Monitor Radiation with a Raspberry Pi | Hacker News Reader

Monitor Radiation with a Raspberry Pi

nbailey.ca

82 pointsGroup_B34 comments

They have been around for years, have a similar global presence, and won a Hackaday.com prize back in the day.

It isn't an RPi but is a great device. The platform has been steadily upgraded over the years to accomodate a wide range of environmental sensors. They are a great group of people with a focus on providing tools needed to quantify the extent of our self-inflicted environmental problems.

Price: $549 USD

Wow...I would love to and there isn't anything close to my quite big city right in the middle of Europe but this is just too high for such a passive fun project.

The availability and accessibility(incl. price) is what makes RPi a great compute device for DIY projects, It's sad that the chip shortage has put breaks on that.

Interesting that rpi projects are being posted today when it's impossible to get one.

https://rpilocator.com/

I would argue that any old 256/512MB first gen Pi would suffice, and those are easily found second hand. Not everything involving a Pi requires an 8GB Pi 4 model. Most things involving a Pi don't even require a Pi.

My counter used an ATTiny. That was overkill for counting, likely.

I'm guessing an ESP of any stripe would be a low bar for measuring and networking a tube up.

You can buy a starter kit, plenty of them. It's double the price but if you starting with rpi it's necessary.

Some stores in Finland have them. But you might be correct: Looks like the stores in Finland have stock left but seem to have difficulties ordering more. The demand must be so low, that they're still only slowly running out of the stock they have.

Don't you always have one stored for "that one project" which may come one day?

I do...

I wish. I had to rip out one in-use for a project I was more interested in. Three is not enough for me. I didn't have much money when they were available though. So now I have money but buy nothing. Cue recession.

I feel you.

I needed one at work and probably got one from the last batch...after waiting for months.

Feels more and more like back behind the iron curtain again.

Apparently along your RPI you also need a device called GQ electronics GMC-320v5. I don't know what that is but it seems pretty important to make the measurment.

It is a Geiger-Mueller tube aka geiger counter capable of counting incident ionizing radiation.

Gotta love half-writeups like this. A better title for that blog post should be "Set up [gadget] with Raspberry Pi and radmon.org".

For any of you GMC Geiger counter owners:

Here is my WIP hobby project for interacting with GMC devices using the Web Serial standard: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/petalite-lapis-fern

Connect the Geiger counter with your web browser via USB, no further software installation required. Also works with Smartphones via USB OTG.

Does Windows support serial over usb without installing third-party drivers?

It's a Web standard, currently implemented in Chrome, Edge, and Opera: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Serial_...

So it works e.g. with Chrome on Windows. And yes, no third-party driver required.

The GMC Geiger counters provide a Serial-over-USB connection. THe GMC devices can then be controlled and read over a byte-oriented protocol.

That is a tempting little project but that Geiger counter is costly for a little hobby project. How about this cheaper alternative?

https://www.adafruit.com/product/483

Is there any data on the longevity of the tube when ran continuously? I have a mightyohm kit, but I decided against building a monitor device around it because I've heard rumors that the tube quickly degrades if ran 24/7. I don't think I ever saw any kind of measurements that would confirm that rumor though.

> Detect particles and/or make a cool random number generator

Nice! (Through the timestamps of the detector's reactions.)

I did this with my geiger counter recently and blogged about it. Very fun.

https://partofthething.com/thoughts/making-true-random-numbe...

Aliexpress seems to have sensors at ~30 GBP, but still a little high for something not super useful

radwatch.berkeley.edu https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/dosenet/ Fair warning: I am a previous developer!

i've been thinking of buying a Geiger-Müller counter here in india but amazon results are either too expensive or sketcky AF.

has anyone bought one ? there isnt a lot of info about this

What sort of detector are you looking for? An all-integrated portable unit with display telling you counts and equivalent sieverts? Or are you looking for a more DIY approach with driving soviet GM tubes with flyback transformers? (I've done the latter and I own a bunch of new old stock tubes)

The "only moderately sketchy" counters are all in the $100+ USD range depending on what features you want (wifi enabled alpha detector that can play music and has laser pointer? sign me up!)

i dont know man..... i hike a bit and imagine strapping that with me and suddenly going tick...tick.tick.....

otherwise i have no real use for it,

https://www.amazon.in/Radiation-Dosimeter-Professional-Radio...

https://www.amazon.in/Ubersweet%C2%AE-Practical-Electromagne...

https://www.amazon.in/Counter-Radiation-Detector-Versatile-A...

like a few i found on amazon india but i dont know if they are even real or not

The truly burning question I'm left with after reading TFA is:

How much extra radiation does the RPi-eiger counter introduce to the scene?

What do you mean? That the external equipment itself is somehow radioactive, or what?

If OP is worried about the equipment being radioactive, I'd like to reassure that Geiger counter electronics and RPi are not particularly more radioactive than any other household or natural object. A Geiger–Müller tube is just a canister of low pressure Penning mixture, mostly noble gasses like argon or neon, and some other gasses added for quenching. A voltage is applied across leads of the tube, and a count is detected whenever the tube conducts due to being excited by passing ionizing radiation. There's nothing in this setup that creates ionizing radiation.

Interesting to note that, semiconductor encapsulating epoxies are often manufactured to be extra non-radioactive, as presence of even small amounts of naturally occurring trace radioactivity, when directly against the semiconductor die without any distance to attenuate alpha particles, can cause circuits to experience much more errors like bit flips or latch up.

I'm curious why there is no solid state detector? We've had tons of advancements in solid state optical devices like emitters. But have there been no advancements to radiation detection in 100 years since the G-M tube was invented?

There absolutely are solid state detectors and major innovations! People nowadays use scintillator detectors with photomultipliers, for things like research and more precise counters.

Scintillation counters use some material, often a plastic, that "scintillate," meaning it can absorb high energy particles and re-emit them as lower energy photons. The low energy photons are then amplified though various means, from photoelectric tubes similar to earlier night vision technology, to all integrated silicon chips [0]

In general, scintillation counters have the benefit of more precision and better ability to detect alpha particles (like GM tubes with quartz windows) and also don't require high voltages to drive. I think they're a cool example of technology modernization, where we go from the somewhat janky, almost steampunk aesthetic of soviet geiger tubes driven by crude looking flyback transformers, to low voltage, highly precise, extremely integrated and miniaturized modern detectors powered by semiconductors.

[0] https://www.onsemi.com/products/sensors/photodetectors-sipm-...

Interesting! Thanks for the good information.

Maybe you're thinking about electromagnetic radiation. I highly doubt the RPI would produce gamma rays, but I can assure you that it produces radio waves. I guess it depends what kind of radiation you're measuring.

In terms of radio waves, besides intended emissions like WiFi, well designed modern circuits release little spurious electromagnetic radiation. There's a whole field of engineering that goes into this, called electromagnetic compatibility. Basically the layout of the board feature ground planes and return vias that improve signal integrity while reducing any unwanted emissions.

Avoiding interference is not just altruistic due to the reciprocal property of electromagnetism: a design that does not accidentally create antennas and emit junk, is less susceptible to receiving interference from external sources

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