sgoss66
Well-known member
Architex said:
I just have to believe, Architex, that there is SOMETHING there, that is potentially exploitable. Obviously, as you rightly point out, when speaking of an aluminum tab as compared to a gold ring for instance, a detector's transmitted EM energy induces VERY SIMILAR eddy currents in both objects, such that both objects are then re-emitting EM energy back to the machine with VERY similar properties. And thus, they look "the same" to the detector, for all intents and purposes.
BUT -- I cannot believe that it is impossible to invent some "discriminator" of some sort, so that the user could switch into a different mode, or a different "setting," sort of like hitting the pinpoint button...something that SPECIFICALLY was designed to answer the "is it gold," or "is it can slaw or a tab or a beaver tail" question. It may not be something that can be done in "real time," in regular "detect" mode, but I really think that there ought to be some way such that ONCE you locate a target that registers "in the gold range," in your "normal detecting mode," that -- using some heretofore undiscovered (or at least not yet perfected) approach -- the detectorist could stop, and then "interrogate" that target in this "other" mode, or setting, or whatever. Again -- sort of like switching into "pinpoint mode," once you locate a target of interest. Perhaps a button or a trigger that you could hit, that totally changes what the machine is doing -- i.e. a specific "gold vs. aluminum" discriminator mode.
I THINK (could be wrong, as I've never swung a White's V3i) that some folks claim that analyzing a target in question with the three different frequencies that the V3i utilizes, and then analyzing the responses from EACH frequency, gives a savvy user some fairly decent "clues" regarding the gold vs. aluminum question. I just have an inkling that there are things there that could be "exploited"...differences between how aluminum targets respond to various different EM transmissions, vs. how gold responds to various different EM transmissions, which could be exploited to allow some "discrimination" to take place. I really believe that there's a chance that if a team of really smart people focused on this, that through use of a statistical approach, or regression analysis...something....that it would be possible to find a relatively accurate relationship between changing certain "transmission" characteristics, and then figuring out what "receive" characteristics are correlated with which target, the gold ring or the pull tab.
Just to give a "pull this out of my rear end, completely fabricated" example of roughly the type of thing I'm envisioning. Let's talk about the Equinox 800's five frequencies. If you switched into this "pinpoint-like" mode, that is your "gold vs. aluminum" discriminator, now a whole new set of processes/transmissions occur within the machine, and a whole new set of algorithms go to work, as you take repeated, small sweeps of the target, circling around the full 360 degrees of the target in question. And let's say that what is happening, is that the machine is transmitting in some sequential order all five of the frequencies, from 5 to 40. And let's say that in the lab, during development, Minelab's engineers had discovered, through statistical methods or regression analysis or some other mathematical approach, that aluminum responds in "x" way when "illuminated" by each of the five frequencies, while gold will respond in "y" way -- and they have built that into this "gold vs. aluminum" mode. The user would then have some information to help "determine" whether to dig that target, or not. Even if it was only 80% reliable, or 50%, or even 30%, that's still something that I can't IMAGINE isn't at least theoretically possible. And again, it might not exactly be a "comparison between the different frequencies" approach; it could be something very different, but still -- something that would be do-able within a VLF-IB platform. SOMETHING...
To me, THIS is something that could be looked into, that could be possibly paradigm-changing. Maybe Minelab (or whomever) could hook up with the geniuses at Google, or maybe take a crowd-sourcing approach...SOMETHING. But I really do feel this is something that might be able to be done.
ANYWAY, didn't mean to ramble, or derail anything. Just some random musings. And now back to our regularly scheduled program (thread)!
Steve
dig it all find it all, don't dig it all don't find it all ...
I am also wrong depending on who someone maybe talking too 
