bunnie Huang releases open-source geiger counter reference design

[slateraptor]

Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design

EDIT: Jeff Keyzer's geiger counter design deserves a mention...of course, Amp Hour listeners probably know all about it.

[NiHaoMike]

It would be interesting to be able to also use it as a hardware random number generator.

[Zad]

Very laudable, and a sexy enclosure for it, but essentially just another GM tube detector. I have seen a (small) amount of work done with semiconductor radiation detectors, and I think this has to be the way forward with regards to battery life and integration into end products such as phones, watches, cars, USB devices etc.

[slateraptor]

Very laudable, and a sexy enclosure for it, but essentially just another GM tube detector. I have seen a (small) amount of work done with semiconductor radiation detectors, and I think this has to be the way forward with regards to battery life and integration into end products such as phones, watches, cars, USB devices etc.

For me, the real take-home message of the post came in bunnie talking about the evolution of his design iterations: initial thoughts, what did and didn't make it and why. These are aspects most will never hear about outside of direct involvement with an engineering design team. Similarly, it's also what I feel makes Dave's recent videos so valuable.

bunnie mentioned that one of his design goals was for the capability of detecting not just gamma but alpha and beta particles as well, which ultimately drove the decision to use a much larger detector. Seeing as how there seems to be a direct correlation between detectable particles and detector size, would these semiconductor radiation detectors have such capability?