Building a PI Detector

Hello everyone, I am making this posting to gauge the level of interest in an "open source" metal detector and the associated accessories such as search coils. To date I have cobbled together PI prototypes that equal or rival the latest offerings of the big manufacturers. Presently, I have not formally documented my designs, but if there is enough interest shown I may be encouraged to do this and make them freely available to all. I expect the detector could be built for under $200 and the coils for around $30.00 or so. Of course I will offer all parts and sub-assemblies myself but there is nothing stopping you from taking the plans and making your own. For those that don't know what "open source" is , below is a great example of this.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/1122

Hi Byteman,

Just viewed the link, very interested

Hope you can get it up soon as I'm looking at upgrading and I would love to support this idea.

Regards

Peter

Hey there Byteman

I love DIY stuff, Iv'e built my own guitar fuzz pedals out of recycled radio parts and have thought about building a detector, there are schematics out there but seems like a big task...

There are plenty of suppliers of DIY guitar pedal clones on the internet, just like there are plenty of people that offer mods to guitar pedals...

But if you have designs that are simple, have pre made parts ie. blank circuit boards and you want share them you will more than likely be successful selling kits to those who will give it a go...

In fact make me your first customer!!!

GT

Hi,any net. evidence of your work on any of the forums or elsewhere,to see what you have done and had success with yourself?You say you have a number of successful proto and other?equal and better?
Im interested? But?
Open platform participants risk many personal critic an abuse as seen of the recent number of years,elsewhere?
A very cautious territory to tread for many,in this Tech. field of endevour.
regards Rov

Hi byteman
I for one would love to see where this project could go. so keep me posted ,no one should knock some one for trying

Allan in vic

No response as expected from Byteman! Posts an interesting post but doesnt respond?a Tech Troll? only?
probably an alias from another Forum.????
Im Not ! an legit ,same username for all detector an coil exp.worldwide! Rov
regards!

Thank you for the show of interest so far from those that have responded. I must say I expected a bigger response, but then again most of the folks around here already have a detector so it (making their own detector for cents-on-the-dollar) is irrelevant to them, they just want to know how to, and where to go to find the gold. I never thought of that! I'll monitor this thread in the future to try and scope the level of interest. Considering launching an open-source detector project will consume several hundred hours of my time without any financial gain I'm not inclined to bother, my time will be best spent elsewhere.


I'm currently designing and experimenting with micro-dredges. I believe that if you're going to go after gold then you have to make it worth your while; waving around a six-thousand dollar wand to get a few scraps just doesn't cut it in my book.

Very interesting concept, check out the site and see for your self.
Gold prospecting is definitely something that has its roots in DIY, more so with sluicing and dredging but some of the early detectorists made their own coils as well as add ons and mods to the detectors.
Unfortunately it does seem that if you put a new idea out there (we are familiar with the QED) you get more knockers than supporters, but if it wasn't for those risk takers there would be few developments independent of large corporations with big budget r'n'd departments developing products that will make money for their share holders.
A PI detector for $200? Covering the cost of parts for that is conceivable but the big bucks paid are not for the parts but for the knowledge of how to make them work. If someone can do so independently, that is not by reverse engineering an existing product, and is willing to make the knowledge public then we should be grateful.
Polak

polak wrote:
Unfortunately it does seem that if you put a new idea out there (we are familiar with the QED) you get more knockers than supporters,
Polak

polak i think you will find, it's not the QED that people are knocking..

it's the people connected to it that make stupid comments that attract the "knockers"

cheers

Hey byteman.good concept and idea..I have always found that the knockers are the ones who are not game enough to try something new..for instance careful Columbus you will fall off the edge of the world..WRONG

Byteman wrote:Thank you for the show of interest so far from those that have responded. I must say I expected a bigger response, but then again most of the folks around here already have a detector so it (making their own detector for cents-on-the-dollar) is irrelevant to them, they just want to know how to, and where to go to find the gold. I never thought of that! I'll monitor this thread in the future to try and scope the level of interest. Considering launching an open-source detector project will consume several hundred hours of my time without any financial gain I'm not inclined to bother, my time will be best spent elsewhere.


I'm currently designing and experimenting with micro-dredges. I believe that if you're going to go after gold then you have to make it worth your while; waving around a six-thousand dollar wand to get a few scraps just doesn't cut it in my book.

No scope for any kind of dredge in OZ! your time would be best spent O/Seas im thinking

One has to be careful about encroaching on others patents, Minelab will go for the Jugular if anyone comes close to their I.P Sometimes these big companies just wait for you to sell a few and slam you with a damages claim and a massive legal bill. These big companies are very protective of their market and will fry anyone who is a threat. There is no problem doing a design for yourself even if it uses patented technology, just do not attempt to commercialize it. If anyone upsets the big commercial companies and they go after you, they will win...Why, because they have more money than most and will crush you with legal costs. It is best to fly well under the Radar.

Hahahaaa

show it or bin it......

Nuff said..
no time to waste while out bush




Pete in WA

Byteman wrote:

I'm currently designing and experimenting with micro-dredges. I believe that if you're going to go after gold then you have to make it worth your while; waving around a six-thousand dollar wand to get a few scraps just doesn't cut it in my book.

are your micro dredges the ones i saw on ebay yesterday ? if so they will be nice and quiet. do they have plenty of suction? http://cgi.ebay.com.au/GOLD-PROSPECTING-EQUIPMENT-Mini-Suction-Dredge-CreVac-/280672593371?pt=AU_Business_Industrial_Mining_Equipment&hash=item415963e5db

A PI detector to rival the latest designs for under $200.....Coils for under $30.....Bring it on. I could prob scrape a coil together with my tech skills but to build detector .. mmmm... That would be a task in itself.

I am all for DIY and hey, maybe there are people out there with the tech ability to draw up the blue prints as, at the end of the day, I am sure it is not rocket science. But, yes there is a but, I reckon the majority of us out here just do not have the ability (or eyesight) to put something like this together as it is such a fiddley job trying to solder tiny resisters etc onto printed circuit boards.

I would love to give one a go and to see whether thiese DIY detectors actually work. If you have a prototype Byteman then make a video and post it here comparing the $200 one to the top of the range. Am sure we are all very intrested to see it in action

I originally began work on my own detector (in the early days of my gold fever) as I just couldn't bring myself to shelling out the $$$ for a detector, especially seeing as I'm an electronics product design engineer. I studied up on the concepts of how a PI detector works and began experimenting. I found that I very quickly reached a level of performance that was hard to exceed and ended up mothballing the idea. Not too long after that my GF decided to buy a detector, so she came home with a brand new GPX5000 late last year. I was quite surprised that the performance of this new machine wasn't really any better than the results I'd achieved. I can only assume that we've reached the limits of this type of technology. I considered re-visiting the idea of bringing a new detector to the market but as Woody correctly pointed out Minelab would no doubt have me tied up in court. They're players in the military industrial complex and would have virtually limitless legal resources and funds to make things very difficult. What I find strange is that the concept of the PI metal detector has nothing to do with Minelab whatsoever, yet they have patents on this technology coming out of their ears. I believe an open-source detector could circumvent all of these problems.


Xenon, if the project went ahead you would be able to buy pre-assembled circuit boards so all you'd have to do is basically fit them into an enclosure and connect them together. The coil kit would come with a spool of wire, a coil former, some shielding and the vacuum formed shells.


One of the best things to me at least of open-sourcing this project will be to see what developments other people come up with. There's a lot of very smart people out there so who knows where this could end up. One of the things I've found out recently that is quite interesting is that you can discriminate between ferrous and non-ferrous targets with a mono coil if you've got fast enough signal processing capabilities.


Shicer I'm not the guy selling that crevicing contraption made from a bildge pump on eBay. My micro-dredge is virtually an exact replica of a 6hp Dhalke dredge but only about 35cm in length and uses a brushless electric volute pump. My goal is to make a tiny dredge that can far exceed the amount of material that an experienced panner could process in a given period of time.

Byteman Wrote -

One of the things I've found out recently that is quite interesting is that you can discriminate between ferrous and non-ferrous targets with a mono coil if you've got fast enough signal processing capabilities.


WOW - I will take 3 of them please.

Byteman, dont understand, you claim you can and have build a detector that is equal to the best on the market, Minelab, for $200, yet you let your girlfriend spend $6500 on a Minelab, why. mallee00 and the mutt

hi byteman
when you say the 5000 wasn't any better than the one you built,

are you talking proper infield test's (not just air test) or are you talking bench test's?

cheers

shicer wrote:

Byteman wrote:

I'm currently designing and experimenting with micro-dredges. I believe that if you're going to go after gold then you have to make it worth your while; waving around a six-thousand dollar wand to get a few scraps just doesn't cut it in my book.

are your micro dredges the ones i saw on ebay yesterday ? if so they will be nice and quiet. do they have plenty of suction? http://cgi.ebay.com.au/GOLD-PROSPECTING-EQUIPMENT-Mini-Suction-Dredge-CreVac-/280672593371?pt=AU_Business_Industrial_Mining_Equipment&hash=item415963e5db

Oh it raises its head again!! this contraption has been posted on another forum and the poster ,quite rightly got a smack on the wrist, he should under that forums code of conduct have banned !! but I digress, I also left a notice on Utube about the legality of it !! all I got was ridicule !! water of a ducks back to me lol! but as I've said in other posts It is very important that we DO NOT ADVERTISE illegal items that the greens will come back and bite us with !!

Shicer I'm not the guy selling that crevicing contraption made from a bildge pump on eBay. My micro-dredge is virtually an exact replica of a 6hp Dhalke dredge but only about 35cm in length and uses a brushless electric volute pump. My goal is to make a tiny dredge that can far exceed the amount of material that an experienced panner could process in a given period of time.


I ask you Byteman WHERE in oz can Joe Blow use such an item ???? and please dont hide behind the old "its legal to make them --legal to sell them- go the full distance ITS NOT LEGAL TO USE THEM"

mallee00 wrote:Byteman, dont understand, you claim you can and have build a detector that is equal to the best on the market, Minelab, for $200, yet you let your girlfriend spend $6500 on a Minelab, why. mallee00 and the mutt

Good question Mallee I shall try and explain. I'd probably sunk around 100 hours into my homebrew PI detector and was having trouble increasing the performance to something I was happy with. I had never used a professional detector before so I didn't have any sort of benchmark to which I could compare, I just assumed that the performance I was getting was far inferior to what was out there on the market if you were prepared to spend the dollars. At the time the GF came into quite a bit of money from an inheritance and was throwing money about like a drunken sailor. She pointed out that considering the time I'd invested in making my own detector it would be more economically viable to just go out and buy one. I agreed and we now own a GPX5000 and I have not bothered to develop my detector any further since.


Fencejumper, all the tests I've done have been on the bench. I know I'm going to be up against problems with ground-effect and mineralization out there in the real world, though solving these issues is only a matter of building effective digital filters in software which I don't think will be all that difficult, though I could be wrong.


Another thing I'm interested in and have experimented with a little is completely different technologies and approaches to detect metals in the ground. I can't help but think of all the slugs out there in places like the triangle that are beyond the reach of present day detectors which leaves most prospectors chasing the crumbs (do a search on potato-digging to see what I mean). As far as I can tell there is not a huge amount of difference between the early Minelab PI detectors and the new GPX 5000 which is very similar except for the user interface which features a menu-driven display. This means that basically the goldfields have been scanned for the last 15 years or so with a technology that has remained relatively unchanged. I think a major breakthrough is needed so as we can get to a whole new level.

Another thing I'm interested in and have experimented with a little is completely different technologies and approaches to detect metals in the ground. I can't help but think of all the slugs out there in places like the triangle that are beyond the reach of present day detectors which leaves most prospectors chasing the crumbs (do a search on potato-digging to see what I mean). As far as I can tell there is not a huge amount of difference between the early Minelab PI detectors and the new GPX 5000 which is very similar except for the user interface which features a menu-driven display. This means that basically the goldfields have been scanned for the last 15 years or so with a technology that has remained relatively unchanged. I think a major breakthrough is needed so as we can get to a whole new level. [/quote]

Potato digging? eh.....did a search and founds lots of info on "DIGGING POTATOES"

Murachu wrote:I ask you Byteman WHERE in oz can Joe Blow use such an item ???? and please dont hide behind the old "its legal to make them --legal to sell them- go the full distance ITS NOT LEGAL TO USE THEM"

Murachu, to me laws are just words written on pieces of paper. I live by two principles:

1) Don't cause another harm
2) Don't cause another loss

In addition to this I regard the Australian Government as totally illegitimate. See here http://www.basicfraud.com/


From time to time you hear stories about how so and so got caught dredging and how they lost their car, got dragged through the courts etc and were fined gazillions of dollars. It turns out that nearly all these stories are crap and forums such as this perpetuate these lies. It reminds me of the monkey and banana experiment which highlights self-regulation of behaviours and is a fascinating read. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

For gods sake, this country was opened up by the gold rush where massive dredges chugged up and down creeks and huge quantities of potassium cyanide and mercury were directly introduced into the environment. What's the harm in a bloke using a miniature dredge powered by batteries, or for that matter something larger that would need to be moved about on a trailer? Virtually any activity you can think of in this country is either illegal or regulated and people just put up with it.

xenon wrote:Potato digging? eh.....did a search and founds lots of info on "DIGGING POTATOES"

See here http://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/augoprhime.html

Hi Byteman,

Your choice of forums to launch another NEW detector astounds me,


THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN EDITED AS WE DO NOT ADVERTISE DOUGS FORUM HERE. - JEFF

THE CHOICE TO LAUNCH THE NEW DETECTOR ON THIS FORUM WAS MADE FOR IT IS THE BEST FORUM FOR USER COMMENT AND BYTEMAN IS TO BE CONGRATULATED FOR DOING SO.


PS: this forum incase you havn't noticed is an end users forum ......not so much a roll your own!!!!, man get with the program!!!!

Byteman, what you are advocating is anarchy ,pure and simple, Dont get me wrong if dredging were legal ide be in it -- well in this great democracy it isnt at present but there are some of us fighting for the rights!

Murachu wrote:Byteman, what you are advocating is anarchy ,pure and simple, Dont get me wrong if dredging were legal ide be in it -- well in this great democracy it isnt at present but there are some of us fighting for the rights!

I'm comfortable with that label but I prefer libertarian.

Authere, mate this is a gold and prospecting forum and the majority of successful detectorists in the goldfields use Minelab, if another manufacturer comes out with a better product the you will find people will flock to it, you might have a beef with Minelab but if your not using one you are behind the 8 ball, cold hard fact. I have a wall full of detectors inc Minelab, Whites, Fisher, Garrett and Tesoro and if im going gold detecting the first choice is the Minelab, but i use American brand detectors if im going coin shooting, do you think they will chuck me off this forum for not using a Minelab on coins? mallee00 and the mutt

authere wrote:Hi Byteman,

Your choice of forums to launch another NEW detector astounds me,


Also, you have prattled on for a bit without anything up front or on the table so i'm finkin put up or shut up!!!!

Ron

PS: this forum incase you havn't noticed is an end users forum ......not so much a roll your own!!!!, man get with the program!!!!

hey ron show us where anyone is putting the idea down about his open source idea


i feel like saying how silly it is to claim that his home made detecter is just as good as a 5000 based on bench test's
but i won't cause that will give you ammo for your silly "minelab run this forum" rant which makes you sound like dugglets