Mr Blinky

Seriously! This thing is garbage! It actually doesn't work either, no surprise. I bought this on eBay a couple of years back and just never got around to posting about it. I paid just £16 for it plus about £4 postage. It was cheap, super cheap. I didn't expect a lot, but I didn't expect to find what I did. After plugging in it's USB C connector and getting a little charge into it, I turned it on. It powered up and displayed 0.09 µSv/h on the display. Then after a short while it dropped to 0.00 µSv/h. I placed a source by it and nothing. I tried a stronger source, still nothing. So I took it

I bought the new Radiacode Zero and I must say that this is probably the most boring product Radiacode has to offer. I don't say it is boring as a negative term for the RC-Zero, in fact, quite the opposite. This device should be boring. It is made to be boring. I'm sure the model Zero is for zero fun. 😄 However, if you put gamma spectroscopy and a couple of other fancy bits to the side then this little device is could be worth it's weight in gold. It does what all of the other Radiacode's do (less the spectroscopy) - it counts, and that is about it. I also think it is fair to say that it is

A very kind gentleman recently sent me an outdoor BME280. It is a smaller version of the BME280 breakout board, but in an outdoor enclosure. It was sent with one very simple instruction: "For Radspod One." I think it is like this one from AliExpress but there seem to be a few different types so have a look about. Not too long ago, Steadramon added capability to ESPGeiger for the BME280, BMP280 and I think the BME680, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, as it was intended for Radspod One, and now ESPGeiger firmware supports the BME280, it would be very rude not to! So I did. 😁 It was all quite

Why are you prattling about with coding your own ESP8266 or ESP32 to run a Geiger counter when you can simply run ESPGeiger! Yaaay! 😄 I actually mean that. Stop messing with code that will give you only what you want. Choose ESPGeiger and get all the beans! I'm joking, but now seriously, ESPGeiger is good. No, it's not just good, it is fantastic! Let me tell you why. The first thing is as of the time of writing, ESPGeiger is currently under development, meaning as you read this, Steadramon may be bashing away at his keyboard making it better. Steadramon is the guy that wrote ESPGeiger and

I have been doing quite a bit of PHP programming lately. One thing I have found is repeatedly having to check up on my PHP error log. You know the thing, you write some code, move down the page, write some more, up a bit, little more, down to the bottom and finish. There, all good, and.... HTTP 500. I have two options, go through all the code I have just written and look for that missing semicolon or bracket, or open the log, look at the last entry and go from there. I have been doing a lot of the latter of late. Something doesn't work so look in the error log. Ooh, line 57.... I thought,

I recently got a new multimeter that has a slightly higher burden than the meter I was previously using. This meant that the original voltage divider I made wouldn't calibrate to my new meter. The solution was to increase the resistance of R2 in the divider. On the v1 divider R2 was made up of a 1MΩ and a 100KΩ trimmer pot in series. To increase the R2 in the v2 divider I added a couple of 100KΩ resistors in series with the 100KΩ trimmer pot. R2 became 1MΩ + 100KΩ + 100KΩ + 100KΩ (pot) all in series. I added two jumpers alongside the two new 100KΩ resistors so I can put them in circuit or

I have a few of these little counters on hand and decided to mod a few. One I have at my office sat on my desk, and another two I'll be sending out in the wild. My original intention was to mod a bunch of them and sell them to potential radmon.org users as a 'works right out of the box' counter submitting to radmon.org. I changed my mind after realizing they take a lot longer to actually mod than I initially thought (because I'm doing a much better job on these than the first), and that recently a version of ESPGeiger firmware was released with a bug that made them unable to update

On 24/11/2024 Radspod One went offline. It had been just doing it's job for 8 years non-stop, with the odd break, usually PC/server related. This is the very first counter I got online years back when I only had half a clue. 😂 On the 24th the server eventually died. Capacitors had gone bad on the mainboard and around the time I just couldn't be bothered repairing a machine that should have been recycled a long time ago. So it got left. I eventually got fed up of seeing it blinking away outside and doing nothing more, so it was time to give it a good service and a full bill of health. It was

If you have ever used Radlog Pro from radmon.org, you will know that the only way to get the counts into it is via serial. This is generally fine if your counter sits near the PC Radlog Pro is running on, but if not it can be a challenge. Simply making a long serial cable works providing you can route the cable. The other method is wirelessly. I used to use a wireless TTL serial transmitter and receiver. It worked for the most part, but the signal was always an issue. Even receiving the signal in direct line of sight, through glass was a challenge for these little units. After servicing my

Modifying my GK Radmon kit Geiger counter to run ESPGeiger firmware has gained a little interest in it. John (BroHogan) the creator of the GK Radmon and other kit counters caught wind of this and appears very happy for me to be slicing and dicing his work - all in the good spirit of things, and Steadramon, the writer of the ESPGeiger firmware is looking if he can make a drop-in version of his ESPGeiger firmware that can be loaded onto the GK Radmon (and probably GK Radmon Plus too) without the need to modify the counter itself. That would be very cool. It has also spurred on an ESPGeiger