Free Joe Patrick Build-It-Yourself Info For Advanced Programmable Color Meter With CUSTOM Target Labels For Sovereign (EASY Off The Shelf Project!)

Before you think this is beyond your ability, it's a ready to use off the shelf color screened volt meter that you'd only need to build a battery holder for and perhaps use a tuning pot to calibrate to 180 as most of us do with our meters to match ID charts. You simply set up the display styles and options via a USB port on your computer.

Thought you Sovereign users might want to check out this how-to project. As many of us know, Joe Patrick has made some excellent meters for the Sovereign over the years, including an analog style meter for those who prefered them from their old analog detector days. He also has a meter that is installed in the speaker hole of the Sovereign for those who like to hip or chest mount the control box.

Anyway, I guess he was considering coming out with a new high tech meter for the Sovereign line but then decided to just release the information for people to freely use. It features an off the shelf LCD color display volt meter unit that measures voltage levels (which is what a Sovereign meter does anyway) and displays them.

That's not anything too intriguing to me, but where it gets real interesting is that you can hitch this meter up to your computer via a USB port to choose from over 30 different display styles, change text, set colors to specific VDI #s, and so on. But, that's not the best part, you can assign custom labels to individual VDI #s as well! Now that's real interesting, as you could say assign VDI#XXX- Silver 3 Cent Piece, or so on, for custom target labels to invidual IDs. I'm not aware of any machine on the market that lets you customize target labels like that?

That alone would make it worth taking on the project to me, as it would refresh my memory without having to look at the ID chart I carry to see what a target's potential is. Not only that, but from the sound of it you can assign an alarm to specific numbers too. That would be interesting, as let's say a certain coin reads in the "trash" range such as pulltab #s, and as you hunt you'd normaly be ignoring those same sounding close VDI #s, but the alarm could grab you attention and say "Hey, this one might be something else." I think you can also change colors for specific VDI #s, so you could say have common trash numbers show up in red and potential good stuff show up in green or something.

He also mentions that you can choose from analog simulated or digital displays, as well as both at the same time.

Anyway, it sounds like an easy enough project. Pretty much you just have to build a battery holder for it. He did mention you might need to install a tuning pot to calibrate the meter for the 180 scale most of us use. The display screen comes in several sizes all the way up to 3.5", which I think he says costs about $100 off the shelf. Not a hard project. Just use the software supplied to set the meter up like you want it, build a battery holder, a possible tuning pot, and your set to jet. If anybody takes on this project I'd love to hear about it. Money is a little tight for me right now otherwise I'd be building one in my garage right now.

[www.detectingequipment.com]



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2012 04:33PM by critterhunter.