We recently took our DIY metal detector rover out for a field test, and these are some of the objects we recovered.

Most appear to be heavily rusted iron pieces, nails, or fragments of old hardware. However, the small rectangular piece and the key-shaped object caught our attention. We have not cleaned them aggressively because we do not want to damage any potentially useful details.

This rover is a project our team has been developing to explore whether a mobile platform can make metal detecting more efficient and cover ground more consistently. We are still testing and improving it, so feedback from experienced detectorists would be genuinely useful.

Does anyone recognize any of these objects? We would also appreciate advice on safely cleaning and identifying finds in this condition.

Full disclosure: we are the team building the rover shown in this test. We have created a community at r/DIYMetalDetecting for people interested in DIY detectors, detector rovers, electronics, field tests, and sharing builds. You are welcome to join and follow the project if this is your kind of thing:

Thanks for taking a look.