really is a single frequency in single frequency mode - but a favoritism around/including the chosen frequency.
There is a huge operational difference between Park1 and Park 2. I have some crappy videos showing this on my youtube channel:
[video]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9kem8woYGfXIlDBTfbF9cw[/video] It seems power differs as well as receive sensitivity.
The manual describes the power cutback capability in beach mode in conditions where there is a lot of black sand - a little icon to indicate it is in this state.
It is not a user-controllable feature though.
I bought a used CTX coil with broken tangs but it was in such good condition I replaced the tangs and didn't try getting at the pcb. Hope it is not like an excal pcb encased in epoxy. Be sure to post photos if you try getting at the EQ pcb - I'd like to make a bigfoot coil for this or my CTX someday.