Cooking Hacks has launched Radiation Sensor Board for Arduino. The main finality of this board is to help people in Japan to measure the levels of radiation in their everyday life after the unfortunate earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in March 2011 and cause the nuclear radiation leakages in Fukushima. We want to give the chance to measure by themselves this levels instead of trusting in the general advises which are being broadcasted. The usage of this sensor board along with the affordable and easy to use Arduino platform helps people to get radiation values from specific places.
As technical guys, we feel the responsibility of providing our support in those areas where we can contribute. As a result, first batch has been shipped to Japan at no charge to the Tokyo Hackerspace and other working groups.
The design of the board is open hardware and the source code is released under GPL.
Quick Overview:
Detect Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation integrating any Geiger Tube and read this levels using Arduino. As well as from the terminal, the radiation levels can be shown using different actuators.
While the motivations a laudable I worry about this project. There is no way you can determine if the radiation level is safe with equipment like this and you might lead people into a false sense of security or insecurity.
The tutorial link you posted makes no mention of dead time or dead time correction and while you might get some beta and gammer readings the most ionising alpha radiation is virtually impossible to detect with that tube.
The most dangerous problem is the ingestion of small amounts of alpha emitters, there is no way you are going to detect that. I would rather people relied on official measures than simple systems like this.
Thanks Mike for your comment. We are open to add this new features in the coming up version. Please keep on sharing all the ideas in this post of our forum to improve the design.
There are several 'amateur' maps of radiation being put together, and the comments I listened to (BBC Radio 4 program - I forget the name) from professionals in this area, was that while its of some interest and use, the big problem is that these devices are not calibrated.
So, the readings are almost meaningless, apart from indicating dangerously high levels.
And as Mike says, unless you have a suitable thin-ended tube, the alpha won't get through the glass.
However, if I lived near Fukushima, its the first thing I would make.
Incidentally, I made mine from the charging circuit of a disposable camera, so the tube is the only bit that needs to cost money. Although, mine is clearly not as neat
