Good afternoon my troubled brothers. It is with a heavy heart that my AT Max has also become afflicted with this invisible, cruel terror similar to that of the plague. This is not, however, without hope. The symptoms are much like the others' with erratic screen, hyper numericals and crackle and chatter to the high heavens. I persevered through this and have come up with some theories and hypothesis of how this could ever happen to our beloved products.
While the Pointer Pro does not show signs of duress under heavy heat, the Max seems to wilt woefully so under tremendous heat, and I reckon that reduces the flux in the internals; ultimately complicating the signals to the power box. To test this, I let the detector sit in a cool spot in shade (quite an impossible task in CA) and noticed two things from this. 1). The detector came to its senses 5/10 times with 5 minutes of inactivity or powered off upon encountering another signal, and 2, the ailment would pass in this time altogether. Additionally; cleaning off the pins and resecuring the signal seemed to help tremendously at first, even with batteries left at 1/4 capacity. Do take note: try to avoid opening the assembly too often, as it runs the risks of particles becoming embedded within the pin slots and bending pins, clean up excess grease if applied to the O-Ring. With that, 2 more things must be considered.
Anytime I powered off the unit upon finding a signal to dig in the interest of preserving battery, the issue would activate even if left off shade to cool down. I suspect this might be the case for two more reasons, a bug in the firmware of the device which is impossible to update as the manufacturer does not offer an interface to access and update with easily, and the second possibility being that this somehow refreshes codes or errors within the processor and circuits. Yes, what I'm saying is that somehow along the way the heat brings about a glitch in the software of the device and I must say that this is extremely discouraging upon gearing up and setting out only to experience mindless chatter.
If four things are to be taken from this passage it is this, summarised.
1). Do not under any circumstances leave your unit in direct sunlight or in a heated storage (mine presented issues after two months of being in the car in 112 degree heat).
2). This issue can be dealt with and doesn't seem to brick the unit. If the error is cleared by detecting several signals within 3 minutes or so, that might be your ticket.
3). Make sure the screwable binding ring is tight, all the way down to the bottom (the bit that secures the signal to power box connection) using two fingers until it simply cannot be twisted any longer.
4). Returns on registered products are okay, as I suspect the issue many of us may be running into is involved with incompatibility with heat that the AT Pro doesn't seem to have as many issues with. Consider asking support if they're getting requests to trade based on buggy units or whatever they find upon disassembling products as this is true with new customers only starting with detecting: we tend to panic in our inexperience and are dissuaded all too easily. That's all I have. If these match anyone elses observations, we might be able to get a grip on this. If I find anything more, I'll update later as it's curious we're still running into this in 2019 with new units.
