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DIY Quick'n'Dirty Geiger Counter

A Geiger Counter made from stuff i had on hand

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Welp, the bug is in me, so I better make a Geiger counter too, right?
Right?

So... Radiation, huh? Skyfall (the Russian thing that happened). Are you affraid? Good, you shouldn't be. Everything is basically normal. But how're you gonna know everything is fine? With a Geiger Counter, of course.

I've literally made this one in a couple of days, including the 3D printed case. I'm still waiting on a BNC connector 

I tried being all smart and making a high voltage supply, a pulse discriminator, blah blah.... And i've got the files and boards... And one of them even has a place for an Atmega 328. Meh, might do something about that.

But for now, ive made this: '

Small, rechargable and yellow. Same colour as the Gamma Scout, but rechargable and smaller. Oh, and it also works with a number of geiger muller tubes:

Ignore the High Voltage power supply. The big grill thing is an SBT-10A. It's a Russian pancake-style geiger tube, sensitive to both Alpha, Beta and Gamma rays. HUGE Mica Window, very fragile and very sensitive. The background on this thing is 180 Counts per Minute!!!!!

Aaaaand i've made it into a probe...


Aaaand i got 2 of them... 

The big cylinder tube is a SI-20G tube. It's a very good tube as well. Very sensitive to background but not as much to point-sources.  

The glass cylinders are a SI-22BG, SI-21BG and the very insensitive SI-3BG. The SI-3BG barely registers one count per minute at background but it goes to 300 Roentgen per Hour (Open Reactor Core levels).

I've made one into a very pretty probe: Complete with BNC connector. 

As you can see, the probe isn't that much bigger than the BNC itself.

If there's ever a nuclear catastrophe, I'll be dead, but ready :D.

Here it is, next to the scintillation detector

geigerCounter.ino

Slapped together code... Seems to work just fine.

ino - 840.00 bytes - 08/29/2019 at 11:33

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  • 1 × Theremino Geiger Adapter I was lazy and i got a complete Geiger counter power supply and pulse discriminator.
  • 1 × Arduino Pro Micro Lazy... Told you
  • 1 × 1400mAh Battery LiPo
  • 1 × Charger and 5V Boost Converter Sparkfun Powercell
  • 1 × 3D Printed Case

View all 8 components

  • Finalized

    Alex Lungu09/04/2019 at 09:59 0 comments

    Well.

    It's done.

    It has a power switch, a nice quality BNC connector and it charges via Micro USB. My coding skills also seem to be not too shabby, since it hasn't acted up yet, and the values seem to agree quite nicely with the Gamma Scout.

    Also: 

    Probes!

    The grey box is a pancake Alpha-Beta-Gamma probe, using the SBT-10A tube.

    I'm still waiting on an adequately long BNC cable. This one's too short, my other one's too long.

    Handle's made from a piece of Heat-shrink tubing. The biggest and thickest one I had on hand. It's simply glued to the case. I don't think it's going to stay put for long, but if it breaks, i'm going to figure out a better, comfier handle. 

    The small silver probe is the High Dose probe i've made. It is based on the SI-3BG tube, which goes up to 300 Roentgen per hour (open reactor core levels).

    That's about it. 

    Hope you like it

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