Medal detector
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| Developer | Geoffrey H. Carlson |
|---|---|
| Release date | 2017.75 |
| Introductory price | $269.98 |
| Units sold | ~50 |
The medal detector is a tool created for the purpose of locating medals, and has been marketed toward award winners for finding any awards they may have misplaced. The device also functions as a can opener.
History
The medal detector was invented by Geoffrey H. Carlson in the year 2017.5. The story goes that Carlson misplaced his medal, but his metal detector was useless for finding it because their house was made almost entirely out of metal. This gave him the idea to create a device which could detect medals made of any material. Carlson would then spend the next few years developing this device.
After completing the first fully functional prototype, he reached out to several metal detector companies to see if they would be willing to sell his invention alongside their metal detectors. Every single company he contacted declined to work with him for various reasons. One common reason for their declining was that they didn't have any way of manufacturing his invention; there were no factories they could buy from that already manufactured medal detectors, and the design was too different from any metal detector to be manufactured by any of their manufacturing facilities.
According to the book Geoffrey Carlson wrote about the story of his invention; after he was rejected by the companies he contacted, they went on a walk through their favorite shady back alleys to clear their mind before working out their next steps. Carlson reports that in one of the alleys, a person came up to him offering to manufacture and sell his invention. Carlson agreed, and soon their medal detectors were being sold to customers across the globe.
Function
The medal detector functions similarly to a metal detector; when a medal is in close enough proximity to the detector, it beeps with the frequency of the beeps indicating how close it is to a medal. Unlike a normal metal detector though, instead of a simple beep, it plays a wonderful noise, and instead of the frequency of the noises indicating proximity, its volume indicates proximity. This was not present in the original prototype which used beeps and beep frequency to indicate proximity; it was reportedly a change made by the person who offered to manufacture it, who refused to sell it otherwise.
Mechanism
The exact mechanism by which the medal detector works has never been officially published anywhere, but some have attempted to reverse engineer the device, and some elements of its mechanism have been worked out.
The main selling point of the medal detector is that it can detect medals regardless of their material, and will not also detect other things of the same material. The leading theory as to how it is able to accomplish this is that the detector can detect anything, and it uses machine learning algorithms to discard any thing that isn't a medal. Upon examining photos of early prototype models, some reverse engineers noted that they appeared to simply be a metal detector, plastic detector, wood detector, and can opener all taped together and connected to a microcontroller. Reverse engineers have also noted that the detector's internals share many components with the three types of detectors seen in the prototype. Reverse engineers at DetectorCon 2019.428571 were able to successfully modify a medal detector to work as a metal medal, wood medal, and plastic medal detector. The changes made to the detector were done entirely to the software, which further suggests that the three types are detected separately.
Also at DetectorCon, it was found that the microcontroller used in the prototype had been switched to macrocontroller in the mass produced version; this was presumably to handle running the AI models better.
Issues
Due to the mechanism by which it works, the medal detector is incapable of detecting medals of materials other than metal, plastic, or wood. Although uncommon, medals of other materials do exist, and several people have sent in complaints regarding the ineffectiveness of the detector on their medals. Due to the low volume of these complaints, the company has yet to respond publicly to them.
The AI models are also prone to occasional false positives and false negatives. Although uncommon, they still occasionally happen; most commonly false positives with objects of similar shape to medals that are not classified as medals.
Controversy
Usefulness debate
Upon the initial release of the medal detector, Carlson received many letters questioning the actual usefulness of his invention. A common practice among award winners is to attach trackers to their medals to find them in case they are stolen or misplaced. Carlson responded to these by making a blog post where he pointed out that trackers can fall off, and can die if you don't recharge them; his invention also doesn't involve attaching anything to the medals, so their entire surface can be seen and no adhesives are being used on the medals.
This only brought more attention to the issue, and comments started pouring in bringing up other reasons why they didn't find the invention very useful. One common point brought up by these commenters was that losing medals isn't that big of an issue for most people, and if they did lose one they'd be willing to just spend the extra time looking around for it. Carlson tried to respond to most of these criticisms, but after a few weeks everyone just got tired of it and stopped caring about it.
Can opener dispute
A while after its release, there was a dispute regarding the can opener. A can opener company accused them of unlawfully selling their can openers as a part of their detectors, but it turned out that there wasn't actually any law prohibiting that, so the case was thrown out.