How To Program Your Metal Detector

Hey Everybody. Welcome! To Episode 78 of the metal detecting show podcast. My Name is Ciaran and I have been Metal Detecting for nearly 30 Years. This week I want to address my most requested show topic something that I have avoided and that is how to program or creating programs for your detector.

Hey everyone before we start I want to thank you for listening to the podcast and I hope you enjoy the episode this week  If you want to support the show there are many options available from the links in the episode notes below and if you want to interact with me and the show that information is there too.  

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Hey everybody welcome to this week’s episode I hope the only discrimination you have in your life has been of the ferrous type. 

Not much in the way of detecting for me this last weekend as it was a super important 8 year old’s birthday and family will always come first. 

so this week I want to talk about my most requested show topic which is how do I create a program or what programs do I use on my detector or some flavour of this, there isn’t a week going by where I’m not asked this and I can understand this, you’re a metal detectorist you want to make sure you are doing what you can do to maximise your chance’s of a successful hunt. 

You want to make sure that you have your detector set up so that you are leaving nothing behind, but what if I told you there is no magic program that can do this “leave nothing behind” and frankly some programs are total bullshit positioned as a Midas touch of programs only to be shown to some sort of snake oil. 

I say this because one man’s program is not the same as another man’s program. One man may be looking for coins in specific ground conditions while another may be looking for small gold nuggets is the desert and in these situations an educated detectorist can set up their detector to best match what they are looking for and to what environment they are searching in. 

Another reason I stayed away from this topic is because of you guys you all have different detectors you all are at different stages with the hobby and I can’t cater or relate to you all if I specifically only go through my detecting program. 

However here I am talking about creating detecting programs. 

I have been thinking on this for a while to how best do this and what I have come up with is the following thought process.

I have gone through each of the features available in most detectors and categorised them as either a Filter as in they filter out some information for you to make it easier for you to identify targets or as additive where they add some form of augmentation on top to help you better id targets during the hunt. 

What I would suggest is to set up your filters first and then layer your augmentation on top of that so your essentially filtering out all the noise and layering functions on top if this to enhance what is left after the filters.

So The very first step in creating a program is to identify what this program will be looking for and where it will be used, will it be a coin shooter on the beach or a relic program in a field. 

If your trying to set up a program for all eventualities your better off sticking with the pre-programmed programs that come with your detector.

But if you want to set up a very specific programme for a very specific target then lets gets started and look at discrimination first, 

The most basic of features but also probably the most important that comes with all detectors, So discrimination is essentially a Filter and it’s the detectors ability to filter out targets based on their conductivity or Ferrous properties. 

With Discrimination for example you can notch [some brands use this term] out any Targets that may fall in a conductivity or ferrous range for example you may want to filter out low conductivity or high ferrous targets for coin shooting or you may want to leave it in if you’re a relic hunter. 

what this means is you can select an Area in the discrimination range that corelates to the conductivity range of targets that you want to find. 

So pick your discrimination first for what your targeting then

If you have the option of changing your detectors frequencies I would do this next, Frequencies determine how well a detector can identify a target for example a lower frequency will be good for larger Silver but not so good on small gold and visa versa a higher frequency will be great at smaller gold but not so good at larger silver. 

Most detectors operate between 3khz and 30khz the minelab Nox and vanquish can go up to 40khz and most nugget machines operate north of this frequency up to 80khz making them great at finding small gold. 

I would consider adjusting the Frequency if you can as a filter as you are tuning into a specific frequency suited to what you are looking for so if you can adjust it then go for it. 

Another feature I would consider a Filter would be Sensitivity this is the detectors ability to find an object of a certain size normally the size of a quarter at a certain depth, 

this is why when you pinpoint a target that your detector has indicated is 6 inchs deep that when you dig it you either find it is smaller if its shallower than 6 inch or bigger than a quarter if its deeper than 6 inchs.

but this can be used to your advantage because turning down your sensitivity doesn’t really lower the depth that your detector can detect, you maybe lose half an inch to an inch but nothing more however you can actually use sensitivity to filter out smaller targets at depth. 

So you can use it to filter out small bits of aluminium on trashy sites 

or the opposite if you want to grab every little minute piece of metal ramp that baby’s sensitivity right up.

There are two more filters that I wouldn’t necessarily program into my detector, Ground balance and Volume both of these I would adjust on the fly as you can’t know in advance what your ground conditions will be like or the level of background noise onsite this also goes for noise cancel you cant tell what type of electrical interference will be around on site so I adjust these on the fly in fact I will regularly do a noise cancel and a Ground balance just to make sure I have filtered out any irregularities that may have crept in across the site. 

So with all these filters you should be able to Filter out unnecessary information and allow any signals that pass the criteria through to the next stage of augmentation.

So remember augmentation is additive not reductive or filtering out information. 

The first adjustable feature I consider additive is recovery speed this is your detectors ability to recover from one target and be ready for the next the higher the recovery results in a shorter tone for the target and if your lucky enough to have a detector that allows recovery to be adjusted then you can adjust your recovery to make your detectors response larger allowing for a clearer identification however don’t go too low with your recovery as you will become more susceptible to target masking and you may have to adjust this onsite depending on trash levels and your swing speed.

The Final Feature and the most additive is your Tones, with your tones you can layer on specific pitches to specific discrimination ranges allowing you to identifying finds on the fly simply by the tone, if your detector has this ability you can have 50 tones 1 for every 2 steps in a 100 point scale but as I said before I don’t see the point of so many tones as it is very hard to identify tones between neighbours on the scale. 

I think if you’re a VDI hunter as in you only look at the number on the screen then 50 tones maybe for you however I think 5 tones is the sweet spot for me 1 for iron and 4 others with 1 of these at the top of the conductivity scale right where large silver lies. 

How do you pull these filters and agumentation all together well say if you were looking for silver coins and only Silver Coins I would first discriminate out a good portion of the detectors discrimination range just leaving the top 25% assuming your detector operates on the conductivity scale

I would then adjust my Frequency to the lower end of the scale available to me where Silver is better detected possibly 5khz – 15khz

Next I would possibly lower my sensitivity to filter out any super small targets but bare in mind you can have small silver coins and you may be leaving these behind depending on how aggressive you are with the sensitivity adjustment.

With the filters set I would layer on a recovery speed that allows a clear tone at my swing speed but with the knowledge that I may need to adjust this up if the site has more trash than normal.

Next I would layer on 5 tones, 1 for everything I have filtered out and only audible in in all metal mode which you can hopefully profile switch too. 

With the remaining 4 tones across the top 25% of the range I would distribute them with the hope of being able to assign tones to copper, gold and Aluminium targets that will sit very close to silver in detection with this program.

This program is very much a hypothetical program designed to give you the basics in program or profile design. 

You may notice I didn’t do much with the VDI as this is only an indication of the conductivity scale and what remains after you have filtered out your noise. 

Also note that this program will also potentially target Aluminium or Copper targets simply as they sit close to silver in the conductivity scale.

Remember the key is to know what you’re looking for, the more specific the target the more specific you can be with the profile or program. Most programs online are exactly this designed for very specific targets under very specific conditions some detectors will require a more complex program but the basics will remain the same, your detector may not have all these features but most have tones and discrimination which will allow you filter and augment for specific targets.

Wrap Up 

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Once again, I hope you have enjoyed this episode and we will chat to you all again next week. 

Get out there eyes down and Happy Hunting.