8 ms·

Flipper Zero Geiger Counter

270 points by wgx 1y ago

Chabsff 1y ago
I know that footguns are broadly "on-brand" for the flipper zero ecosystem, but exposing high-voltage leads like that without any warning whatsoever seems a bit much.
- superxpro12 1y ago
  Is there a schematic? How high we talkin?
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    Hundreds of volts
    - leshenka 1y ago
      but how many amps though?
      - hgomersall 1y ago
        How many is safe? I don't mean that facetiously - do you have a good understanding of a safe power limit on a source at hundreds of volts?
        vlovich123 1y ago
        Depends on the specific conditions but less than 2mA for AC should only be a tingle and closer to 5mA for DC will be a slight tingling.
        JohnFen 1y ago
        > less than 2mA for AC should only be a tingle Yep, and even with AC, it depends on the frequency. There are a ton of variables affecting how dangerous electricity is to people, so it's hard to make general statements about it.
        vegadw 1y ago
        There's a really good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGD-oSwJv3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGD-oSwJv3E But even beyond that, the maximum power output will still be pretty limited. If you short the HV rails, it will almost certainly start to drop in voltage and raise in current quickly, but only to the limits of the resistance from other elements in series and the power source's output ability. I strongly doubt you could even make something dangerous from the Flipper, at least unless you attach a large cap, let it charge slowly, and attach a taser module.
        OkayPhysicist 1y ago
        Talking a bit out of my ass here as someone whose EE experience ended at graduation, but a good general rule is if you stay below 5 mA continuous, it is rather difficult to injure yourself. For extremely short shocks (like you get when you discharge a capacitor across yourself) you can get away with a lot more than that, though. I would be rather surprised if a device that is powered off a lithium ion battery like the one in the Flipper Zero managed to seriously injure someone.
        idiotsecant 1y ago
        Yes. Someone else already did the hard work for us on that. GFCIs commonly trip at 5mA. Pretty hard to really hurt yourself below that.
        superxpro12 1y ago
        15mA is the limit in my brain. Im sure someone will chime in with a different number but its around here. The thing to remember is the output impedance. You can have 1000's of volts at a node, but its sourced by a VERY high impedance output. so when you touch it with your hands (which is like 100kohm on a dry day), the voltage collapses because of the voltage divider your hand created. But if the output impedance is low (transmission lines), well its game over.
- ooterness 1y ago
  Geiger counter with built-in taser. It's a feature, not a bug.
  - wellthisisgreat 1y ago
    Fallout vibes
- JohnFen 1y ago
  I don't know about the details of this device, but in general, simply being high-voltage doesn't automatically mean it's dangerous. One of the machines I work with in my day job has probes that put out around a thousand volts, but it's totally safe to touch them with your bare hands. You won't even feel a tingle. That said, it's always prudent to treat any live electrical line as dangerous unless you know for a fact that it isn't, of course.
  - giveita 1y ago
    Why is the 1000v safe? My guess is energy released is small e.g. a small capacitor. Or internal resistance is high so it becomes much less when you touch it. Or you mean touch one end and it is DC.
    - JohnFen 1y ago
      I'm no EE, but my understanding is that it's partially because the amperage is very low and partially because the signal is AC operating at a frequency that causes a large impedance mismatch between the probe and people. It's counterintuitive enough that the probes actually have an "anti-warning" label to inform people that they are safe to touch.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  About the same voltage as a carpet shock.
- emsign 1y ago
  I'd highly recommend printing an enclosure for it.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Chinese Geiger counter kits sometimes include a single piece of plexiglass or nothing at all. I have one I only use when placed inside a plastic bag, so it's not going to be detecting any α. I haven't yet put it up against my CDV-717.
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  Current kills. Voltage just makes it possible for the current to get into you.
- umvi 1y ago
  High voltage means nothing if the power source can't deliver the current. You could use a transformer to step up a AAA battery to a billion volts and it wouldn't do anything because a battery can't actually push out 1B/[your body's resistance] amps. With low voltage battery circuits the main thing you have to be wary of is capacitors because those can push out a lot more current than the battery itself. Usually you can judge how much a capacitor would hurt if you touched it based on its size. If you have a device with 20 batteries charging a baseball sized capacitor, be very cautious (like the DIY gauss guns/rail guns you see on youtube). Even a thimble sized capacitor will jolt you surprisingly hard. One time I touched the charged capacitor of a disposable camera and the discharge gave me quite the zing.
  - jcalvinowens 1y ago
    > High voltage means nothing if the power source can't deliver the current It can still be dangerous though, it can trickle charge an output capacitance which will deliver the current to hurt you. A small battery only charges it more slowly, the end result is a function only of voltage (assuming the battery has sufficient capacity to completely charge the capacitance).
    - giveita 1y ago
      Did you just invent a taser :)
- numpad0 1y ago
  I believe it also doesn't make a lot of sense to have a real Geiger tube and have it exposed. For the sexond, Geigers are binary, they only report detection events, not types. So you don't want it to be triggered on non-X rays like interferences from computers around, and you might also want to be able to occasionally remove surface contaminants from the equipment. Both of these are easily achieved by giving it a durable opaque case which is how everybody do these. And for the first, I believe a modern photodiode taped over is by itself more sensitive than Geigers, even more so if coupled to a scintillator crystal(salts that glows in x-rays), not to speak of spectrometer based systems that can additionally tell energy levels therefore types and biological damage levels of incoming rays. The real Geiger tube running on display is cool, but that's strictly it. I believe.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- GuB-42 1y ago
  It is significant though? The suggested board is powered by USB, that's 5V 500mA, so, 2.5W. Let's say the tube is run at the recommended 380V, at 2.5W, that's a current of 6.5mA, which is barely painful, and not dangerous. I guess that with that power, if the circuit really wanted to hurt you, it could boost the voltage in the 50-100V range for a ~30mA shock, which is definitely painful and the start of what is considered dangerous. Electric safety is complicated, there is so much to take into account: current, voltage, frequency, location, presence of water, etc... Skin resistance is far from constant. Maybe it could do more if it disregards the 500mA USB limit to the full 1.2A that the Flipper Zero can deliver, or with capacitors, but it doesn't seem to have enough of them for a significant power reserve. If it could do that, I would also worry about plugging it to my Flipper Zero or to anything of value out of fear of damaging it, as it would have to be of pretty terrible design, but well, that's AliExpress after all.
jasonfrost 1y ago
Really neat. It'd pair well with an alarm the user can set at the appropriate turn back dose for custom doses and concerning dose rates
vegadw 1y ago
This project is neat and OP did a good job, but I think the interest in Geiger counters among hackers needs an update. The Geiger kit on Adafruit (Yes, I know that makes the cost a lot higher to be from them instead of Ali, but I think is a good baseline for "finished good" price) is $99. Meanwhile, Raysid or Radiacode let you do full on gamma spectrometry, for about 2.5x the price. And, like, yeah, 2.5x the price. I'm not oblivious to that being significant, but to me it's sorta like an GT1030 with DDR4 - it's about $100 or you could get an RTX 3060 for a bit over $300. Like, you might have a use where you ONLY need a cheap display card, but there's a reason LTT calls the 1030 eWaste from the factory. Similarly, you might get enough out of the Geiger or it might do something the Radiacode doesn't for you but for most hobbyist, I doubt it.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  Tangential, but this is the right crowd to know: what's the best digital visible light spectrometer in that kind of price range?
- wer232essf 1y ago
  [dead]
- tavavex 1y ago
  > Like, you might have a use where you ONLY need a cheap display card, but there's a reason LTT calls the 1030 eWaste from the factory. Similarly, you might get enough out of the Geiger or it might do something the Radiacode doesn't for you but for most hobbyist, I doubt it. I think the biggest difference here is that GPUs are fairly general-purpose devices. Even if you only need one as a cheapest possible way to output something to your monitor, it's easy to imagine how that might change and why you might as well future-proof your setup. The other thing you didn't mention about why a 1030 is manufactured e-waste is in large part the competition from the used market. You can get equivalent functionality for a few dozen dollars, so buying a brand new 1030 as an individual makes no sense. This isn't a problem in the specialty radiation device market. The thing is that most people probably don't buy Geiger counter modules or devices because of a burning need to do some specific tasks, like you would with GPUs. I'll bet that most people buying the Adafruit kit are getting it as a novelty, or for educational purposes, or to just have something reporting the background radiation around them out of curiosity. Because of this, price is the most important factor for these groups. I've never heard of Radiacode, and looking it up, it seems seriously impressive - especially the portable gamma spectrometry that you mentioned. But I also know that it's a very niche device, and most people who would shell out $250+ for this need it for chemistry projects, exploring irradiated areas, evaluating radioactive items and so on. It's not a lot of people, considering that if you just want something to give you a readout, you'll get the <$99 product, and if you need it occupationally, you'll already have received a professional device.
joahnn_s 1y ago
We need the iconic sound of the geiger counter
ge96 1y ago
There is a subreddit where people measure the radiation given off by random things you'll see them pointing some device at the ground or an object. Like an old glass cup
- emsign 1y ago
  If you have one of those small scintillators on you all the time you can measure your own radiation. A significant spike in the spectrum for Potassium-40.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  The only thing I can find radioactive enough to be picked up by a cheap GM tube kit is vintage real green uranium glassware. Even a giant bunch of bananas doesn't increase counts enough. Smoke detectors also don't seem to be radioactive enough either.
morninglight 1y ago
Do a search for "MightyOhm Geiger Counter Kit Bundle" and you will find a stand alone version of the same circuit along with photos. Although the PCB has a "High Voltage" label, it is powered by 2 X AAA batteries which are might be very lethal if ingested.\s
- morninglight 1y ago
  Here it is - https://mightyohm.com/files/geiger/images/6275026497_3cf9f175b2_c.jpg https://mightyohm.com/files/geiger/images/6275026497_3cf9f17...
- vegadw 1y ago
  Powered by 2x AAA batteries != not high voltage. Boost converters can reach high voltages pretty easily. That's why you can get USB powered nixie clocks, for example.
- QuinnyPig 1y ago
  You can shock the hell out of yourself with the capacitors for the flash in a disposable camera, so the AAA battery source isn't exactly exculpatory...
whytevuhuni 1y ago
I wonder if a device with worse RAM can measure radiation by checking how many of its own bits are being randomly flipped. Coding a program that could self-heal and survive in such a situation would be fun.
- lights0123 1y ago
  A device with a camera can: https://hackaday.com/2012/01/15/turn-your-camera-phone-into-a-geiger-counter/ https://hackaday.com/2012/01/15/turn-your-camera-phone-into-...
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  You'd crash the hardware just as often as the program.
- aa-jv 1y ago
  Back in my SIL4 days, we had a de-capped memory SIMM in the lab that we used to test resilience to cosmic rays for certification and other testing procedures .. often requiring a junior dev to sit there waiting for the signal and remove the lead shield we'd place over it when not testing, in order to trigger a cosmic bit shift. We had t-shirts for those guys "Guardian of the Cosmic Bit" printed up, was a fun time ..
burnt-resistor 1y ago
It's cute, looks nice, and bravo for shipping something, but FZ is too hyped and too expensive for what it is. I have a similar Geiger counter that functions standalone and works as an Arduino module. It doesn't appear to be very sensitive because bananas don't increase counts. The only household object able to barely increase counts was some vintage uranium glass tucked away in a corner behind a display case.
aftbit 1y ago
You can get a standalone (cheap) Geiger counter like the GQ GMC-300S on Amazon (B0B541D433) for ~$50. If you're interested in monitoring radiation and have a higher budget to play with, I highly suggest stepping up to the Radiacode 103G (~$600) or the Radeye B20-ER (~$3000). The Radiacode can only detect gamma/x-ray, but is a spectrometer so it can determine the energy level of the radiation. The Radeye can do the full suite of γ α β, and can provide energy-compensated dose rates when its gamma filter is in place.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  There are/were Arduino-compatible GM tube kits from China for $35 USD.
TheJoeMan 1y ago
I admire their solution to the modulo fair randomness issue is just "re-rolling" the out of scope (7,8,9, or 0) values.
anonymousiam 1y ago
I bought a few Geiger tubes about 10 years ago. The larger one is more sensitive, but doesn't detect beta radiation. The smaller one does alpha/beta/gamma, but it's less sensitive. When you buy the tubes, you don't get the benefit of a calibrated measurement device, so I also bought a few Cesium 137 calibration sources. (No idea what sort of government watch lists I ended up on after placing that order.) Next, I built a simple Geiger counter based upon a Raspberry Pi (Model B) and a Piface LCD display. I wanted to increase dynamic range of the measurements, so I did some circuit modifications to recharge the Geiger tube faster after an event. This allowed for higher counts, but consumes more power and lowers sensitivity. Also, getting the Pi to interrupt on each event for efficient counting has its limitations. A separate digital counter that is reset upon each read sample is better. Anyway, it's a rabbit hole that ended up taking a lot more time and effort than I expected, but I was happy with the results.
BetterGeiger 1y ago
Cool project! My business is Better Geiger (www.bettergeiger.com), I design and sell radiation detectors. I just hope people keep in mind the capabilities and limitations of those simple Geiger tubes. Radon was mentioned on the project website, yes technically radon decay products are detectable but pracfically a Geiger tube is reacting only to terrestrial, cosmic, and other sources of radiation, not anything to do with radon. Measuring radon generally requires a dedicated device (I recommend ecosense, at least until I get around to designing one). You correctly noted that such a tube can't accurately measure dose, that's because it is not energy compensated, so usually such a tube has a count to dose conversion factor for Cs-137 that will cause major overestimation in realistic scenarios. Those cheap tubes of that type also saturates easily in radiation fields that are really hazardous, making it fairly useless in an emergency situation. That is the main distinguishing feature of my products, high range and energy compensated. I have put out some YouTube videos that go into more detail about radiation dose, fallout and how to reduce risks, etc. I've given a lot of thought to doing a project like this with a scintillator, but I don't think the demand is there for me to do it before a lot of other ideas I have... When a cheapo standalone Geiger tube device can be had for $50, my products with scintillator go for $150 or $200 for the very high sensitivity version, then for $250-600 there are a few gamma spec products like radiacode, raysid, and radview with varying other features that are fun for hobbyists (though be aware none of those go to high dose rate range). For hackability mine offers access to the digital and analog outputs, but it's not really made for gamma spec so the spectrum quality is poor, but it can be a fun way to play. I've given a lot of thought to something designed more for DIY people, but in my experience very few people actually want that, most just want plug and play, and the ones that do request it usually don't even follow through. I've only communicated with a couple people that actually pulled a spec from a better geiger. Maybe that would be different if I designed a device specifically for DIY, something really small with simple serial comm output or something like that... Maybe some day.
- monkmartinez 1y ago
  Read above now and twice on Sunday. I love the idea of using the tube and measurements as a random number generator! However, please treat the whole category of homemade devices to measure/detect "bad shit" as novelty and nothing else. If you are actually concerned enough to really measure/detect harmful materials, buy the proper devices. Learn how to calibrate and how to use them properly. The last thing our 911 system needs are people calling with aliexpress radiation detectors going off in a cancer center.
majke 1y ago
When I was playing with arduino geiger counter, apart from of course breaking the tube, I struggled with counting the results. On one hand it's trivial - counts (ticks) per second. However, this (of course!) can be very spiky. I ended up using pretty simple EWMA to smooth the results for user interaction. Anything really works, short decay is fine. Then the really fun bit, was trying it with more serious radiation source, and guess what.... interrupt per tick, is... really bad! I was easily able to overwhelm the arduino, too many interrupts. Fun project to understand interrupt masking.
criddell 1y ago
This reminded me about a wtf moment back in 2008. New York City tried to make it illegal (misdemeanor) to posses a geiger counter without a license. Obviously, it never became law. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/locked_fire_box.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/locked_fire_b...
dividedbyzero 1y ago
Hypothetically speaking, how useful would something like that be in a nuclear weapon fallout scenario? Can such a contraption detect the important isotopes and give the user an accurate idea of the level of danger they're in, does that change over time as isotope composition changes through decay?
- 9dev 1y ago
  Are you willing to bet your life on it?
  - dividedbyzero 1y ago
    No, I'd be dead anyway. Still curious what these things can do, seeing as some people buy them for that purpose.
- BetterGeiger 1y ago
  tl;dr not useful. To make a long story short, max range is very important and these cheap tubes saturate easily, and they don't give energy-corrected dose rate. They also cannot do gamma spec (isotope identification), but that is not needed for a fallout scenario because fallout contains basically every isotope under the sun, no need to do any gamma spec. I have a very long detailed video about this topic on my youtube channel BetterGeiger
daft_pink 1y ago
Is there a maximum level to the measurement? Asking for a friend… “3.6 roentgen. Not great, not terrible.”
- BetterGeiger 1y ago
  I am not certain but this tube looks like an M4011 which typically measures up to 1 mSv/hr for a reference Cs-137 source. Pretty low maximum level, not suitable for emergencies.
- wgx 1y ago
  Why did I see graphite on the roof?
ZeroCool2u 1y ago
This is cool, but if you're ever in need of a dope present, especially for someone like your father-in-law, Better Geiger[1] is awesome. My FIL was stoked. Loves checking the bananas at costco and other random stuff at costco. [1]: https://www.bettergeiger.com/ https://www.bettergeiger.com/

270 points by wgx 1y ago

I know that footguns are broadly "on-brand" for the flipper zero ecosystem, but exposing high-voltage leads like that without any warning whatsoever seems a bit much.

superxpro12 1y ago
Is there a schematic? How high we talkin?
- colechristensen 1y ago
  Hundreds of volts
  - leshenka 1y ago
    but how many amps though?
    - hgomersall 1y ago
      How many is safe? I don't mean that facetiously - do you have a good understanding of a safe power limit on a source at hundreds of volts?
      - vlovich123 1y ago
        Depends on the specific conditions but less than 2mA for AC should only be a tingle and closer to 5mA for DC will be a slight tingling.
        JohnFen 1y ago
        > less than 2mA for AC should only be a tingle Yep, and even with AC, it depends on the frequency. There are a ton of variables affecting how dangerous electricity is to people, so it's hard to make general statements about it.
      - vegadw 1y ago
        There's a really good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGD-oSwJv3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGD-oSwJv3E But even beyond that, the maximum power output will still be pretty limited. If you short the HV rails, it will almost certainly start to drop in voltage and raise in current quickly, but only to the limits of the resistance from other elements in series and the power source's output ability. I strongly doubt you could even make something dangerous from the Flipper, at least unless you attach a large cap, let it charge slowly, and attach a taser module.
      - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
        Talking a bit out of my ass here as someone whose EE experience ended at graduation, but a good general rule is if you stay below 5 mA continuous, it is rather difficult to injure yourself. For extremely short shocks (like you get when you discharge a capacitor across yourself) you can get away with a lot more than that, though. I would be rather surprised if a device that is powered off a lithium ion battery like the one in the Flipper Zero managed to seriously injure someone.
      - idiotsecant 1y ago
        Yes. Someone else already did the hard work for us on that. GFCIs commonly trip at 5mA. Pretty hard to really hurt yourself below that.
      - superxpro12 1y ago
        15mA is the limit in my brain. Im sure someone will chime in with a different number but its around here. The thing to remember is the output impedance. You can have 1000's of volts at a node, but its sourced by a VERY high impedance output. so when you touch it with your hands (which is like 100kohm on a dry day), the voltage collapses because of the voltage divider your hand created. But if the output impedance is low (transmission lines), well its game over.
ooterness 1y ago
Geiger counter with built-in taser. It's a feature, not a bug.
- wellthisisgreat 1y ago
  Fallout vibes
JohnFen 1y ago
I don't know about the details of this device, but in general, simply being high-voltage doesn't automatically mean it's dangerous. One of the machines I work with in my day job has probes that put out around a thousand volts, but it's totally safe to touch them with your bare hands. You won't even feel a tingle. That said, it's always prudent to treat any live electrical line as dangerous unless you know for a fact that it isn't, of course.
- giveita 1y ago
  Why is the 1000v safe? My guess is energy released is small e.g. a small capacitor. Or internal resistance is high so it becomes much less when you touch it. Or you mean touch one end and it is DC.
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    I'm no EE, but my understanding is that it's partially because the amperage is very low and partially because the signal is AC operating at a frequency that causes a large impedance mismatch between the probe and people. It's counterintuitive enough that the probes actually have an "anti-warning" label to inform people that they are safe to touch.
CamperBob2 1y ago
About the same voltage as a carpet shock.
emsign 1y ago
I'd highly recommend printing an enclosure for it.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Chinese Geiger counter kits sometimes include a single piece of plexiglass or nothing at all. I have one I only use when placed inside a plastic bag, so it's not going to be detecting any α. I haven't yet put it up against my CDV-717.
madaxe_again 1y ago
Current kills. Voltage just makes it possible for the current to get into you.
umvi 1y ago
High voltage means nothing if the power source can't deliver the current. You could use a transformer to step up a AAA battery to a billion volts and it wouldn't do anything because a battery can't actually push out 1B/[your body's resistance] amps. With low voltage battery circuits the main thing you have to be wary of is capacitors because those can push out a lot more current than the battery itself. Usually you can judge how much a capacitor would hurt if you touched it based on its size. If you have a device with 20 batteries charging a baseball sized capacitor, be very cautious (like the DIY gauss guns/rail guns you see on youtube). Even a thimble sized capacitor will jolt you surprisingly hard. One time I touched the charged capacitor of a disposable camera and the discharge gave me quite the zing.
- jcalvinowens 1y ago
  > High voltage means nothing if the power source can't deliver the current It can still be dangerous though, it can trickle charge an output capacitance which will deliver the current to hurt you. A small battery only charges it more slowly, the end result is a function only of voltage (assuming the battery has sufficient capacity to completely charge the capacitance).
  - giveita 1y ago
    Did you just invent a taser :)
numpad0 1y ago
I believe it also doesn't make a lot of sense to have a real Geiger tube and have it exposed. For the sexond, Geigers are binary, they only report detection events, not types. So you don't want it to be triggered on non-X rays like interferences from computers around, and you might also want to be able to occasionally remove surface contaminants from the equipment. Both of these are easily achieved by giving it a durable opaque case which is how everybody do these. And for the first, I believe a modern photodiode taped over is by itself more sensitive than Geigers, even more so if coupled to a scintillator crystal(salts that glows in x-rays), not to speak of spectrometer based systems that can additionally tell energy levels therefore types and biological damage levels of incoming rays. The real Geiger tube running on display is cool, but that's strictly it. I believe.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
GuB-42 1y ago
It is significant though? The suggested board is powered by USB, that's 5V 500mA, so, 2.5W. Let's say the tube is run at the recommended 380V, at 2.5W, that's a current of 6.5mA, which is barely painful, and not dangerous. I guess that with that power, if the circuit really wanted to hurt you, it could boost the voltage in the 50-100V range for a ~30mA shock, which is definitely painful and the start of what is considered dangerous. Electric safety is complicated, there is so much to take into account: current, voltage, frequency, location, presence of water, etc... Skin resistance is far from constant. Maybe it could do more if it disregards the 500mA USB limit to the full 1.2A that the Flipper Zero can deliver, or with capacitors, but it doesn't seem to have enough of them for a significant power reserve. If it could do that, I would also worry about plugging it to my Flipper Zero or to anything of value out of fear of damaging it, as it would have to be of pretty terrible design, but well, that's AliExpress after all.

jasonfrost 1y ago

Really neat. It'd pair well with an alarm the user can set at the appropriate turn back dose for custom doses and concerning dose rates

vegadw 1y ago

This project is neat and OP did a good job, but I think the interest in Geiger counters among hackers needs an update. The Geiger kit on Adafruit (Yes, I know that makes the cost a lot higher to be from them instead of Ali, but I think is a good baseline for "finished good" price) is $99. Meanwhile, Raysid or Radiacode let you do full on gamma spectrometry, for about 2.5x the price. And, like, yeah, 2.5x the price. I'm not oblivious to that being significant, but to me it's sorta like an GT1030 with DDR4 - it's about $100 or you could get an RTX 3060 for a bit over $300. Like, you might have a use where you ONLY need a cheap display card, but there's a reason LTT calls the 1030 eWaste from the factory. Similarly, you might get enough out of the Geiger or it might do something the Radiacode doesn't for you but for most hobbyist, I doubt it.

zamadatix 1y ago
Tangential, but this is the right crowd to know: what's the best digital visible light spectrometer in that kind of price range?
wer232essf 1y ago
[dead]
tavavex 1y ago
> Like, you might have a use where you ONLY need a cheap display card, but there's a reason LTT calls the 1030 eWaste from the factory. Similarly, you might get enough out of the Geiger or it might do something the Radiacode doesn't for you but for most hobbyist, I doubt it. I think the biggest difference here is that GPUs are fairly general-purpose devices. Even if you only need one as a cheapest possible way to output something to your monitor, it's easy to imagine how that might change and why you might as well future-proof your setup. The other thing you didn't mention about why a 1030 is manufactured e-waste is in large part the competition from the used market. You can get equivalent functionality for a few dozen dollars, so buying a brand new 1030 as an individual makes no sense. This isn't a problem in the specialty radiation device market. The thing is that most people probably don't buy Geiger counter modules or devices because of a burning need to do some specific tasks, like you would with GPUs. I'll bet that most people buying the Adafruit kit are getting it as a novelty, or for educational purposes, or to just have something reporting the background radiation around them out of curiosity. Because of this, price is the most important factor for these groups. I've never heard of Radiacode, and looking it up, it seems seriously impressive - especially the portable gamma spectrometry that you mentioned. But I also know that it's a very niche device, and most people who would shell out $250+ for this need it for chemistry projects, exploring irradiated areas, evaluating radioactive items and so on. It's not a lot of people, considering that if you just want something to give you a readout, you'll get the <$99 product, and if you need it occupationally, you'll already have received a professional device.

joahnn_s 1y ago

We need the iconic sound of the geiger counter

ge96 1y ago

There is a subreddit where people measure the radiation given off by random things you'll see them pointing some device at the ground or an object. Like an old glass cup

emsign 1y ago
If you have one of those small scintillators on you all the time you can measure your own radiation. A significant spike in the spectrum for Potassium-40.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
The only thing I can find radioactive enough to be picked up by a cheap GM tube kit is vintage real green uranium glassware. Even a giant bunch of bananas doesn't increase counts enough. Smoke detectors also don't seem to be radioactive enough either.

morninglight 1y ago

Do a search for "MightyOhm Geiger Counter Kit Bundle" and you will find a stand alone version of the same circuit along with photos. Although the PCB has a "High Voltage" label, it is powered by 2 X AAA batteries which are might be very lethal if ingested.\s

morninglight 1y ago
Here it is - https://mightyohm.com/files/geiger/images/6275026497_3cf9f175b2_c.jpg https://mightyohm.com/files/geiger/images/6275026497_3cf9f17...
vegadw 1y ago
Powered by 2x AAA batteries != not high voltage. Boost converters can reach high voltages pretty easily. That's why you can get USB powered nixie clocks, for example.
QuinnyPig 1y ago
You can shock the hell out of yourself with the capacitors for the flash in a disposable camera, so the AAA battery source isn't exactly exculpatory...

whytevuhuni 1y ago

I wonder if a device with worse RAM can measure radiation by checking how many of its own bits are being randomly flipped. Coding a program that could self-heal and survive in such a situation would be fun.

lights0123 1y ago
A device with a camera can: https://hackaday.com/2012/01/15/turn-your-camera-phone-into-a-geiger-counter/ https://hackaday.com/2012/01/15/turn-your-camera-phone-into-...
privatelypublic 1y ago
You'd crash the hardware just as often as the program.
aa-jv 1y ago
Back in my SIL4 days, we had a de-capped memory SIMM in the lab that we used to test resilience to cosmic rays for certification and other testing procedures .. often requiring a junior dev to sit there waiting for the signal and remove the lead shield we'd place over it when not testing, in order to trigger a cosmic bit shift. We had t-shirts for those guys "Guardian of the Cosmic Bit" printed up, was a fun time ..

burnt-resistor 1y ago

It's cute, looks nice, and bravo for shipping something, but FZ is too hyped and too expensive for what it is. I have a similar Geiger counter that functions standalone and works as an Arduino module. It doesn't appear to be very sensitive because bananas don't increase counts. The only household object able to barely increase counts was some vintage uranium glass tucked away in a corner behind a display case.

aftbit 1y ago

You can get a standalone (cheap) Geiger counter like the GQ GMC-300S on Amazon (B0B541D433) for ~$50. If you're interested in monitoring radiation and have a higher budget to play with, I highly suggest stepping up to the Radiacode 103G (~$600) or the Radeye B20-ER (~$3000). The Radiacode can only detect gamma/x-ray, but is a spectrometer so it can determine the energy level of the radiation. The Radeye can do the full suite of γ α β, and can provide energy-compensated dose rates when its gamma filter is in place.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
There are/were Arduino-compatible GM tube kits from China for $35 USD.

TheJoeMan 1y ago

I admire their solution to the modulo fair randomness issue is just "re-rolling" the out of scope (7,8,9, or 0) values.

anonymousiam 1y ago

I bought a few Geiger tubes about 10 years ago. The larger one is more sensitive, but doesn't detect beta radiation. The smaller one does alpha/beta/gamma, but it's less sensitive. When you buy the tubes, you don't get the benefit of a calibrated measurement device, so I also bought a few Cesium 137 calibration sources. (No idea what sort of government watch lists I ended up on after placing that order.) Next, I built a simple Geiger counter based upon a Raspberry Pi (Model B) and a Piface LCD display. I wanted to increase dynamic range of the measurements, so I did some circuit modifications to recharge the Geiger tube faster after an event. This allowed for higher counts, but consumes more power and lowers sensitivity. Also, getting the Pi to interrupt on each event for efficient counting has its limitations. A separate digital counter that is reset upon each read sample is better. Anyway, it's a rabbit hole that ended up taking a lot more time and effort than I expected, but I was happy with the results.

BetterGeiger 1y ago

Cool project! My business is Better Geiger (www.bettergeiger.com), I design and sell radiation detectors. I just hope people keep in mind the capabilities and limitations of those simple Geiger tubes. Radon was mentioned on the project website, yes technically radon decay products are detectable but pracfically a Geiger tube is reacting only to terrestrial, cosmic, and other sources of radiation, not anything to do with radon. Measuring radon generally requires a dedicated device (I recommend ecosense, at least until I get around to designing one). You correctly noted that such a tube can't accurately measure dose, that's because it is not energy compensated, so usually such a tube has a count to dose conversion factor for Cs-137 that will cause major overestimation in realistic scenarios. Those cheap tubes of that type also saturates easily in radiation fields that are really hazardous, making it fairly useless in an emergency situation. That is the main distinguishing feature of my products, high range and energy compensated. I have put out some YouTube videos that go into more detail about radiation dose, fallout and how to reduce risks, etc. I've given a lot of thought to doing a project like this with a scintillator, but I don't think the demand is there for me to do it before a lot of other ideas I have... When a cheapo standalone Geiger tube device can be had for $50, my products with scintillator go for $150 or $200 for the very high sensitivity version, then for $250-600 there are a few gamma spec products like radiacode, raysid, and radview with varying other features that are fun for hobbyists (though be aware none of those go to high dose rate range). For hackability mine offers access to the digital and analog outputs, but it's not really made for gamma spec so the spectrum quality is poor, but it can be a fun way to play. I've given a lot of thought to something designed more for DIY people, but in my experience very few people actually want that, most just want plug and play, and the ones that do request it usually don't even follow through. I've only communicated with a couple people that actually pulled a spec from a better geiger. Maybe that would be different if I designed a device specifically for DIY, something really small with simple serial comm output or something like that... Maybe some day.

monkmartinez 1y ago
Read above now and twice on Sunday. I love the idea of using the tube and measurements as a random number generator! However, please treat the whole category of homemade devices to measure/detect "bad shit" as novelty and nothing else. If you are actually concerned enough to really measure/detect harmful materials, buy the proper devices. Learn how to calibrate and how to use them properly. The last thing our 911 system needs are people calling with aliexpress radiation detectors going off in a cancer center.

majke 1y ago

When I was playing with arduino geiger counter, apart from of course breaking the tube, I struggled with counting the results. On one hand it's trivial - counts (ticks) per second. However, this (of course!) can be very spiky. I ended up using pretty simple EWMA to smooth the results for user interaction. Anything really works, short decay is fine. Then the really fun bit, was trying it with more serious radiation source, and guess what.... interrupt per tick, is... really bad! I was easily able to overwhelm the arduino, too many interrupts. Fun project to understand interrupt masking.

criddell 1y ago

This reminded me about a wtf moment back in 2008. New York City tried to make it illegal (misdemeanor) to posses a geiger counter without a license. Obviously, it never became law. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/locked_fire_box.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/locked_fire_b...

dividedbyzero 1y ago

Hypothetically speaking, how useful would something like that be in a nuclear weapon fallout scenario? Can such a contraption detect the important isotopes and give the user an accurate idea of the level of danger they're in, does that change over time as isotope composition changes through decay?

9dev 1y ago
Are you willing to bet your life on it?
- dividedbyzero 1y ago
  No, I'd be dead anyway. Still curious what these things can do, seeing as some people buy them for that purpose.
BetterGeiger 1y ago
tl;dr not useful. To make a long story short, max range is very important and these cheap tubes saturate easily, and they don't give energy-corrected dose rate. They also cannot do gamma spec (isotope identification), but that is not needed for a fallout scenario because fallout contains basically every isotope under the sun, no need to do any gamma spec. I have a very long detailed video about this topic on my youtube channel BetterGeiger

daft_pink 1y ago

Is there a maximum level to the measurement? Asking for a friend… “3.6 roentgen. Not great, not terrible.”

BetterGeiger 1y ago
I am not certain but this tube looks like an M4011 which typically measures up to 1 mSv/hr for a reference Cs-137 source. Pretty low maximum level, not suitable for emergencies.
wgx 1y ago
Why did I see graphite on the roof?

ZeroCool2u 1y ago

This is cool, but if you're ever in need of a dope present, especially for someone like your father-in-law, Better Geiger[1] is awesome. My FIL was stoked. Loves checking the bananas at costco and other random stuff at costco. [1]: https://www.bettergeiger.com/ https://www.bettergeiger.com/