September 7th, 2011 5:02 AM

Hello all;

Friday morning I came across an interesting app for the Android Smartphone and Tablet platform, Claus Buszello’s Original Geiger Cam. Someone has actually written a radiation detector code that works on the Android Platform. It uses the camera to detect gamma rays, cosmic rays and muons.

I downloaded it for $1.49 US and decided that if it didn’t work, I really hadn’t blown a lot of money. At least I had some toy software for my phone.

This afternoon I tested it with my Sears Tower Radium Check Source (It still glows in the dark!). My smartphone is a Samsung Galaxy S variation known as the T-Mobile Vibrant. It has a 1,000 MHz processor, 512 mb of Ram, and a 5 mp Camera. The check source measures 1 mR/hr gamma and 10,000 cpm total counts with a Monitor 4ec (LND712 gm Tube)

Drawbacks, the program measures in Hertz, not mR/hr or mSv/hr, so it is not going to be mistaken as a serious rad detector (at least at this time). It does measure events and gives a count, and how many pixels where stimulated by the event, so it seems to act like a scaler, except you cannot get counts per minute, unless you reset it and count again.

Here are my results of 5 tests over 10 minutes:

     No Source             With Source

1)   3 cpm                  14 cpm

2)   20 cpm                57 cpm

3)   7 cpm                  8 cpm

4)   42 cpm                84 cpm

5)   56 cpm                89 cpm

For some reason it appears to get more sensitive the longer it is used. I am not ready to give up my PM1703m or other GM Counters, and I have only tested this with Ra 226, however, for only $1.55 it looks like a cheap radiation detector alternative. It is not very sensitive, but it does work with my phone and is written by a gentleman that works at Cern!

 

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