So, you're probably wondering what you're
looking at here. This is my geiger counter
project that I've been working on for about
the past year. I decided to build this project
as I discovered these cheaply available radiation
monitor boards on Amazon or AliExpress, and
although they, as they stand they give you
a nice clicking sound, the recognisable sound
you hear on movies and TV, they don't really
do an awful lot. So, I decided to up the ante
a bit by connecting this board to a Raspberry
Pi, feeding the data into InfluxDB and showing
it with Grafana, but then of course it needed
a fancy case. So I set off on this expedition
to build a steampunk-style geiger counter
case, including custom-machined brass parts,
LEDs, and nixie tubes. And so everything you
see here, pretty much apart from the copper
pipe is custom made. So, that includes the
woodwork, the electronics, the nixie tubes,
well not the nixie tubes themselves. The nixie
tubes are from Ebay, but the steel plate that
they're mounted on and all the brass nameplates
are all custom made for this project. My thinking
behind the design of the thing was that I
wanted to replicate the old-style of showing
radiation counts. So, I found these things
called dekatron tubes online. In addition,
I added a mechanical counter that's got a
servo in the base, and that provides like
a count that retains even when the thing is
not powered on. I tested the counter with
a radiation sample from an old gas lamp, which
I believe is Thorium, and so you'll see me
throw that on top of the device and you can
see the counters go crazy. I also added a
couple of toggle switches so you can flip
the sound on and off. So the idea is you can
leave this thing powered on, on a shelf, and
then you don't want that clicking away all
day long so you can just flip the sound off,
and then the idea is that if the background
radiation does go crazy you'll see all the
flashing lights and the counter. So yeah that
was my geiger counter project, feel free to
check out the blog post where I've got a whole
load more photos and a build guide, and thanks
for watching.
