maybe hack a day is worth reading again after all..
not because there is a arduino but because there is a quality project after all.

Posted at 5:28 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by arcnemisis

looks pretty good, though at first glance I thought it said “moron detector”

Posted at 5:39 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by medix

it takes a (greek letter mu)-controller to detect muons?

I’ll have to see how they avoid congestion in the microcontroller operating system or Mucos.

Posted at 6:02 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by tz

A good, non hateable ardunio based project! hooray!

Posted at 6:10 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by napalm

so it’s basically the humbucker equivalent of a geiger counter?

Posted at 6:12 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by sean

@sean: while it does detect cosmic radiation in the same manner as a geiger counter, geiger counters don’t discriminate terrestrial from celestial radiation. with this, you know that the radiation is coming from space rather than, say, stray radon leaking through the cracks in your basement ;)

Posted at 6:33 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by andrew

i just noticed, the description says he used fluorescent tubes, but that is a different project, the one linked and pictured uses actual geiger-mueller tubes.

Posted at 6:42 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by andrew

Related link with synthesizer implementation:

http://kosmophone.com/

Posted at 7:19 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by reboots

A neat addition would be a multi-toggle switch to control the number of lights on in the circuit.

Posted at 8:26 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by Skitchin

this would be a good source of randomness

Posted at 9:59 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by anon

erm sorry posted comment in wrong article >_<

Posted at 11:47 pm on Sep 3rd, 2009 by Skitchin

Hmn ccckc meets in a cave. 85 or so feet of rock might shield some radiations. And provide a differential for one detector at surface and one in cave.

Posted at 12:15 am on Sep 4th, 2009 by Oren Beck

Awesome and great idea. I like it

Posted at 2:56 am on Sep 4th, 2009 by rusli zainal sang visioner

That’s extremely cool.

(I read moron at first too)

Posted at 4:36 am on Sep 4th, 2009 by strider_mt2k

Moron detector? An Arduino uses a servo to open a door, revealing itself. Then it uses frequency analysis to determine if someone says “Cool!” Just kidding, I use Arduinos a lot for testing ideas, then C and assembly for final projects.

Posted at 11:38 am on Sep 4th, 2009 by macegr

Why do you have to stress that much that it’s using an Arduino? Detecting muons with fluorescent tubes is cool by itself, and you should rather focus on this part and explain how it works instead of speaking of Arduino and MaxMSP that everyone knows.

Posted at 9:57 am on Sep 5th, 2009 by lekernel

I’m fairly impressed with this. I wonder if this is method extensible to a 3D detector with a 3D array of neon bulbs.

Posted at 5:57 am on Sep 6th, 2009 by Tachikoma

“cosmic radiation will fall in-line with the tubes and pass through at least two of the”
As if comsic radiation ONLY travels straight down, you know the horizon also extends into the cosmos, and depending on the angle some might be absorbed by the larger volume of air between the detector but certainly not all of it, that’s why the author says “meaning a stronger likelihood of a cosmic source”, whereas hackaday suggest otherwise.

Posted at 7:56 am on Sep 6th, 2009 by Wwhat

The detector loaned to Seb is built using Geiger Müller tubes but I have been working on a low-cost version using Fluorescent Tubes. I expect that is where the confusion may come from.

Very pleased people think this is a worthwhile project.

Posted at 4:45 am on Sep 7th, 2009 by Robert Hart

What to do with this:

The University of Washington has (or at least used to have) a project where they’d install muon detectors with data loggers at schools all over Washington state. They collected all the data and looked for coincident events to detect, count, and estimate the size of large (high energy) cosmic ray air showers, which gives information about the highest energy (and least understood) part of the cosmic ray spectrum. This was part of their particle astrophysics group, which was also involved in the Superkamiokande neutrino oscillation experiment, which needed good baseline data on high-energy cosmic ray events.

If I recall correctly, their detectors consisted of a photomultiplier tube inside a metal garbage can, which would have a much higher volume than a couple of flourescent tubes, and thus be more likely to see a muon from a given event.

But in any case, if you can get enough people to build and install them, log data from them, and collect that data, you can do Real Science[tm].

Posted at 9:57 am on Sep 9th, 2009 by Zombie

The method using scintillators and photomultiplier is well documented and has the added advantage of measuring the energy of each muon detected. However they are quite expensive to build and not really the realm of most want to be Amateur Cosmonuclitian :-)

My aim is to develop a very low cost system for detecting Muons, that anyone can build. That being said there isn’t any real intention to do “Real Science” although I like the idea of many detectors linked over the internet in an array.

This project is more about interest, fun and the mystery that Cosmic Rays.

Sebs’ idea of producing music from the detections has real artistic merit which in its own way may inspire some young people to explore a career in real science.

Posted at 4:46 pm on Sep 9th, 2009 by Robert Hart