Open Metal Detector Project Charter

[Davor]

Davor, speaking of Black widow, a single fiber from a mature female web can be used to make a very sensitive mag field detector.

I had no idea. How?

[WM6]

Crux can be deciphered from this: C.... .ru.. H

And Patent expired about: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5506506.pdf

[Thomas]

detectormods, crux patent? I did a search and found nothing. Could you say more about it?

[Thomas]

Davor, speaking of Black widow, a single fiber from a mature female web can be used to make a very sensitive mag field detector.

[detectormods]

Well, The main Lynch pin of every ML detector is the ground balance offset patent that has expired, yes it is free to everyone to use.... Wow i just see so many designs coming onto the market...(NOT)

Have a think about it.... Pulse ........Ping.......Recovery.......Its about as difficult as making a ham sandwich.

Waiting for the the hmmm ML Killer.......zzzzzzzzzz are people that stupid that no one can beat a standard ML P.I detector... It really is pathetic. The crux patent has expired, the other patents are not the the performance barrier that you all fear.

Head down, bum up, make a better detector.

[Thomas]

Tim, you speak of billions of ideas, my whole life is about finding such. Could you share a few, I have a feeling that T/R detectors were left before reaching full potential, but I am not a Guru. I am genuinely interested and would like to know your views. Are we of the same tribe?

[Tim]

Well, in the case of defending myself before I even start. I came here for support, not criticism. Yes a copyright. Detectormods can stuff it. I hope your coil co. chokes on it's profits. Yep. More money in selling the top-end BS than researching the direct results of coils on gold, for something other than a top-end detector. But we must all keep it hushy-hushy.. Hehehehehe!
GROW UP the lot of yez!
An AM radio detector will whip the arse off a ML on solid Ironstone. So shut yer yappin' cake-hole Mr corporate.
The demise of basic detector research was overlapped by the saturation of the Australian Goldfields with corporatism and micro-processor ignorance(very similar to the political ignorance we have.. )
As an example i will take a Lister 8hp motor, old water-cooled and push water 23km uphill 450m.
Then I will take a so-called "better" 2 cyl.,13hp air-cooled. AND IT WILL STALL.
This is the example I will give to the general Pulse Induction Tribe.
You have discarded the majority of your research material without proper digression.
For any real progress to be made the pre-conceptions, sterotypes and corporate dis-information must be bypassed.
There are absolutely billions of ideas that are made available for re-invention, by the progress of technology, and *******-patent lapse, and that scope of progression is open to the lateral thinkers. Patent merchants seek to inhibit progress for profit. That is wrong on a basic level.
This website commits itself to the salvation of PI. What an ignorant joke!
I do hope Davors positive help is not the exception here....

[Davor]

Or not... living in a crowded city gives you impression that the whole world is a terribly crowded place.

This sudden surge of money is a sore consequence of gold prices being ridiculously high. It is also localised to OZ and partly US, and nowhere to be seen in Europe. When gold frenzy dissipates, so will extra financials.

Don't get me wrong, niche markets are a fine way of earning steady profits, but don't confuse that with sudden stroke of luck.

[detectormods]

Look at Minelab's financials...There is bucket loads of money in Gold detectors, the market is way bigger than you contemplate.

[Davor]

detectormods, I think you are wrong in two details:
1) metal detectors are by all means a niche market, and there is not too much money running about. High prices per unit may give you such impression, but opposite is true. If there was lots of money in it, detectors would be cheap as chips, and you'd buy one occasionally even at a green grocers shop.
2) patenting your idea is the only way you can get legally separated from your idea, also your money and everything dear, so it is not such a bright idea after all. Copyright is a better and inherently free alternative that does a much better job.

The only reason everyone is frightened of the Chinese is because their prices are so much lower than the "genuine stuff" which is also made in China, in the same sweatshops, and by the same workers. In many ways it is the same as the free spirited girls are scorned by their virgin peers - for devaluing what posh girls consider their birthright.

Now, just put an amateur that gets lucky and produces a better AND cheaper detector than a top shelf one. Heinlein puts it this way in his "Stranger in a Strange Land":
"Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight."

[detectormods]

There is too much money to be made from metal detectors, especially the prospecting detectors. For too long so many just gave away extremely valuable information, only to find it sucked up big companies, changed slightly and patented.
The engineers and owners of various companies peruse the web trying to find the next good idea that they can take away and patent.
Even you you point out flaws in coil design expect a new lot of coils to be out on the market, it is much better to shut up and quietly work on your own stuff and patent it.

PS...The Chinese make very good copies of the 4500, not the crappy vlf version but an identical unit part for part correct, They even managed to reverse engineer the Hitachi micro code or come up with their own version that does the same. They are a little bit more noisy than a genuine one but maybe they just use crappy 4051 chips.

[Tim]

I see this thread has come to a bitter end. The Yay-sayers attack the Nay-sayers and vice-versa. Progress stalls. A bit like politics. A bit like bloody-minded Seppo-style litigation.
The stagnation and reversal of good intention and honest people. The only winners being the designers of self-interest. Politicians and lawyers.
This alone is reason to snub any corporate and/or state control altogether. The designers of pilfery and possession should be banished.
Knowledge IS NOT something that should be suppressed under ANY law. That is the inhibition of human learning.
Any judge who would convict someone for sharing knowledge should be dis-barred.
Recognition of rights for commercial use does not need to include the skinning alive of hobbyists. Indeed this corporate stance provokes and promotes a divide within detectorists, as shown here. If a million Chinese technicians can't figure out the GPX5000, then what chance do a few hobbyists have?
Another fine example of corporate greed and politics in cohoots to brainwash and bleed the lemmings. We do not need Patent laws. They do. Perpetual, paranoid malcontents.

[scrungy_doolittle]

He is a great inspiration of mine. Please say hello on my behalf. If I remember correctly, he also played with some magnetometers several years ago. So in fact he is one of us

I think every one of us who are interested at all in electronics, owe a lot to Don.
http://www.tinaja.com/ here is his web site.

Davor, unfortunately it would be a very expensive call for you, but Don always answers his phone. We go back to 1985 when I was selling postscript lasers, and having to write everything in postscript because
windows did not have any drivers for it. I got to playing with the old Kroy color process, and found that by simply passing a mylar sheet through the laminator or copier, on top of the toner, it would come out gloss black. Don has called that process Bakerizing ever since. (now I guess ya'll know my last name .

[Carl-NC]

Don Lancaster is a good friend of mine. And he is directly spot on. That being said, you *can* practice a a patent. Under US law, you can make a patented product for your own use, you can't sell it or give it away.

Be careful, it is actually illegal to make a patented product for your own use. It is legally accepted use to build a patented product for the purposes of evaluating the claims of the patent. That is, I could build a ML detector covered by patent for the purpose of evaluating the patent, but not for the purpose of generally hunting for gold.

Patents can be challenged and invalidated if you can find prior art.

And even without prior art, though exceedingly difficult and expensive.

[Davor]

Don Lancaster is a good friend of mine.

He is a great inspiration of mine. Please say hello on my behalf. If I remember correctly, he also played with some magnetometers several years ago. So in fact he is one of us