FBS2 my take on the Technology

In another post someone thought that the new CTX3030 was more of a Xterra on Steriods. I had a different impression from what I read. Most of this is subjective but based on what Minelab has released, but I do not believe I am to far off on what FBS2 is doing. First the person that made an analogy to the Xterra is not all wrong in fact I think they are pretty close. What I think is going on is like the Xterra the coil is smart but where the Xterra only tells the control box what freq to run and the size and format of the coil I think the New FBS2 is more like the XP Deus in that the coil actually process some of the data collected from the ground before it is sent to the control box. I still think the control box originates the transmitted signal but unlike the current Etrac I believe a least some of the received signal is processed before it is sent to the control box. At a minimum it is digitizing the processed information before it is sent back to the control box.

I think what is happening now when a coil is swept across the ground the coil is taking many snapshots of the what it sees in the ground. Lets use the photography as our analogy. So before with the Etrac the coil swept over the ground an in most cases give us one TID result or a single picture of what it saw. In contrast the audio was always running in real time hearing many things and send that information to our ears. One picture many sounds - assuming there were multiple targets.

Now lets look at this same coil sweep with the new technology. Now the coil takes many pictures of the ground as the coil is swept. If there is only one target then the pictures are pretty much all look the same. But when there are multiple targets and trash we get many varied pictures of the ground under the coil. Just like the audio before gave us many different sounds when there were multiple targets. The real time and wealth of information contained in the audio was why those that used the Etrac relied the most on sounds not Target Id information. Now with the many pictures of the ground the coil is taking, we have a wealth of visual information being sent up to the Control box where it merges those pictures together to give us a Visual image that contains almost as much information as the audio portion of the target data system of what is under our coil. So finally our Visual information is catching up with our audio information. And since we are better at interpreting visual information then audio we have just made a huge leap forward in our ability to predict what was under our Coil.

One more analogy this time a story book. Most children's books have a single picture of a scene (TID info displayed on our screen) Below the picture are words that describe what is happening in the picture (Our Audio Data from our detector). In many cases the words help explain what is in the picture so the child can understand what is going- change the words and change the story - (on our detectors different sounds tell us a different story even if the TID stays the same). Now as the child gets older the pictures get more complicated and less words are needed to tell the child what is going on. If you have ever read a find Waldo book to your child you begin to see how the visual side of the book has become more complicated. With the Etrac we had a very young child's book where most of the understanding came from the words and not the picture. Now with the CTX3030 we have a 5 year olds book. The Picture now has a lot more information and much of the story can be told just from the picture alone. But the words still help clear up the story so the child has a more complete understanding of what the story is about. So now we have both very informative visual information with very informative audio. I really think this may be a game changer. The proof will be in the pudding, but if it works as well as the first bits of information are indicating Minelab has raised the high bar for other companies to meet and it may be high enough that it will take a while for others to catch up.

Nice interpretation there. This gets my hopes up for the CTX having a non lagging VID like the E-Trac does - which can be dreadfully slow at times.

I get the impression that to go further with VLF, doing things such as what you mentioned, might be creative ways to solve certain limitations, though limitations of course still exist.

I am still a bit perplexed that a few feet of cord can actually slow things down enough that we can perceive it. Basically, the audio signal is less filtered than the VID one, is that generally true and is that why it might lag (on the E-Trac anyway)?

You are a thinker there Bryannagirl...enjoyed your analogys. My buddy just ordered one from the local shop. I think he said the total package was under $2,500.
I'll wait for Fisher's new unit ....and, I don't really have a choice..... too many other things needed around here, so says the wife.

Yea I am thinker but could be totally wrong as well. My bet is no matter what this detector spanks the Etrac and it can get wet so put those two together and could be a winner. Price seems high but I guess if you wanted an Etrac for Coin hunting and a Excalibur for Beach hunting your are spending more then the winchester 3030.

ozzie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are a thinker there Bryannagirl...enjoyed your
> analogys. My buddy just ordered one from the localExcalibar
> shop. I think he said the total package was under
> $2,500.
> I'll wait for Fisher's new unit ....and, I don't
> really have a choice..... too many other things
> needed around here, so says the wife.

Very interesting well thought out thread.

Yes the Explorer series is painfully slow but I am in no hurry and the series sure has produced some nice silver over the years and do remember the tortoise and hare race.

Everytime I hunt with a buddy conversation goes something like this lets put up a few bucks for the oldest most etc. and I say no as it makes one hurry and honestly enjoy my buddies finds also.

Thinking out loud if they makes these units too good going to be too easy to clean out the areas and thus kill the hobby as somewhere along the way the thrill of the hunt will be lost and after a while will anything be left to be found.

All in all it all comes down to finding an area with goodies to be found, coil don't go over it not going to be found and last but not least the skill of the nut behind the wheel.
When a unit tell me the date of the silver coin or the kt. of the gold ring it will be time to move on but its not going to happen in my lifetime.

Guess well just have to wait and see. Spank the etrac?? The etrac did not spank the explorer,and neither can spank the Sovereign, at least for deep turf silver.

Like a GPS plot tracks location over time, I believe the CTX trace view plots targets over time with the brightest target being the strongest, most current signal. With an Explorer or Etrac you see the cursor move from point to point. Now you have a connect-the-dots history over those recent target hits.

The ability to program audio based on the 2D screen will be a big improvement over simple conductive or ferrous tones alone.

But what of its recovery speed compared to a Deus, F75 or Gold Bug?

What of its sensitivity to low conductors where the Etrac was weak?

I have heard that FBS2 technology is using (probably more like broadcasting) on more frequencies. I still would think they are just receiving on 2. Carl from White's had this to say to me, here, a few months back:

Hi Albert,

All these detectors are true MF designs. They all have remarkably similar receiver hardware designs, in that they all split the received signal into individual frequency channels. That is, ALL of them do the analog processing on the individual frequencies, NOT a combination of them. This is very easy to determine with an oscope.

It is also an easy way to determine that the so-called 17-frequency BBS is really only 2 frequencies, and no more. They are roughly 3.125kHz and 25kHz. I haven't bothered to probe an FBS design but the identical transmit waveform dictates that it is also a 2-frequency design. The noise channels are minor perturbations of the transmit waveform, and not the selection of wholly different frequencies. That is, the channels might result in 3.15/25.2, 3.175/25.4, 3.2/25.6, etc (I don't recall the exact numbers)... the frequencies don't change much, and maintain an 8:1 ratio. DFX and V3 do the same thing with "frequency offset."

With all these designs the baseband signals from the individual frequency channels are sampled by an ADC and fed to a microprocessor. It is certain that they all process the BB signals in some algorithmic way that combines information from the individual channels to effect GB and to identify targets. It is pretty certain the 3 manufacturers all do it differently, resulting in pros & cons amongst the 3 approaches. But they are all unquestionably multifrequency.

- Carl (End Quote)

I do wonder if perhaps they opened things up to receive on 3 frequencies to make it more sensitive to gold, if that indeed would be the case?

Also, FBS has been descrived as time domain, which relates to PI, but of course it isn't. I do remember reading the "pulses" in FBS2 have been speeded up. What this means to me is they are speeding up the time domain, perhaps not listening as long but sending and receiving more of them? Perhaps this gives the appearance of faster recovery. I very much expect that it is faster and it isn't just about target trace as the main feature.

Love the tone feature as well.

Albert

"Pulses", be they square or of sinusoidal shape, occur over time. 15 kHz detectors put out twice as many pulses compared to 7.5 kHz detectors but the "recovery" speed is determined by the processing side of the electronics. The sampling rate and processing speed must be faster (CTX vs. Etrac) but if more processing is required the apparent recovery speed may not be improved. The Gold Bug 2 @ 71 kHz would then be the fastest regular production detector, which we know not to be true.

In the common language of metal detectors, I don't believe the CTX operates in the time domain (=PI).

There is nothing in the coil except wire.
Nice thoughts, but I am afraid you don't get it.
Machines like the F-75 have double-filter discrimination modes, etc. ---They are in the guts, not the in the coil. Same as any other machine.