Pin Pointing

Hey Everybody. Welcome! To Episode 54 of the metal detecting show podcast. My Name is Ciaran and I have been Metal Detecting for nearly 30 Years. This week Is a bit of a Hodge podge of an episode with loads of updates and a small tech tip at the end.

So I hope you enjoy the show this week and let’s get on with it.

Music

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

but most importantly If you like this content please don’t hesitate to tell your friends and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button.

Content:

Hi All I hope your week has been great. Spring Showers have limited my hunts but the weather is brightening which means more time for detecting and im calling the detection season as officially started.

Firrst a Quick update on the giveaway so don’t forget to enter. Right now we have just over 1500 entries which is great so make sure to enter and remember you get more entries for promoting the podcast which will get the podcast to a wider community.

But on this point I can see straight away that my subscribers you guys are not hear for giveaways but are here for rock hard metal detecting tips and tricks  I know this by the simple fact that my downloads are down for last week’s episode down over 25% and I don’t blame you guys firstly this is an experiment to see what works and doesn’t work and your all my guinea pigs muhhahahah and I can see this won’t work. So once this giveaway is done it’ll be back to the drawing board on how to do giveaways with my subscribers only and ill come back to it  again in the future.

I had another voice mail from Jim the DIY detector have a listen.

Thanks for the voicemail Jim and thanks for keeping me honest and on my toes as I had put the button away giving up as I couldn’t see a way of doing this safely and attractively and then I totally forgot about it but your idea about a coin pocket gave me the idea that I could 3D print a little frame to go around the button, where the button could then clip into the frame. It took me only 20 mins to draw up on the computer and an hour or so to print as I adjusted the size to best suit the button and I have to say it worked a charm and now the button is proudly and most importantly safely mounted in my frame so make sure to check out the pic I posted on Instagram but ill also include the pic on the website, the pic doesn’t do it justice it looks great the wife want to put it up pride of place in the down stairs toilet. 

So Pinpointing Jim Without doing extensive research looking into patients and marketing blub. My understanding of how Pinpointing works is that it is firstly a separate program that runs on the machine at full power with zero discrimination much the same way as all metal mode would work but more like a PI machine with a pulse being sent out and received in turns, this allows you to not have to swing the coil like a VLF machine to generate a response signal another difference being is in how the signal is processed.

So in a previous episode where I described the detection and transmission field as a blade for a double D coil and a cone for a Concentric Coil and I said this is not entirely accurate but serves a purpose to illustrate the differences between the coil designs. What it really looks like is imagine an upside down bell curve hanging below the coil with the tip of the curve being the sweet spot. A find at The edge of the coil will not resonate with as much power into the detection coil as a find in the sweet spot would,

Im assuming this power drops I would imagine as per the inverse square law so is easily measured and is measured in Decibels so imagine a find in the sweet spot will have a decibel measurement of 0 and this will drop as you move to the edge of the coil to say -30db. The sound you hear in pinpoint mode is a direct translation of the signal strength measured in decibels. So a low tone at the edge and high tone in the sweet spot. Now this is an assumption so I could be way of the mark. I suppose a top tip is to know where your coil pin point sweet spot is, this can differ from coil to coil depending on shape and design.

On the Music Jim I have had complements for the new sounds of the Metal detecting show podcast but I hear you and I will add the upbeat original soundtrack to the end of the show for the craic. And Finally Jim you hit the nail on the head about listening to the podcast while driving to a hunt that’s exactly one of the founding ideas for the podcast I wanted people to have something that wasn’t a rambling monologue for hours but something that they could listen to when driving to their hunt and get them in the mood.

Thanks Jim for your message this week I hope I have answered all your questions well and Keep the feedback coming and that goes for everyone if you want to give me feedback on the show what could be better just let me know or if you have a specific topic or question you want answered I would be glad to do cover it. Im always on the look out for content.

OK so a quick Tech time out this week as we haven’t much time left and this week I want to talk about an online too that is a tool I have been using more and more and that is Google Reverse Image search if your not familiar with it.

It is a function of google from your browser or app where you can upload a photo and google will use its Machine learning and photo matching capability to give you results in pictures that match your picture.

In the past I have used this to identify Coins, pieces of iron etc my most recent effort with it was identifying a brass hatchpin and it found it and several like it no problem.

the key to using it is to make sure when taking the photo you ensure to capture any detail in the object.

It wont work if you take a blurred photo or a photo of something that has no detail but if there is detail then there is a good chance it will find something similar.

As most people operate on a mobile phones the easiest way to access this feature is to use the google photos app and hit the lens button whose icon is a square with a dot inside it.

Google will do its thing then and give you results based on the picture very handy.

Generally I search any off line material I have at home first but if Google Image search doesn’t work ill check pinterest next which is a surprising wealth of historical information and if that doesn’t work ill start putting it on the forums like the friendly metal detecting forum or I have had some success on the subreddit on reddit r/whatisthisthing.

I am always amazed of the speed of results I get this way. However don’t be one of those guys or gurls posting pictures for everything you find without doing some research on what it may be first and always include something for scale.

Wrap Up 

That’s it for this week’s I hope you liked this episode of the metal detecting show podcast.

Check out our website www.themetaldetectingshow.com for this episode show notes.

Check out our Patreon page if you want to help the podcast stay alive or just want to buy me a coffee. Actually if you want to buy me a coffee you can do so at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/metaldetecting also

If you would like to leave me a voice mail please do so on speakpipe.com/themetaldetectingshow the link will be in the show notes.

If you feel like taking your appreciation to the next level feel free to leave me a positive review on any podcast directory of your choice.

If you like this content and would like more please don’t hesitate to tell your friends and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button.

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.