Geiger Counter Built In An Ohmmeter Enclosure

April 7, 2011 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Here’s a Geiger Counter that makes itself at home inside of an old Ohmmeter (translated). [Anilandro] set out to built this radiation detector in order to learn how they work. Like other diy Geiger Counter builds we’ve seen, this project assembles a circuit to interface with a gas-filled tube which serves as the detector. [Anilandro] takes a few paragraphs to discuss how this works; the Geiger tube is basically a capacitor whose electrical characteristics change as an ionizing particle passes through it.

Once he had the theory worked out he scavenged some parts to use. A broken emergency light donated its transformer to provide the high voltage needed. The rest of the circuit was built on some protoboard, and a speaker was added to output the clicking noises that have become a familiar part of the detector hardware. The tube itself is housed in a wand that attaches to the base unit through a cable. Check out some test footage of the finished unit after the break.

Continue reading “Geiger Counter Built In An Ohmmeter Enclosure” →

Geiger Counter A/D Conversion For Radiation Level Crowdsourcing

March 23, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

arduino_geiger_counter

[Akiba] and the crew at Tokyo Hakerspace are still hard at work trying to help out their fellow countrymen after the recent earthquake, tsunami, and ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan. You may remember the group as they are behind the Kimono Lantern project we featured last week. This time around, their efforts are focused on getting usable information out to those who need it.

With all of the talk about nuclear fallout, they wanted to see what sort of measurements they could get in Tokyo, however they could not locate a Geiger counter anywhere nearby. Luckily, they were eventually able to source two old counters from the Reuseum in Idaho. One is being lent out to individuals in order to check if their home’s radiation levels are safe, but it was decided that the other would reside outdoors in order to collect radiation readings from the air.

[Akiba] wanted to put the results from the external Geiger counter up on Pachube, however these old units are all analog. He figured that a quick and dirty way to do analog to digital conversion would be to monitor the chirps coming off the counter’s speaker. This was done by wiring up an Arduino to the speaker leads, and keeping track of each time the speaker was activated. This resulted in an accurate digital radiation reading, matching that of the counter’s analog display. The Arduinio wirelessly sends the information to another Arduino stationed inside his apartment, which then uploads the data to Pachube.

A walkthrough of his conversion as well as the source code for both the Arduino counter and the Pachube uploader are available on his site, in case anyone else in the Tokyo area has a Geiger counter handy and wishes to do the same.

HERF Gun Zaps More Than Your Dinner

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 76 Comments

Instructables user [Jimmy Neutron] had an old microwave sitting around and figured he might as well gut it to build a high-energy radio frequency (HERF) gun.

The concept of a HERF gun is not incredibly complex. Much like your microwave at home functions, a high voltage power source is used to drive a magnetron, which produces micro wave radiation at 2.45GHz. These waves are then guided away from the magnetron using a waveguide, towards whatever the target might be. These waves then energize the target in a similar fashion as the water molecules in your food are energized during cooking.

[Jimmy] has not quite finished his HERF gun as he still needs to build a waveguide for it and then safely mount it for use. In the meantime, check out the pair of HERF guns we found in the videos below.

As a parting note, we must stress that building a similar device is dangerous, very dangerous – especially if you do not know what you are doing. Microwaves contain high voltage components, and exposure to microwave radiation can be deadly under certain circumstances. Stay safe!

Looking for more microwave fun? Check these out!

Continue reading “HERF Gun Zaps More Than Your Dinner” →

More Radiation Test Gear

March 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This is a multifunction too for measuring radiation (translated). The measurements center around gas discharge tubes that react when ionizing particles pass through them. After reading about the counting circuit for the pair of tubes used in this handheld it’s easy to understand why these are tricky to calibrate. The handheld features a real-time clock as well as a GPS module. This way, it can not only give a readout of the radiation currently measured, but can record how much radiation exposure has accumulated over time (making this a dosimeter). An accompanying dataset records the location of the exposure. An ATmega128 drives the device, which is composed of two separate boards, a series of five navigation buttons, and a salvaged cellphone LCD for the readout. The translated page can be a bit hard to read at times, but there’s plenty of information including an abundance of schematic breakdowns with accompanying explanations of each.

This is certainly feature-rich and we think it goes way beyond the type of device that Seeed is trying to develop.

[Thanks Andrew]

Seeed Looks For Help Developing An Open Source Radiation Detector

March 18, 2011 by Mike Szczys 68 Comments

Seeed Studios, makers of the Seeeduino and fabricators of small-run PCB orders have put out a call to help develop an open source radiation detector. Will it be of any help to people in the area of Japan that is at risk? We really can’t say. But if you can lend some expertise with this, it can’t hurt. We’ve already seen a simple dosimeter project but this one sounds like it’s more on the level of a DIY Geiger counter. We know it’s possible, but the hacked together unit we saw back in 2007 had very little documentation and used parts that may be hard to come by.

The specific information needed is what type of sensor to use, what supporting circuits should be included, and what method is best to calibrate each unit. There’s a discussion going in the comment thread of that post which should be interesting to read even if you think you don’t have anything to add.

[Thanks Michael]

Monitor UV Exposure With Your Sunglasses

May 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Tired of those awful sunburns? [Nikko Knappe’s] UV sensing glasses will warn you before you become crisp and red as a lobster. The bump added to the bridge support hides a TSL230R light frequency sensor. The device automatically switches on when the arms are unfolded and starts tracking cumulative exposure. If it detects a rising UV level, or you are about to burn based on skin type, an LED inside one arm of the frames will flash to inform you.

This has some potential if you think David Brin’s Earth outlines how climate change is really going to play out. Either way it’s still fun and we give bonus points to [Nikko] for disguising the lilypad that controls this as a flowery hair-pin.

Hackable Geiger Counter

October 21, 2009 by Devlin Thyne 41 Comments

SFE_Geiger_Counter

[Aaron] A.K.A. [A1ronzo] at SparkFun has put together a hackable USB Geiger Counter. In his tutorial, he gets the Geiger counter to work as a random number generator. Later, he analyzes and discusses how well it works as a random number generator. In the past, we have seen a number of radiation detectors hacks such as the Mr. Fission digital Geiger counter, a count accumulator, and a Polonium detecting pen, Besides our inital thoughts of speeding up the number generation, and using it as a special character device, what else can you come up with to do with this device?