Geiger Counters, Radiation, Electronics, Projects and Other Good Stuff

The Chamber. I wasn't actually going to look into the chamber more, but a radmon.org user was curious, and curiosity got the better of me, so I dug into it - and I'm glad I did! Quite interesting. A little, but not actually quite as I expected. (I have added the high resolution images of this post to the download in the first post of the AEGTest Hound-3699 series.) Under the little metal cap on the underside of the chamber there are more discrete electronics and in the center a long gold plated pin that runs into the chamber. All the markings have been removed like the rest of the ICs. It

AEGTest Hound-3699 Radon Monitor Accessing the 'Admin' menu. The manual states: “Admin: Technician access only (Note: Do Not Click.)” Do not click? On something I bought? Something I own? Really? Give me a big red button that says 'do not press,' and I’m going to press it. If it’s locked behind a PIN code, I’m going to try and guess it. And you, AEG Test — you’ve just fuelled me with the absolute determination to click things, crack things, push buttons and tear them to pieces. That said — I still think this is a decent little unit. So everyone deserves access to the admin menu. If you follow

AEGTest Hound-3699 Radon Monitor Review & Teardown Many high resolution images of the teardown are here. I have been getting to know Radon quite a bit more of late. I manage a couple of sites at work and these are in Radon areas. I have used the Airthings Corentium and also fitted an Airthings View Radon 2989 in the basement of one of the sites. Monitoring is ongoing. I have also been experimenting with Radon a little too – discovering it’s progeny. I have also discovered that many (all?) of my U-238 sources also emit small amounts of Radon, local to their storage and I want to keep an

Here is a 24 day and 10 hour long accumulation from a glow in the dark Tritium tube, vial, thing. It's just like the ones used in fishing indicators, clocks, watches and military defile markers. Often called 'beta lights'. Total counts: 76,669,829 😄 The massive peak at ~11.8 keV is from Zn Kα X-rays emitted as the Tritium hits the zinc sulphide phosphor and the smaller (~85 keV) peak is most likely from X-ray fluorescence from materials near the detector, or could be backscatter from the detector housing. My spectrum is ever so slightly out by 2-3 keV as the peak is shown on the chart at

Vintage (circa 1944) Victoreen 6107 / BS 212 GM tubes & HV PSU I picked up these little gems (and they are!) along with a (matching?) power supply, crystal earpiece and instructions on using them to make a rudimentary Geiger counter. I got them for £26.20 shipped, which I think is great price for these pieces of history, although they were sold as parts and unknown if working/no way to test. As it happens, both tubes work great! One tube came wrapped up in vintage fluff in it's original box and the other tube was loose. The loose tube was in worse condition than the boxed one. The boxed

I couldn't wait to tinker with this so I decided to mod this in lieu of getting the ESP-12 modules and programmer. Using a scope I found the connection points I needed, Soldered some wires on. Soldered a Wemos D1 Mini clone on the other end, installed ESPGeiger 0.7.0, and boom! Literally as simple as that. Using the scope I checked the ribbon cable pins one by one and found the pulse coming from the PSU board. I didn't want to solder right on the ribbon, it looks janky already, so probed about and found that it is connected to L12. The MCU side of the inductor is where I soldered the pulse

Yaorea YRG01 I bought another cheap Chinese counter from Aliexpress and I am impressed, especially for the price of £27 shipped to my door. Despite its cheap appearance it actually offers a lot of bang for buck. I haven't looked into it closely, but there seems to be a lot of attention to detail, and I reckon whoever designed this really gave a damn about it. 😄 It came up in suggested products on Aliexpress and I wouldn't have bothered about it if not for the fact that someone reviewed it and posted pictures of its insides. "Okay, a glass tube... Ooh a separate PSU board with a big hunking

This is a comparison of 8 glass walled GM tubes, with a SBM-20 as a control. I did this some months ago, but hadn't pulled all the data together until now. Of the eight tubes, four are of the J305 flavour - M4011, J305 (2021 - light sensitive), J305 (2023 - not light sensitive) and one that appears to be a copy, with no markings and came in a cheap FS-2011 Geiger counter. The other four are more interesting, or less, depending which way you look at it. The HH614 is from a pen type counter and is quite small and thin. The remaining three are very low sensitivity tubes designed to be used in

I got these tubes just to see what they were like. I was a little surprised to learn that they are black due to a sleeve of heat shrink over the tube. I had previously thought they were black due to them being an opaque glass, but after peeling a little of the sleeve off it revealed tin oxide coated clear glass, much like the J305. I accidentally rubbed the markings from the J306 when cleaning it, as I have done on a J305. The markings come off very easy with these tubes. Going from top to bottom - J306, J307 then J308. Specs from Alibaba: Below is the background comparison result. Each tube

I want to build a radiation shielded chamber for Gamma spectroscopy using my Radiacode 103. After batting some ideas about on another thread this is what I have so far: Outer case is 6mm steel (mild steel) - This could be a square tube section, or made from sheet. Inner case is the same as the outer and has 60mm x 60mm to 75mm x 75mm (thereabouts) space in the center for the Radiacode and source. Internal length of the chamber will be ~200mm. Space between the inner case and outer case will be filled with lead, ~25mm thick. Tabs/flange on both caps and outer case to put bolts through to fix

Here is a 12 hour spectrum accumulated on the Radiacode 103 of a spicy Sr-90 (Strontium-90) check source (~100-200 Bq) from a DP-5 Geiger counter. Both Lin and Log are shown. Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 06/04/2025

Experiment - Capturing Radon progeny from Uraninite (Uranium ore) This should be quite interesting to anyone that owns or is thinking of owning Uraninite (Uranium ore) sources, and anyone with a keen interest in Radon. TL;DR - Skip to the last part for safety concerns with U-238 sources and also Thorium gas mantles, Thorium dioxide. This was a fairly well controlled experiment that was carried out at home, and using ChatGPT as my lab sidekick. The idea was to capture Radon progeny from 4.46g of Uraninite (Uranium ore) and prove the decay products. Uraninite emits Radon gas and this decays

I have just picked up a couple of Mullard MX-124 GM tubes on ebay for a song! I originally bid a fair amount that I immediately regretted, but when the auction finished I got them for a really good price! There were two tubes in the auction and one came with original datasheet and Mullard guarantee . They are quite unusual in they are designed to detect radiation in liquids. Their construction is like a glass walled GM tube inside a test tube, with a stopper on the end. They are to be used in a vertical position and the liquid poured into the top of the tube and the liquid will run down to

The Radiacode website has a great isotope spectrum library: https://www.radiacode.com/spectrum-isotopes-library All of the spectrums are from the mobile app for the Radiacode so don't have a massive amount of detail, but there is some great information for each isotope, such as half life, emission lines and a decent description of where they may be detected. Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 12/12/2024

For all of the posts in the Negative Ion Energy Ju-Ju series, click here. A radmon.org user arranged some stickers in a certain way around their tube they managed to get around 4300 CPM. So I tried too. I managed to arrange nine of my stickers in a similar arrangement as Mercator and I get around 4200 cpm also! It peaked at about 4218, but is mainly around 4100. I'm impressed for some cheap stickers! Excellent check sources. 😄 nzoomed, over on radmon.org, asked about a gamma spectrum, to try and identify the radioactive compound in these items. I only have a Radiacode 101, which whilst it

SI-19BG (M) | SI19BGM | СИ19БГМ - Tiny end-window Geiger Muller Tube I received this today after waiting for it to arrive for a couple of weeks. Purchased from Ukraine (via eBay). Not only is it tiny, it is the most expensive GM tube I have bought yet per gram of weight! And it appears to work okay. Sensitive to Gamma and Beta. This tube really is remarkably small. The end window must be no larger than 6mm diameter and the whole thing is only 20mm in length. It's not sensitive and for the couple of minutes I had it on test, the background was about 4cpm and it went nuts with Am-241 being held

For all of the posts in the Negative Ion Energy Ju-Ju series, click here. Latest Round Of Negative Ion Scalar Energy Ju-Ju - Moar stickers! If you haven't read my previous posts on these kinds of Ju-Ju items you can do here, here, here and here. This will probably be the last round of Negative Ion Scalar Energy Ju-Ju things from China, unless I find more unique Ju-Ju stuff. More stickers this time, some similar to what I have already shown. Most of these are pretty boring and not very active, except for one lot of stickers. I think I have practically bought every type of this nonsense so far.

*** Please note: Working with lithium batteries can potentially be hazardous. Damaging the battery can potentially cause fire or explosion. Learn and understand the risks before performing such a repair. *** I had to replace the battery in my Radiacode 101 as it was becoming potentially dangerous. I noticed the main button on the Radiacode wasn't pressing in properly and was sticking at times, so I popped the unit open and found the battery had expanded and was putting pressure on the circuit board, and thus making the button tight. The battery hadn't expanded like other LiPo's I have had,

For all of the posts in the Negative Ion Energy Ju-Ju series, click here. This is the latest update with more Thorium negative ion scalar energy anti-radiation radioactive Ju-Ju for shits and giggles. 😄 Some laughs and scary thoughts pursue! 😯 Somewhat of a sticker bonanza this time, along with some quantum Ju-Ju wearables. We have round stickers and rectangle ones. Different colours and finishes, and all radiating Thorium Ju-Ju goodness! This will probably be my last post on Ju-Ju radioactive stuff as I think I have exhausted the types that are available, without paying too much. There are

Can you guess what the 'thing' in the picture above is? I will give you a couple of clues - 1, it is from the Soviet era. 2, It is a component that is widely used today, but the form factor has changed somewhat. Answers on a postcard. There are no prizes for guessing the correct answer, but you can live with the knowledge and glory that you were correct! 😄 ↓ Scroll down for the answer