updated software, add-on display
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 12:43 pm
Hi Mighty Ohm, all,
I've got my kit a few days ago. The build went smooth and the counter worked right away. The kit and the instructions are very well made!
Of course, building it wasn't enough and I went on and studied the source code.
That lead to a new version of the code with a few more features. The visible one is a beep and flash on power on. My place doesn't seem to be very radioactive and it can take a few seconds for the first event to occur. So I wanted an instant confirmation that the software is running. My other changes to the code are not really visible and mostly include cosmetics (I just prefer spaces over tabs and similar things of personal preference), but might be interesting for others.
I've put the source code online in case anyone is interested: https://github.com/phkehl/geiger-counter
Of course that still wasn't enough. I wanted a display. So I've added a display. It's a very nice Siemens DL2416 16-segment four character display. Unfortunately, there isn't enough resources left on the ATTiny for driving that (you need at least 11 GPIOs). So I've used a small ATMega328 board I had. It uses the same (FTDI style) serial header pinout and so it can connect to the serial out of the Geiger counter board and is powered by it (I had to connect the VCC pin to VCC and routed the GC serial tx to the Atmega serial rx). The software reads and parses the serial output and displays the CPS resp. the CPM value on the display. This software is online, too: https://github.com/phkehl/arduino-uno-s ... igerdisp.c
Power consumption went from ca. 10mA without the add-on display to ca. 20mA with the display. I'm not sure about the capacity of AAA batteries. So I don't know how long they will last. But I definitively need to go hunt for some interesting radiation sources..
Here's some pictures:
Happy hacking!
Regards,
flipflip
I've got my kit a few days ago. The build went smooth and the counter worked right away. The kit and the instructions are very well made!
Of course, building it wasn't enough and I went on and studied the source code.
That lead to a new version of the code with a few more features. The visible one is a beep and flash on power on. My place doesn't seem to be very radioactive and it can take a few seconds for the first event to occur. So I wanted an instant confirmation that the software is running. My other changes to the code are not really visible and mostly include cosmetics (I just prefer spaces over tabs and similar things of personal preference), but might be interesting for others.
I've put the source code online in case anyone is interested: https://github.com/phkehl/geiger-counter
Of course that still wasn't enough. I wanted a display. So I've added a display. It's a very nice Siemens DL2416 16-segment four character display. Unfortunately, there isn't enough resources left on the ATTiny for driving that (you need at least 11 GPIOs). So I've used a small ATMega328 board I had. It uses the same (FTDI style) serial header pinout and so it can connect to the serial out of the Geiger counter board and is powered by it (I had to connect the VCC pin to VCC and routed the GC serial tx to the Atmega serial rx). The software reads and parses the serial output and displays the CPS resp. the CPM value on the display. This software is online, too: https://github.com/phkehl/arduino-uno-s ... igerdisp.c
Power consumption went from ca. 10mA without the add-on display to ca. 20mA with the display. I'm not sure about the capacity of AAA batteries. So I don't know how long they will last. But I definitively need to go hunt for some interesting radiation sources..
Here's some pictures:
Regards,
flipflip