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.

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_b...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We need the iconic sound of the geiger counter

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

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.

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