For anyone who has worked with radioactive materials, there’s something that’s oddly comforting about the random clicks of a Geiger counter. And those comforting clicks are exactly why we like this simple pocket Geiger counter.
Another good reason to like [Tim]’s build is the Fallout theme of the case. While not an item from the game, the aesthetic he went for with the 3D-printed case certainly matches the Fallout universe. The counter itself is based on the popular Russian SBT-11A G-M tubes that are floating around eBay these days. You might recall them from coverage of this minimalist Geiger counter, and if you were inspired to buy a few of the tubes, here’s your chance for a more polished build. The case is stuffed with a LiPo pack, HV supply, and a small audio amp to drive the speaker. The video below shows it clicking merrily from a calibration source.
We can see how this project could be easily expanded — a small display that can show the counts per minute would be a great addition. But there’s something about how pocketable this is, and just the clicking alone is enough for us.
Sorry to be that direct: The 3D Print looks terrible and the amount of hot snot is disgusting. A standard plastic box, proper mounting and 3D printed decals would have been way nicer.
Filler primer, sand, and paint would help.
Yes, but he’s got one thing you haven’t got– a finished project in his hand and a post on Hackaday.
it’s not difficult to do. All you have to do is enclose a raspberry pi in a case, and you got yourself a basic project that will merit itself a post from them. To increase your odds, have the case be a nintendo console, because everyone loves nintendo.
you made my day with this reply :D
Hello Jensma,
a standard plastic box… seriously, what’s the point. Why not go for a standard geiger counter completely then that would really look nice. Ohhh… whoops it would not be a project then.
I don’t think that the 3D print looks that terrible at all, sure there is room for improvement, but it does the job.
What’s the point in using standard G-M tube if you can make one at home?
It’s better to use standard case and make it look good than print a shitty one…
It’s notahacks all the way down.
The 3D printing looks terrible: if the enclosure is a simple parallelepiped, please, please use a standard prototype case (like Takashi or such)
I agree that the quality of the 3D print is sub standard, but hey, you got to use that $300 3D printer for something.
I have the exact same experience, I printed a case for a Raspberry, but ended up replacing it for a $1 case from flebay.
Consumer 3D printing has a looooooong way to go still, if you are going to use the prints for something other then dustcollecting.
I have seen more expensive consumer 3D printers with better print quality, but the price of those are way higher.
I guess you get what you pay for.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with this print. I feel like the complaints are because it’s got a thick layer of paint on it…that and a bunch of armchair quarterbacks who have to rip down everything they see.
Yeah I thought it looked decent for a 3D print. I do agree with the post about using some filler and sanding it before painting. A bit more effort in finishing the print would go a long way.
I put up a project page to explain why I did what I did (which includes the terrible 3D print and hot snot in the feedback section).
https://hackaday.io/project/20371-mini-fallout-themed-geiger-counter
You can get some pretty tiny mica end window tubes that would fit in there too.
So…not even a schematic?
I’m lazy and would have used “losalt” as my radiation source. At 66% potassium chloride, and 0.012% of all potassium being potassium-40, it should be a good enough for test purposes. with beta particles (@ 1.33 MeV, 89.28% of the time when it decays into calcium-40) and gamma rays (@ 1.460 MeV, 10.72% of the time when it decays into argon-40). And since at low household quantity this is only about 3x the natural background radiation it is enough to be detected and very safe to be around if you mess up and sneeze or something.
Or a banana, that way you have the scale of the thing too.
Beat me to it.
The problem with a BED is that it has so little potassium spread over such a large area, with a basic Geiger counter, it takes a minute or more of measurement to detect the difference in background levels. It is just not a big enough jump in levels for a quick demo.
Correct me if I’m wrong but 1.322MeV is the energy released in electron annihilation as gamma radiation. Potassium z is 19 and calcium 20 so it should be a beta – (elecron not positorn) which won’t annihilate right( without a source of antimatter)
It’s not too difficult to find a cheap radioactive sample on eBay. Look for uranium minerals like autunite, torbernite, uranocircite or plain old pitchblende :) If nothing else, there’s still old Fiesta ware and depression glass.
junutahaw
ncieI’m lazy and would have used “losalt” as my radiation source. At 66% potassium chloride, and 0.012% of all potassium being potassium-40, it should be a good enough for test purposes. with beta particles (@ 1.33 MeV, 89.28% of the time when it decays into calcium-40) and gamma rays (@ 1.460 MeV, 10.72% of the time when it decays into argon-40). And since at low household quantity this is only about 3x the natural background radiation it is enough to be detected and very safe to be around if you mess up and sneeze or something.
Correct me if I’m wrong but 1.322MeV is the energy released in electron annihilation as gamma radiation. Potassium z is 19 and calcium 20 so it should be a beta – (elecron not positorn) which won’t annihilate right( without a source of antimatter)
Another load of **** cut & paste from igmur
Someone could point to a good guide on how to actually build something like this?
And maybe also the STLs for the case! :D
I built a similar geiger detector recently – I’ve posted the schematic and some pictures of the construction on the project page:
https://hackaday.io/project/18767-pocket-geiger-detector
https://hackaday.io/project/20371-mini-fallout-themed-geiger-counter
Lucky Bethesda are not like Nintendo or Blizzard otherwise they’d sue everyone here.
It doesn’t contain the word “Scrolls”.
Small enough for use in the grocery store.
Or for taking to the home improvement store to make sure you don’t accidentally pick up a uranium ore countertop by mistake. These guys could have used one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html
Ha. I recall reading an anecdote years and years and years ago about a class of university students that were studying, I don’t know exactly, radiation in an urban environment or something and set up radiation monitoring equipment in the lobby of a downtown office building with an all granite facade.
Allegedly when they saw the initial radiation readings, they immediately left the building abandoning their equipment.
IIRC those eBay Russian tubes aren’t very sensitive (I think the citation is a HAD post). So this is actually a nicely finished project, (and remember, the difference between Project and Product is just 2 letters) but could it be under-reporting?
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the Russian tubes in particular. Of course, if you pick a tube that’s very small it’s not going to be very sensitive. I’ve used a different Russian tube, STS-5 (SBM-20) which is longer than the one in this post. I get about 20-25 CPM from background radiation.
I have the SparkFun Geiger counter – but I don’t know how accurate it is either. There’s probably a comparison on the Goog somewhere, but I’d hate to have a device that is under-reporting :-) Some very insightful person on HAD was talking about why medical devices are so expensive – it’s because you have to get past the vagueries of the sensor to match reality.
Wouldn’t a scintilation counter be easier?
Perhaps only useful on higher radiation rates but I remember seeing a schematic for a cheap keychain radiation detector for cops and firefighters which lasted about 10 years on a lithium cell using a tiny microprocessor to run the rate counting logic, the scintillation flash sensor, and the piezo beeper..
scintillation detectors usually require a PMT to detect the pulses from the crystal or plastic scintillator. I am not sure what you saw.
Digital X-Ray detectors are state of the art now. A grown crystal substrate is attached to a massive x/y array of phototransistors with amplification and a sample and hold for each pixel, then this array of readings is scanned into the computer and displayed. dave mentioned scintillation and what we were taught was scintillation is a single event… but the way they are taking x-ray images now is illuminating the array just like it was used to “illuminate” and expose the film with a massive number of events over a short period of time over the entire field all at once. It’s still scintillation that is being used, but in the old days scintillation generally spoke of a single gamma event, but now it means “We make the screen glow and tell the transistor array to integrate/sample/hold, then we scan the array for readings.” Those arrays are ungoshly expensive… and the salt crystal in front is still slow-grown just like it was for nuclear medicine.
Yes, they are being made now. Made to show rate of dose rather than bothering with single scintillation events. Measures overall glow of mass number of scintillation events.
Alas… just not sensitive enough for use in a grocery store.
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
thats not a sbt11a
Sent Dan an email already about that fix. This was supposed to use a SBT-11A but because of it’s size, I had to opt for an SI-29BG
https://hackaday.io/project/20371-mini-fallout-themed-geiger-counter
Everyone’s complaining about how great/bad it looks and here I am wondering about what people in radioactive zones do if they accidentally walked into a radioactively-dangerous area. What do they do after that? Do they have a recovery plan or do they like, just accept it and move on?
“Mind the Geiger counter!” -Cosworth