Frustrated Cibola owner

ed1234 · Feb 18, 2015

l.cutler said:
at nickel, I get a clear repeatable signal at 10 inches.

What year is you device?

l.cutler · Feb 18, 2015

I think I have had it about four years, maybe five. That would put it around 2010 or 2011.

Hobojo · Feb 18, 2015

Our Cibola is one year old , I bought it for my bride on Valentines day last year!! Im such a romantic :laughing7:

ed1234 · Feb 22, 2015

OK, I spent time trying to figure out what happens. I observed that when at max (thr, sens and min disc) it is very unstable making false target sounds. Hmmmm
Here is what I found inside the control unit: from coil connector there 2 pair of wires and ground. Ground is black, then red-black and green-white. One is obviously transmitter pair, another receiver. Green-white twisted just 2 times over and (here is the key) laying over another pair touching it. Here is my theory: Frequency is very low, I get it, they twisted (just 2 turns), but still 2'' wires act like antennas where transmitter inducts magnetic field to receiver messing the signal.

The fix: I just bended pairs opposite ways and made sure they stay far when closing. Now it is way more quiet when pushing to limits, and most important -- I got 8.5'' stable reading on a dime in air test. Problem solved. Hope this will help someone.

Detector Wars · Feb 23, 2015

What coil are you using? With the stock 9x8, it's hard to interpret anything. For a coil that's easy to interpret sounds, any round elyptical will do. You also need to understand the difference between pitch and tone. The Cibola will give you many tones, but only one pitch. You can interpret the tones alright, but not with those stupid elip coils!

ed1234 · Mar 1, 2015

Today measured Cibola current draw, just for fun. 30 mA in both modes. Current jumps up to 50-60 mA only when internal speaker gets engaged. So low, amazing. How can they power the circuit including transmitter with such little energy.