Hi there,

I came via Seti to Rosetta and stumbled over radioactive@Home. Quite an interesting project, but is it still alive?

No recent postings. Something about a map migration because of google, and little about required sensor devices and how to get them. The serverstatus page seems to have a major component down and no info about it on news.

This all looks a little deserted. Is this so? If not - how to participate?

Cheers
Stefan

The project is still alive, plenty of us still running it. The community is pretty dead though, not much to say!

The map no longer works due to changes by Google, I doubt that it will ever be fixed.

Sensors are available sporadically, and you need one to participate. You just have to check for announcements of a new batch. Could be years between batches.

Not sure what you mean about the server status page, but I guess you mean the up/down status being disabled - It isn't, that's a bug in the ancient server code used here.


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Hurray! Nice to hear that the project ist still alive!

That the community is not very active is OK. Lot of people with different background and the contribution is not made via form small talk but through providing measurements. Though looking at the long pauses of several years across postings stunned me a little to be honestly.

Anyway thanks a lot for the pulse of living by your response.

I guess that there might be coming more people with interest, as COVID-19 brought attention to BOINC. So quite a view may stumble over this project as I did. And there are already a view postings.

Maybe you can help a little by answering some Questions:

I understood we need a sensor to participate. And it's very difficult to get one through a batch ordering by the projects owner. What makes this sensor so very special, that it could only be retrieved through the owner?

I would expect that the forum would contain some blueprints and lists of dealers, such that we may assemble the sensor by our own.

The google map is callable, if you say it won't be fixed does that mean the data we currently see there is just stale? If so what about the plans to move to another map? Is the project infrastructure being covered by a single person? Any call for help here in the past? There should be some among the community being able to help.

About the statis page, I meant this one: http://radioactiveathome.org/boinc/server_status.php
and it's good to hear that it's just a bug. For the community it would be nice, that the page would contain a bold info about that being a bug.

Cheers from Germany
Stefan

Yes you need the sensor, you can build your own. The link to the drawing is on the homepage with the Firmware. The hard part seems to be getting the Geiger Tube.

I'm not sure how much time that Admins have to develop things.

It would be interesting with the fires around Chernobyl

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Hi there,

does it need to be excat the same assembly of the project, or would something like this be sufficient:

https://www.banggood.com/de/Geekcreit-Assembled-DIY-Geiger-Counter-Kit-Module-Miller-Tube-GM-Tube-Nuclear-Radiation-Detector-Geekcreit-for-Arduino-products-that-work-with-official-Arduino-boards-p-1136883.html?gmcCountry=DE&currency=EUR&createTmp=1&utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=cpc_bgs&utm_content=frank&utm_campaign=frank-ssc-de-css-all-19bf11&ad_id=380597671089&gclid=CjwKCAjw7LX0BRBiEiwA__gNwzSIlcovzmz7XdUA2PJhQBAGiklgQWAmPECS0VBG5k-X6X0hb1iG-BoCEWIQAvD_BwE&cur_warehouse=CN

Or a bit more expensive, this mightyOhm based one which seems to be more distributed:
https://www.elektor.de/mightyohm-geiger-counter-kit-bundle?gclid=CjwKCAjw7LX0BRBiEiwA__gNwxqwYXxZvkxYTWd0mMa8BUyUged81gFR4ng2xw7feJebsr5WDKTKuhoCTegQAvD_BwE

I think the question is the software adapter to the boinc client for being able to counting the clicks.

Cheers
Stefan

I can imagine the cheaper one would be fine, the more expensive one doesn't seem to have USB from a 30sec glance.

You'll need to work out how to hook in to the current app though, I guess it's hard coded to expect the same responses as "project" hardware.

This probably needs some work on your part.
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Thanks for your judgement.

Being completly new to the issue, my first glance of the cheaper version gave me the question: is this geiger tube real - looks like an old halogen light tube because of the glass. From what I read the metal tube sounds more true because of the anode/kathode. But the glass maybe a lead variant, hm...

As for the software part I'm a bit more confident in my capabilities as in the required soldering work of the ICs.
I'm a software engineer. But I would require some specs by the owner. I don't like the idea of starting to reverse engineer the existing driver.

As lack of suitable devices is one of the major slowdown of the overall project, the work might be valuable to enable more devices that interested participants can buy. The software part would be opensource on github, such that maintenance can be ensured even when I should be off.

But I'm not in the project yet. My main motivation would be the shared map by all owners, from which I understood is not working now. I would like not to see what's up only on my location. I would like to to see what happens in my geographic surroundings as, well.

As for the map issue, beneath openstreetmap.org may be this would be a suitable partner: https://opensensemap.org for the project?

The source code for the project's detector is there in C/C++ so it's not a true reverse engineering project since you can see what the output format is. As you said this can be put on github for everyone.

Yes the lack of devices has since the beginning of this project been an issue. Middle of last year he was working on another batch.

I think the best would be to try and contact Krzysztof Piszczek, he is the owner and offer your services from software development perspective.
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If your motivation is to provide and receive radiation readings to map-based sites, there are alternatives. Radmon.org and Netc.com are vendor-neutral and offer time-based graphs. Gcmap.com is vendor-centric and offers tables of values. BOINC can be used for other projects at the same time. This project is the only one I know of that combines BOINC and radiation measurements.