Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches
There are some basic adjustments that you will find on many metal detectors. They might work slightly differently on different detectors, but there will be some similarities.
The Equinox metal detector is a very popular beach metal detector, and you will find many of the most common adjustments on the Equinox, whether it is the detector you use or not.
Let's see if you know what these Equinox icons indicate. If you use a Minelab Equinox detector, you definitely should know these, but if you use another metal detector, you might still be able to figure out what the icons mean and how to make the adjustments. Some of the icons might be more intuitive than others.
Below are the icons for the top-level Equinox settings. If you use an Equinox, you should definitely know what they are. Take a look at each and see if you can tell what they mean.
You get those settings by pressing the settings button a certain number of times. First, here is the settings icon. 
I don't know how intuitive that one is. A similar icon is used by Microsoft operating systems as a "settings" button.
On the first press of the settings button, you will gain access to the first adjustment. The second time you press of the settings button will see the icon for another adjustment and be able to make that adjustment. If you press the settings icon seven times, you'll get the option associated with the seventh icon and the associated adjustments.
Below are the seven icons that indicate the seven top-level (basic) adjustments.
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| Source: Minelab Equinox Manual. |
The first icon is pretty easy. It think many people would associate the icon with the associated type of adjustment. The first icon is the noise cancel button.
I've found the noise cancel option useful and effective. Doing the noise cancel help a lot when you when you have electrical interference in the area, whether the noise is caused by underground cables, electric lines, cell phone or security systems. I use it fairly often. You can also change the frequency, but that can be more difficult and can have negative effects.
Many other metal detectors will conduct an automatic noise cancel operation. You might not need to do a noise cancel very often at the beach. You'll more often encounter electrical interference at home or at a park.
The second icon is....... ground balance. You can manually ground balance your metal detector, but it is not necessary. I don't think I've ever manually ground balanced my Equinox, except to test it at home. On the other hand, I always ground balance the ATX when metal detecting wet sand at the beach. The ATX is really different than the Equinox, and I use it differently. When I use the Equinox, I am usually in more of a quick scanning mode, and when I use the ATX, I am probably more intensely detecting a specific area.
The third icons is the volume adjust. I seldom adjust the volume on the Equinox, but you might want to pump it up to max if your hearing isn't good or there is a lot of noise in the environment.
The fourth icon is for the threshold level. The threshold is the level of noise you will hear when there is no signal. Without adjusting the threshold on the Equinox 600 (not all modes of the 800), the threshold will be 0 in the Park, Field and Beach modes. The range of threshold levels is 0 - 25. 0 is silent.
If you just use the default Equinox threshold setting, that will probably be ok in most situations. On other detectors, you might more often want to adjust the threshold. The threshold level can be really important when using some detectors. A threshold too low or too high can really affect performance.
The fifth icon gives you access to the target tone adjust. I won't get into that one now.
The sixth is the accept/reject button. It allows you to discriminate specific items. You will want to practice with that one before using it in the field. Until you get it down, you can use the tones or conductivity numbers to discriminate. I've talked a good bit about the conductivity numbers in the past.
And the seventh, and last, top-level adjustment is the recovery speed. That is another one that should be practices a lot before using it in the field. Nonetheless you should be aware of what the icon indicates, and know something about the adjustment.
You might want to do a FP preset when you start each session, otherwise it is possible to carry over adjustments from previous settings that are no longer the best.
I am not trying to teach you to use the Equinox. I am only trying to provide some discussion of the most basic icons and options so you will have a basic level of familiarity. You will be much better off if you understand these basic icons and the basic adjustments your detector will allow, no matter what metal detector you are using.
You might use the basic modes and not make too many adjustments, but you should have sufficient familiarity with the most basic adjustments so that you are not wasting a lot of time and making a lot of mistakes in the field. It is not difficult to accidently make an adjustment and be using it without knowing it.
My main point today, though, is to encourage you to spend some time learning about your metal detector. Many of the options and combinations of adjustments might never be used, but you should certainly be familiar with the most basic options.
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Successful invention is rare. Monkey see - monkey do, is the more general rule, but there are inventions that change how the world does thing, and credit is seldom properly distributed.
The way we interact with technology these days has a long history. Apple computer, some time in seventies, I think it was, developed the Graphic User Interface (GUI). At the core of Apple's (pun intended) GUI were icons. That was a switch from MS-DOS, which you used by typing commands rather than selecting icons.
I remember that I was not as impressed by the new GUI as much as most people, and was the only person that I recall, to point out that under every little picture was a name, which is still the case with the Microsoft operating system, which copied the main features of the Apple GUI.
On smaller devices today, such as cell phones and now metal detector display screens, the icons do not carry a text label or name. That makes it more important that the icon be intuitive. Some icons better convey or stand on their own than others. Some seem to me to be misleading, but manufacturers are not going to conduct studies to determine the effectiveness of the icons and much of their effectiveness will be determined by the users prior experience anyhow. If you recognize the "settings" icon from Windows, you might quickly recognize the "settings" icon on the Equinox display, and that icon might become as pervasive and easily recognized as bathroom gender icons, even though it seems they are becoming meaningless.
In any case, the GUI has become very pervasive, whether there is another better system or not. A verbal interface might work well, or the metal detector of the future might simply do more automatically, like the self-driving car. Some people will like not being bothered by adjusting a lot of settings, while others will undoubtedly like to be able to make their own adjustments. Like a lot of metal detecting, it depends upon personality and cognitive style.
Another thing we use today when we interface with metal detectors such as the Equinox, is touch screen. When we talk about touch screens, we are usually talking about one type, but there were other attempts.
In the seventies, instead of the capacitive touch screens that are so common today, there was an infrared version. A grid of beams and receptors overlaid the PLATO computer screen and when a finger interrupted a couple beams, that indicated where the person was touching. That was the early version, and the person had the sense of touching the screen but did not actually have to touch the screen to indicate a point on the screen. The problem with that system is that the touch grid was not as precise. If I recall, the touch panel on the PLATO system (the first to use touch panel technology, as far as I recollect) was only a 24 by 24 grid on flat panel computer display screen, which is not fine enough for many of the small screen applications we use today.
It is fun to watch technology the evolution of technology and how one thing leads to another, and try to guess how we will be interacting with the metal detectors of the future. It would be easy to imagine radically changing metal detector technology, and it is easy to see how much of a copy-cat world we live in.
It might be fun to see if you can guess the next big change in metal detector technology? What would you like to see?
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Looks like nothing but a two foot surf for the next few days.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net