IoT hardware
SmartGeiger
A background-radiation monitor built as an IoT device — a Geiger counter that reports its readings continuously instead of being read by eye.
- Role
- Creator
- Period
- 2020 — 2021
The problem
Background radiation is a number people care about but cannot easily obtain. A consumer Geiger counter gives you a reading at the moment you point it at something; it does not give you a history, and it does not tell you whether today's reading is unusual for your own kitchen.
The approach
SmartGeiger turns a Geiger counter into a connected instrument. The device counts events, timestamps them and pushes readings to a service, so the interesting output is not “the number now” but the shape of the series.
That series is what makes background monitoring meaningful. A spike is only interpretable next to the baseline it sits on, and a baseline is only meaningful over time.
The firmware and hardware are open, because a radiation instrument that cannot be verified by the person using it is not much use for anyone worried about their own environment.
Engineering highlights
A series beats a snapshot
Turning a point reading into a time series is the difference between a curiosity and a measurement.
Open hardware
Publishing the design lets anyone check the measurement instead of trusting the vendor.
At a glance
- Sensing
- Geiger-Müller tube
- Published
- IEEE conference paper
Stack
- C
- Embedded C
- IoT
- MQTT