MINERO

[J_Player]

Thank you for posting the circuit diagram Ivconic. It will prove very useful to those who wish to build a LRL.

For those who want a circuit commentary, I can give a brief overview. Keep in mind I am not an electronic technician, and I may make some errors.

Starting at the left, we have an oscillator built around the U1 LM555 with it's own dedcicated power supply (this supply is most likely isolated to prevent noise from the oscillator from reaching the sensor circuitry). This oscillator is coupled to the aluminum reflector dish through a small transformer. The secondary side of this transformer circuit which connects to the dish looks a little unconventional to me. This oscillator appears to be the only transmitter circuitry, whose frequency is adjusted with the 100k potentiometer at the left side of the 555. I suppose the transmitter is turned on and off by removing the 9v battery to the left, or a switch could be added to disconnect the battery.

The reciever portion starts with the 30 cm telescoping antenna in the dish. It is shown connected to a wire that passes through a teflon bushing in the center of the dish. It should be said at this point, that teflon is one of the best insulators known, and the use of teflon may be crucial for top performance. The physical dimension of this teflon bushing may also be important depending on what frequency range the oscillator is operating at. I presume the aluminum dish is a parabolic shape.

Next we come to the sensor circuitry. (I presume this circuiotry is isolated and shielded from the oscillator and dish). All of the sensor circuitry is powered by the two 9v batteries shown at the bottom right. The two voltage regulators provide 8v positive, 8v negative, and a ground. The sensor circuit is also turned on and off by removing the batteries, but a 2-gang switch could be added to turn it on and off. When we trace the wire from the antenna to the 3 ICs to the right, we see the signal is feeding into what looks like a "push-pull" amplifier, whose output is sent to a differential amplifier. The diagram shows this differential amplifier at the left side, with an IC to the right that is another stage of amplification.

Take note, that the differential amplifier at the left has 3 potentiometers, one to control the feedback, and two that adjust the output signal that feeds to the next amplifier stage. This is most likely where the sensitivity of this machine is adjusted. After passing through the amplifier at the right, the signal branches toward the speaker and a meter. The speaker has a small power transistor driving it, while the meter has an IC with another adjustment on the input side (appears to be a gain control to keep the meter in the desired range).

If anyone was to build this circuit, I suppose the mechanical considerations would be to make sure the dish and antenna assembly were sturdy enough to withstand whatever use you put the machine to, and, if it is to operate like other LRLs, I would think you need to build a handle that allows the antenna/dish assembly to rotate easily. I imagine the balance of the finished machine is also important. It would be nice to see a photo of a machine that uses this circuitry.

[mosha]

positive ions

thank you ivconic for the circuit.
thank you J_Player for the explanation.

can we convert or modify this circuit to detect positive ions also.

thank you,

[robert]

analyze


Hmmm! Very interesting design, even It is not obvious and clear at the first site.
I have to apply some notes as reply on Junior's analyze. The Al dish with 555 oscilator
is not transmitting at all!But it has almost crucial role in a whole design! The 555 portion
of the device with transformer it seems that have a job only to polarize surface of the dish.
Since it was stated in the name "...negative ions detector...", which means that dish will
reject and retract positive ions and atract negative ones.Input stage is divided on two
input amplifiers(very uncommon) with an ultra high input impendance, which is on some case
logical since it should "suck" ions.Both amps. outputs lead in to diff.amp, but very strange
one.Is it diff. amp or something else? The rest of circuitry explains it'self.The strange
connection of the secondary of transformer is due to make certain potential on the dish
surface and it can be turned by reversing the diodes in a positive ions "sucker".One thing which
really confused me is the "mono" supply of that MPSA13. It will provide much less power than in
case where collector is connected on the minus pole. But since MPSA can go "wild" this is
taken to eliminate that, i guess.I do not think that antenna/dish assembly should be mounted
on a rotary handle. It will not "follow" signal and rotate in that manner. It should be mounted
very ortodox,taking care of isolation between 555 part and the rest.The transformer stated to
be an "Supreme US 028 So 22168 Motorola-Lucent". I tried to find it in Motorola catalogue, but
without success! But i founded on e-bay some chinesse product labeled as "...yuo 22168" which
is almost identical as mentioned one, according to resistance.And guess what !? It is the same
transformer as the one on my 56k modem !? it just has galvanic isolation with 1.5 transforming
rate!Those who wish to build this device start cracking your modems!I doubt that this device is
able to detect ions at long distance, but it will detect ions for sure, and it will be really
selective and "suck" only negative ions.Also it's assignment is probably in some industrial
process not really in the field of detection! But a whole design looks much more conventional
and "working" than all the other's lrl's i have seen here on this and others forums! Just look
a trivial devices as metioned early in this forum (dell's omnitron,mineoro,electroscope...etc).
I absolutely agree with you Junior, it would be nice to see and check a machine that uses this
circuitry.But it's not gonna be easy to do a mechanical construcion proper.It should be taken
care mostly on that!Those who finish it first let's report to the others first results.
regards,
Robert

[michael]

J_player and robert! Thanks a lot for your golden comments.
I don't know much about electronics, but one expert electrician that
built a very good transmitter for me (and I passed my double blind
tests 100% successfully by combination it with Dell Directional Rod)
mentioned LM 555 produces a square wave with unstable frequency and
with maximum 30 KHZ output Whereas the mineoro output is nearly
300 MHZ.[The oscillator been used in my transmitter is XR 2206]
Anyway I hope be practical. Regards, Michael.

[Esteban]

No in plastic case

If you build it, don't use plastic case, the plastic acumulates static electricity and any friction in it will be produce false signals. Barnish wood is better. Also barnish your PCBs considering humidity. Also synthetic clothes are bad.

[Esteban]

Here a sample

This is a sample of box for gold metal detector (via high voltage).

(ivconic, don't leave us.)

[goldfinder]

555 UGH - PIC yes!

The 555 is not too stable. If anyone wants a PIC programmed with some frequency (less than 5Khz) let me know. I can do one for $15 including postage and two for $20.
Goldfinder

[Dell Winders]

LINK: http://treasureamerica.netfirms.com/....php?p=922#922

J PLAYER, I'm encountering some time constraints that prevent me from answering your questions at this moment, and this forum has an edit time limit.

I took the liberty of posting your questions on the TA forum, where I hope to be able to reply tonight or tomorrow. I apologize for the delay, and thank you for your patience. Dell

[J_Player]

Thank you Dell.

If I get to a point where I have a clear understanding of these LRLs, I will write up a couple pages that you can use to send any newbie to learn the basics of how they work and what they are expected to do, and how they are different than dowsing tools.

[J_Player]

After reading robert's comments about the circuitry of this device, a few thoughts come to mind:

1. The purpose of the 555 oscillator circuit appears to be exactly as robert says. The secondary side of the transformer in this circuit appeared to be unconventional to me because it is not intended to be a transmitter, but a dc charging circuit to put a positive charge on the dish. However, the ac component may have some function in the operation of the LRL. I assumed the potentiometer on the 555 is intended to adjust the oscillation frequency. If this is true, the resultant oscillator frequency may determine the ultimate voltage at the dish, as this voltage is dependent on the time constants of the LC circuit at the secondary of the transformer. Also, the electrical charging of the dish comes as a half wave series of pulses. Depending on how well the 105 mfd capacitor acts as a filter, the dish may be recieving a noticable ac component which could concievably influence the operation of the LRL. Take note that there is a dish and an antenna in the center, which are commonly used to either transmit or recieve radio frequency signals, even if the dimensions do not correspond to the relatively low frequeny that this oscillator is operating. On the other hand, if the dish was intended to have a clean dc charge with no ac component, then perhaps the dish and antenna configuration only coincidentally looks like a radio frequency transmitter or reciever. If this is the case, then we are looking at a staticly charged dish and the sensor circuitry is detecting minute variations in the voltage on the antenna. I agree that reversing the polarity of the 2 4001 diodes will reverse the polarity of the dish, and (presumably) will collect signals of opposite polarity than before reversing the diodes. By reversing these diodes I doubt there will be any need to change the detecting circuit because it is coupled by non-polar capacitors.

2. The purpose of the first stage in the sensing circuit is unknown to me. I think it looks like a "push-pull" amplifier, but there may be more to it. There are 3 amplifiers in this stage. The top 2 appear to be the two active sensing amplifiers while the third at the bottom appears to function as a phase shifter for the bottom amplifier. The appearance is that the upper and lower legs of this part of the circuit are designed to provide a differential signal to feed into the differential amp to the right (second stage). I doubt there is any discrimination feature built into this portion of the circuit because there is no provision to adjust the phase shift in the lower of the 3 first stage amplifier components. It may be possible that the phase shift is set to a pre-selected amount that has some target discrimination importance. But this looks doubtful to me. It appears that the real work of the circuitry is done in the second stage with the differential amplifier. The adjustment of the potentiometers at this stage should give a very wide range and very precise adjustment which leaves a nearly neutral output signal that is very sensitive to any variation of input signal ranges. In ways it reminds me of chemelec's balance bridge metal detector project in operation, but connected to a dish and antenna instead of coils. As robert stated, the rest is simple amplifiers and a meter and speaker.

If my understanding of the purpose of these circuits is correct, then many of these components could be replaced by more efficient parts, such as a more stable circuit that connects to the dish, and possibly a more efficient sensing circuit that preserves the same degree of sensitivity, and uses standard rechargable AA batteries.

I know next to nothing about the principle by which this device locates treasures, or if it can locate treasures. But just as a commentary, it is one of the few LRL designs I have seen that uses no "bait charge" or sealed chambers, while using an electronic circuit that is designed to sense and amplify a signal using standard electronic circuits and principles. I see no place where there are wires terminating on surplus or non-working circuit boards, or circuit components not electrically connected, but only glued together.

[J_Player]

Thanks for the photo, estaban.

A couple other circuitry notes that came to mind about the "negative ion detector" circuit:

1. A metal box sounds like a good idea. Keep in mind, when you send a positive charge to the dish, you are also sending an equal strength negative charge to the ground rails of the circuit. It sounds like a good idea to have a metal enclosure to keep any static charge from the circuitry from interfering with the dish or antenna. In fact it might be good to enclose the entire charging circuit in a small metal mesh or box inside the main enclsure so it wont send any stray static charge to the sensor circuitry. Since we are talking about static, any source of stray static electricity seems bad around the sensor, including synthetic clothes (try wearing 100% cotton), as well as any other objects that collect a static charge in the vicinity of the LRL.

2. I have always liked discrete cmos technology for projects of this type, where you are sensing very small signals, and there is no high degree of signal processing. Cmos uses a lot less power, is more stable, and operates on 5 to 15 volts. It is also very quiet as far as creating interference, and very resistant to recieving interference. While cmos is not generally used as a linear amplifier, a combination of FETs and two cmos VCOs could replace the differential amp to capture the signal. I suspect a properly designed circuit would be at least as sensitive as the existing circuit. The dish-charging portion of this LRL is relatively easy to convert to cmos, for a lot lower power consumption and better stability. A cmos quad inverter could be wired as an oscillator in place of the 555, with small resistors and tantalum capacitors that could be potted in epoxy so it is not affected by moisture. There is also a 555c which is an exact replacement of the 555 in cmos technology with better temperature stabiility. Or a crystal timing circuit could be added if stability was critical (somehow I doubt the frequency matters within 10% for a charging circuit).

If the circuitry of this sensor was converted to cmos or another low-power design, then the only real power used would be in the final amplifier stages to drive the speaker and meter and the dish charging amplifier. I imagine the power draw would probably be in the area of 20 to 50 milliamps, probably more like 5 milliamps in the quiescent state. I would think that using the same 9v batteries would be suitable, but they would probably last about 20 times longer, using only one battery in the sensor section, and one in the dish charger.

[FrancoItaly]

I find this ions detector very similar to Mineoro' models, the
"black box" of Carl' model may be the transistor version of LM555 generator, tha large trace around the perimeter is the
Al Dish. I think that the signal to the speaker will be in the audio frequency, the same that is generated by the LM555, then above 100 Hz. I find a bad idea the 9 volt imput of the
78L08 and 78L09 with only 1 volt of swing.
The 100k resistor and the 1n capacitor in the first stage I think are a positive reaction only for AC signals for increase input impedance but not for DC voltage.

[ivconic]

Hi again!


Friends,
I am in the middle of something...I am projecting some device these days.
That's why I was absent, I am not really off this excell forums.I read Your posts and replys on posted schematic and I am very satisfied and gratefull on Your"echoes" on that matter. Only way to give more life on this thematic(lrl) is to post some schematics,photos,cracks and further to analyze it, like You all(thank You for that) done here.Keep that way.I am very pleased reading those analyze and advices. Unlike on some other forums where You can read a lot of philospohy,empty retorics and self-promoting(not progressive at all), here,now is much different case. I would like to see more schematics,exchange,opinions,and scientific analyze.I am preparing soon something very interesting too, to post on some of threads here.But it will happen in a few weeks.Until than I would like You to post some draws, mods on that ionic detector, about the way You would like to improve it.Let's togather make some better device! 'mo better blues....
best regards
keep in touch!

[J_Player]

Moved topic

This talk about the construction of a negative ion detector is quite interesting. However we are straying off topic. This thread was started by Dell to show us that he was testing the Minero machine. What Dell said is the preliminary tests show the Mineoro does work, but is not up to performance level that he would expect for a device with that kind of price tag. There was also a lot of debating about the principles on which this machine worked.

It seems to me the topic of the Minero LRL was finished when Ivconic introduced his schematic for what he calls a "working LRL". The topic changed, and we need to start a new thread if we are to continue any discussion on this negative ion detector. So if anyone is interested in pursuing Ivconic's LRL, look for the new thread devoted to the Negative Ion Detector.

[Jim]

This thread was started by Dell to show us that he was testing the Minero machine. What Dell said is the preliminary tests show the Mineoro does work, but is not up to performance level that he would expect for a device with that kind of price tag.

Is $8,000 really an outrageous to pay for something that is “supposed” to find tons and tons of buried gold/treasure? Dell Winders manufactures/sells LRL products themselves, how odd that he should make such a comment. “Glass Houses” effect, and such.

Jim