at max acting all crazy

[TheJack]

I am by no means an expert on the at max or any other machine, but I do know a problem when I see it lol, when I turn on my max it goes crazy making sounds and jumping all over the place all depth segments light up and and it gives me a reading between 30 and 45 super fast, it does this in all modes, did not do it when I first bought it less than a month ago, any help would be great.

Carl

p.s. when I turn the sensitivity down to 3 bars it stops, at 4 bars its not as loud as the higher bars.

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.

 

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[WawaDuane]

I just got my Max in the spring and I guess I'm sending it to Garrett because it's definitely gone nuts. Basically the same issues as everyone has, jumping around, going crazy all that good stuff. I find the Max works great when it's working but it sure sucks when it doesn't. I found I had to change the batteries when they starting displaying half or so, that did help for a bit. It was so crazy the other day (and I should have shot some video) that it was unusable. The Max goes crazy with the coil disconnected....so I suspect it's not a coil issue. I've had Garrett's going on 30 years and this is the first issue I've had. I've been using my AT Pro the last few days and it's still working great.

 

[mercdigger62]

I purchased my Max in late November 2017 and after very little usage, I too started having problems with it being erratic and very unstable. I contacted Garrett support and they sent me another coil. Unfortunately it did not solve my problem. So, I wound up sending the unit to them in March and when I got it back, the work ticket listed "Repair PCB and Calibration." I never understood why an essentially new machine, would be in need of repair. At any rate, it seems to be working ok now. But, I will admit that I still lack total confidence in it's performance.

 

[TVCJohn]

This is my first post and I wanted to add some "for what it's worth" thoughts to this thread while they were fresh in the mind and this thread isn't too old. Maybe it will help someone else. I got my AT Max in June 2019. I just now started using it frequently snowbirding in Florida and am still in the learning stages. I use it on the beach and at the old family house we're hanging our hats at.

There are numerous Youtube vids of how to set the AT Max up. I noticed many have their own way of doing it. One guy seemed to have a good, simple set up so I was using his with success.

In dirt:

Iron Desc - 30
Shift/Manual ground balance - 80
Sensitivity up to any of the last 3 bars
Mode - Zero

This seems to work pretty good in the dry ground.


At the beach:

Same as above but have do a manual ground balance due to the sand being wet and/or alot of black sand deposits. It will balance out to approx 15 - 19 and that gets rid of the noise.

Continuing....after coming across this thread tonight I was curious and went in the driveway and noticed the numbers were jumping everywhere and alot of noise. (Battery level was at 2 bars) Someone mentioned RFI interference as a possible culprit. I noticed I was standing under the above ground power wires to the house and near the wires in front of the house along the road. Once I moved approx 40' - 50' away from the power wires, the numbers and noise stopped jumping and everything went back to normal. I tried that 3 or 4 times and could repeat it every time. I had my cell phone in my pocket and turned that on/off and that did not seem to have any effect on the detector. If I turned the Iron Desc down to zero, I could get a little closer to the wires before the numbers started to jump around again.

So.....if someone is having a problem with the numbers and noise jumping around, maybe try verifying you are away from any above or underground power wires. If it's doing it inside, maybe the house wires or internet cables or WIFI is having an effect.

I suppose after spending the coin for a new AT Max one would expect electrical interference would not have that big of an effect on the machine, but apparently it does with power wires nearby.

Again...take all of this for what it's worth.

One other thing to add....I had to send the pro pointer back to get replaced. The LED light would not turn off. Ya had to remove the battery to turn off the light.

 

[AR59]

Bought my AT MAX from Cabelas. Put it together and watched all the instructional videos. Took it outside to practice and learn the machine and ran into the problems posted in this forum. Did all of the trouble shooting suggested here and nothing helped it. Wish I had found this forum before choosing the AT MAX. Good news is I took it back to Cabelas and got my money back.

 

[SeanEast]

Well, I recently bought my Max via ebay and it's giving me the same issues all you guys are dealing with as well. I've made sure the coil was plugged in all the way, did a factory reset, lowered the sensitivity, and swapped coils thinking that might be the issue but have met with no success. The numbers are still bouncing all over the place at mach 9, the depth indicator is totally nuts and the damn thing still sounds like I just won $1mil at a slot machine in Vegas.

I don't want to return it to the seller as I think I got a good deal on it (and it came with a NEL coil). I'll play around with it some more but if I can't button this down soon, I'm going to call Garrett and see what help they can give me