Electronics, Detectors and Radiation analysis
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SiPM Pocket Scintillation Detector
This device uses a Broadcom AFBR-S4N66C013 SiPM and a 16×30 mm² NaI(Tl) scintillator to make an extremely portable and powerful handheld scintillation detector. The SiPM carrier board and the driver board are developed by NuclearPhoenix on GitHub. Huge thanks to him for his help and his projects that try to make SiPMs available for a…
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Homemade GPS based Scintillation Detector
As a project for university I made a GNSS (=Global Navigation Satellite System) based scintillation survey meter. Goal of the Project Build a survey meter that records the count rate with the current position coordinates on a TF-Card. Has to be portable and must be compatible with a wide range of common scintillation type probes.…
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Simple Geiger-Mueller Tube driver
There are many different geiger counter boards. The most common blue board is pretty cheap to get but it has a ton of components on it. It is not very compact and without having measured it, I think the current draw makes it not efficient at all to use with batteries. My goal was to…
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Building the biggest scintillation detector
Fortunately I was able to get my hands on a gigantic NaI(Tl) detector. The crystal inside is 3″ by 8″ which is 76mm in diameter and 203mm in length. It weights about six kilograms (12 pounds). The crystal is made by Bicron and I bought it from Albuquerque, New Mexico. My small 2″ x 2″…
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Bicron Analyst Survey Meter Teardown
The Bicron Analyst ist unquestionably my favorite survey meter. I own this unit for about a half year now and I am very impressed. The deeper you go into the details of its build, the more fascinated you will be. This post is about the Bicron Analyst, not the Bicron Micro Analyst which is very…
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Homemade Professional Geiger Counter
I own several geiger counters. All of them miss a datalogger and a long lasting (rechargeable) battery. They can not be re-programmed for different tubes of for calibration and so on. That is why I have decided to build my own. The time elapsed from the start of the project to the current state is…
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Radiation Dose Datalogger
Upon a request of someone I have made a device that measures the backround radiation and transmits the measured values via USB to a PC or a Raspberry Pi. It will then be used to make a graph of the doserates and / or CPM. The unit is pretty much only a derivated type of…
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Philips Photonis XP3312 Photomultiplier
For one of my newest projects I will need a bigger PMT than the Valvo XP2011 tubes that I have. The needed diameter is 3 inches because we will be dealing with a 3″ by 8″ Nai(Tl) scintillation crystal. Yeah this is the biggest one I have ever found and I had to get it.…
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Super simple 555 GEiger Mueller Driver circuit
Recently someone asked if it was possible to build a cheap GM-Driver circuit which is a HV source and a pulse output connected to a speaker. When a gamma/beta/x-ray is detected by the tube, the unit will make a click noise. I’ve decided to make one only by using very standard parts everyone should be…
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Radium 226 Paint on Watch hands
Recently I was allowed to take a look at set of radium watch hands. The watch hands were made from the early 1900s to the late 1970s. They are interesting because when they were new, they would glow bright green because of the radiation of the Ra-226 hitting the zinc sulfite in the paint. Now,…