Need some help with the Scanner thing I have building...

[Joe Smith]

I am officially a city boy again! I have a 8000sq ft shop now with lots of parking and a small house in front. Not to mention a 6ft fence completely around the property. Good fences make good neighbors.

Anyways, I need someone to test this little energy scanner I have been playing with. I noticed earlier that some of these odd critters give off a field of energy at a much different wavelength than normal critters.

I have made a sensitive hand held scanner that will detect all wavelengths and simply sorts out the known, from the unknown.

For example - normal humans are in one range, cats are in another, common electrical devices are in another, and all these ranges are pretty narrow. I have been testing it with people, and common animals - and so far it works pretty good considering I used a broken Iphone to make it. It already had all the needed electronics, an easy programming language - and a camera!. If this one wasn't broken, I think the phone would work also - but not both at the same time since the cell signal just overwhelms the antenna.

The only downside is range - its only good to about 3ft with the Iphones internal antenna, and thats on a strong signal. If you are close to a person (the energy field of people is pretty weak), you can actually program the phone to recognize that person and pop up a pic!

Anyone want to test this little puppy out? Just send me an IPhone and I can reconfigure it for you.

[Victor Woodruff]

Hmm. Sounds interesting. I wonder if it would help with the little guy I've been talking about? Too bad I don't have an iPhone. Where are you located?

[Joe Smith]

I live up here in the great white north - toronto.

I think an external antenna would improve the range, but haven't tested it since this was sort of a side project while I moved, and none of the tools were setup. A parabolic would probably even give you direction.

[Joe Smith]

I think I have most of the bugs out of it, but every now and then I am getting big spikes in the background EM radiation. It pegs the meter.

I also noticed that there seems to be lines of this radiation that you can follow. There seems to be one that passes behind my shop running east/west. They are not very strong, but strong enough to follow. I guess they are natural EM fields generated by the earth itself.

As per the spikes.

I have ruled out the phone itself since it does it on my O-scope also. Its in the same range as the "supernatural" beasties I recorded. A friend of mine who claims to be an archanist is coming over this week to give me a hand with it.

[Joe Smith]

I get to try out my cheesy little Iphone scanner in the field! We are going on a "ghost hunt".

This should be interesting!

[Joe Smith]

IT works! Hehehe. Only 2 problems.

1. Range. Its literally about 3 feet.
2. Water Resistance. It doesn't like to go for a swim. At all. Don't ask...

[finder_fee]

If you want to boost the range the only good, reliable way to do it fast is kind of an ON/OFF THERE/NOT THERE of a satalite or radar style dish. It gives the advantage of direction, but making it anything better than "Over in that half of the building" gets a little tricky. It's why the Radio and Television guys have them mounted on vans for detecting illegal radio transmitions.

As a side note, it's also used to detect old or unshielded cables on televisions. They can drive down your street and spot whoever doesn't have a shielded cable.

Fi

[Joe Smith]

Well, thing one is somewhat directional - it you point in in one direction it has a range in that direction of about 3 feet.

It's made out of a broken Iphone...I am kind of impressed that it works as well as it does. Its just basically an app using a modified antenna. If someone else wants to take it and see if they can extend the range - they are welcome to try.

[finder_fee]

I might be able to do something with it. I spent a lot of time tinkering with radar gear a few years ago, though most of my experience was with the computer systems for it. I didn't do much with the actual physical mechanism.

I take it that since it is using just a palmtop that it is a passive sensor, not an active scan. that always limits range. given the right gear I could probably set up the software and hardware for a sonar type system, if you can make it bigger, like small radar dish sized. But it would probably be rather large, and would take considerably more power. It also wouldn't be too mobile... There is a lot of things that mess with this type of sensing... trust me. The longer the range, the more odd things can foul it up. I can filter out much of it, but only if it is a permanent position. if it is ever moved from it's location all of it's filters would need to be recalibrated, also if there is any kind of large change in it's sensing area it would foul with it some.

You want to have ghost sonar on your shop? it can maybe be arranged, but it will probably be twitchy. I might be able to do something more accurate if you can figure out how to do an active pulse sensor... but I can only assume that that would be detectable by anything you are trying to sense...

Fi

[Holister]

This all sounds a bit echnical for me, but I got a guy here in town that does all that tech-tronic stuff. He was workin' on somethin' similar to what ya' describin' ya' got. He made it usin' a sonar scanner that cave divers use. Not as small as the thing you got but its pretty accurate and the range ain't half bad, but he has to work the kinks out of it. Somethin' about shieldin' the thing from an entity's ability to syphon off energy or somethin' like that.

If ya' want I can get you in contact with him.

[Joe Smith]

I wouldn't mind talking to someone working on somethign similar. I never even considered using something like sonar.

This is just a little passive scanner. It works pretty good for finding spookified objects.

[Holister]

Ok Joe, I talked to Derik and he said he would enjoy workin' with you, and share a design or two with ya' if was for the good of The Society.

[Joe Smith]

I will bring the little scanner along and he can take a look at it if he wants.

I was told by a friend of mine that larger supernatural beasties will have a larger signature and might show up at a longer range on it. I don't think 3 feet will really be enough range for the beastie you have been talking about.

[Holister]

Any help is good help. See ya' soon.