Hidden Screen On The E-Trac - What's This?

[CyberSage]

I was using Google to look for information on the E-trac and stumbled onto to this photo, and Video. I tried this on my E-Trac and sure enough it works. But what is it?


http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f87/keith7777/E-TRACSECRETSCREEN.jpg


The how to video found on Youtube...

Minelab E-TRAC Hack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00vQpE4eyk4#ws)

[earthmansurfer]

I found a few links talking about this. So, until someone that knows posts here ;) here are a few ideas:

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=350119.0

[url=http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16008]http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1600:dontknow:/url]

I wonder if it was the raw data to be used for further analysis screens or if it actually has any merit on its own ?

Interesting,
Albert

[CyberSage]

mL = Low Frequency?

mM = Mid Frequency?

mH = High Frequency?

3 frequency detector? 28 counting outgoing harmonics?

[jkress]

Most interesting Jack. :->
Might be some kind of programers info. :confused:

[MartinL]

mL = Low Frequency?

mM = Mid Frequency?

mH = High Frequency?

3 frequency detector? 28 counting outgoing harmonics?


I believe that mM might be soil water content or water height .

mL & mH...Typical soils of the (ML) and (MH) groups
are inorganic silts.

http://www.itc.nl/~rossiter/docs/fm5-410/fm5-410_ch5.pdf

This may all have nothing to do with the Etrac at all.

[CyberSage]

Most interesting Jack. :->
Might be some kind of programers info. :confused:


I had this thought as well Joe. The time it takes to run the procedure is very close, if not the same as the noise cancel procedure. This quite simply could be a behind the scene look at the variables used to calculate which channel is used. As an interesting side note, both the V3i and the E-Trac have 11 possible channel settings to help combat EMI.




I believe that mM might be soil water content or water height .

mL & mH...Typical soils of the (ML) and (MH) groups
are inorganic silts.


That is an interesting take on it Martin. It looks like you have a background in geology. Thanks for the input.

[CyberSage]

After reading the following information from the Minelab website It looks like that FBS uses only 3 frequencies at a time to make calculations for a given response...

http://www.minelab.com/__files/f/11043/METAL%20DETECTOR%20BASICS%20AND%20THEORY.pdf


2.9 Multi-period rectangular waveforms FBS, BBS and Iron Mask;

As stated, these metal detectors produce many transmit frequencies simultaneously (see fi gure 3). Thus, it is easy to extract high frequency, medium and low frequency components for accurate target time constant discrimination (see 1.1.3).

So...

mL = Low Frequency

mM = Medium Frequency

mH = High Frequency




1.1.3 Multi-frequency or multi-period coin detectors.

Multi-frequency transmitting and receiving metal detectors have a significant advantage in time constant discrimination, and to some extent ferrous discrimination capability, over the most common form of detector, the VLF detector. “VLF” stands for Very Low Frequency, and refers to the frequency of the single-frequency sine-waves that they transmit, usually at high pitched audio frequencies. There are basically 2 types of “multi-frequency” detectors currently available for coin detection. Some transmit square waves, which is effectively a multi-frequency transmission. Minelab’s Sovereign, Excalibur and Explorer units use a more advanced transmit signal consisting of multi-period rectangular waves, which gives more useful information (more frequencies, in effect) than square waves. The major advantage results from having several different frequency R signals. These can be used to more accurately determine time constants of targets because these different frequency R signals are not contaminated by soil mineralisation X signals, unlike the more common VLF detectors which use R and the mineralisation contaminated X channel to determine the target time constant. In essence, targets with short time constants produce larger high frequency R signals than low frequency R signals, whereas with long time constant targets, the low frequency R signals are larger than the high frequency R signals. Thus, the ratio of the low frequency R component to the high frequency R component gives a measure of the target time constant without interference from the large soil X component. In addition, it is possible to extract a better assessment of the ferrous/non-ferrous nature of a target using multi-period rectangular waves by measuring X when this target component is maximized during a particular period of the multi-period rectangular signal. No equivalent such period occurs in a VLF system. See Chapter 2.9 for more information on Minelab’s BBS and FBS ferrous target processing. This results greater accuracy of discrimination at greater depths.


The above information was found at the following link...

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,13712,13740

Some interesting speculation.

[MartinL]

What do the units of measure do over actual ground? Are they static or do the change, and are they usually in the negative? martin

[earthmansurfer]

This part sure got my attention from Jack's post:


Multi-frequency transmitting and receiving metal detectors have a significant advantage in time constant discrimination, and to some extent ferrous discrimination capability, over the most common form of detector, the VLF detector.

I'm curious as to who wrote that. It doesn't seem like a Minelab piece.

Now, Tom Dankowski talked about multiple frequency detectors as not being as good in iron. I know he likes to run Fishers, but the guys seems pretty honest and open minded so I do not think he was falsifying anything, perhaps just misinformed? BTW - he classified the V3i as being single, since it doesn't combine it's 3 frequencies. He never mentioned an advantage of a multi frequency detector in discrimination. I bring this up for two reasons:

1. The E-Trac seems to do very very well on coins in iron (at least the high conductors, which interestingly enough seems to be the same as the V3i when running correlate - correct me here.) I've heard of head to heads where the E-Trac didn't do as well as the faster single frequency machines in iron. I believe this to a point as there are many factors involved. Lastly, from the quote above, I wonder to what extent they mean when they say and to some extent ferrous discrimination capability as the E-Trac is known to false on iron (I believe - mine isn't here yet ;-)

2. The ability to run discrimination on the E-Trac and still not lose depth or miss targets is interesting. I now wonder if this is a by product, in part anyway, of being a multi frequency machine.

:confused:
Albert

[randy]

Great thread Jack, thanks for discovering this Easter egg (that's geekspeak for hidden stuff in software). Looks like a project for next season, to expand on my channel vs dirt vs auto testing, and look at this screen for each channel for different dirt and auto recs. I'm also going to speculate that the dGnd variable is some metric related to how difficult it thinks the ground is (and thus, where it wants to set auto). This is gonna be fun <:

(As an aside, I've taken to doing noise cancel with the coil on the ground vs 12 inches above, based on member myownwings suggestion and common sense after my tests, unless there is an obvious EMI source around such as a visible cell tower or the fact that you are in an urban park. My actual procedure for a new site is to do both, and hope they agree, and if not, note it. Anyway, FWIW).

As for the comment in the previous post about iron falsing, yes, iron can sound very good if the sens is cranked, but it doesn't sound quite as good as the sweet sound of silver once you get used to it. Still, I dig tons of ferrous targets. The real problem for me is bulbous ferrous (a ferrous target like a bolt a bit bigger than a nail) vs affected silvers (a silver and ferrous target against each other). They sound the exact same to me -- ya gotta dig 'em, sometimes silver, sometimes ferrous. Hopefully I will learn the difference someday.

[CyberSage]

Great thread Jack, thanks for discovering this Easter egg (that's geekspeak for hidden stuff in software).

I didn't discover it Randy, I Googled it. lol It's been known about for awhile, but not talked about to much. Thanks for the heads up on running the NC procedure right on the ground. I will have to give that a try. My coin garden is melted off, so this should be fun until the next snow storm. >:\