Better backlight

The backlight I have seen on metal detectors are not that impressive. While shopping for a new watch, I started to wonder why metal detectors aren't equipped with the backlight technology like Timex and Casio. Timex will actually sell the right to use their Indiglo technology. Does any metal detector have a quality backlight that compares to the Indiglo?

I'm going to ask the obvious question - Why do you want a brighter backlight?
I got the impression the current backlights were for fading light / night-hunting, where you don't need much illumination, otherwise it dazzles you, and ruins your night-adapted vision. As an example, my Fisher F75 is too bright for night-hunting, in my experience, I was going to tinker with it and make it switchable on/off, and maybe reduce it's brightness when on. (Like a lot of my tinkering projects, they 'stall' a bit, so at the moment I just have it permanently disabled.)
I think there's potential to make the F75's backlight brighter, it's only an LED, I don't think it's being run that hard (I can't actually remember, now), there's always newer, better, more efficient LED's available, too.
Ideally, the backlight needs user control. At a minimum: Off / Night-mode / poor-daylight-mode.

((these thought also apply to pinpointer LED lights - daylight use down a deep hole is significantly different to night-hunting needs. And an OFF setting is handy, too, plus it saves power. That's another tinkering project of mine))

Hey Pimento,
I'm not suggesting a brighter backlight but one of better quality. The Indiglo, is more of a soft a subtle glow and that's why its used on watches and alarm clocks. Wether a backlight is important or not, if a metal detector is equipped with one, might as well be a functional one that evenly illuminates the screen. Simply putting a bright led on side of a screen doesn't make a good backlight.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2016 11:01PM by aguerrero56.

The F75 display is evenly illuminated, it doesn't just have a light shining into the side, in some crude manner. It had a large bundle of optical fibres, the bundle is placed in front of the LED (standard 5mm package) and it fans out to cover the entire rear of the screen. Quite unusual. But even side-illuminated displays should be capable of giving an even light spread, if correctly designed. There's no space constraints, really, unlike a celphone, for example. Laptops screens, TV screens, etc use LED backlighting these days, they don't have major issues.
If it's just the blue colour you love, then obviously manufacturers could fit blue LEDs, rather than white, which is a bit harsh, I agree. I always thought yellow would be easy on the eye, myself.
Electro-luminescent backlights are not easy to drive, requiring special invertor circuitry, adding cost, whereas an LED just needs a 1 cent resistor in most cases to control it.

aguerrero56 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Does any
> metal detector have a quality backlight that
> compares to the Indiglo?

"Have a look at the Minelab GoFind's...their backlight screen clarity is THE BEST I have ever seen!"

Thanks for the input guys. I'm not sure why I started this discussion. I'm probably the last person that needs to worry about a backlight. The CZ3d and DTVG don't help my case for a better backlight, but I do feel there is always room for improvements across the board.

Agustin

The racer for me works fine and I have a camo hat with tiny LED lights..night hunting is a lot different from day hunting less is better!

LowBoy

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