Intro and where to start

So Im Ian, in Peterhead Scotland, 
I have the following 
Davis Vantage view weather station
A Global meteor network meteor camera UK00B (Raspberry PI project)
A Allsky 7 meteor camera AMS219 (my site is used but not owned by me)
A Allsky camera Thomas Jacquin project
A feed to Flight Radar 24 
Ham Radio operator MM0IHE

So Ive been thinking about the next step that ties in with the abve and 2 projects come to mind
1) Lightening detector
2) Radiation monitor

So going down this road for a radiation detector / monitor  looking for the following
1) Cheap
2) No solder
3) Feeds to own website (Currently needs a refresh as weather software has gone to pot)
4)Feeds to a site like radmon

Had looked at things like the GMC-500+, 
But keep comming accross the kits and I have a spare pi at the moment so was wondering if this was an option and what should I be looking for

Thanks in advance
Ian
 

Hi Ian, I'm from Northern California, USA! 

A kit + a spare R-Pi is similar to the route I took, except I had a spare linksys NSLU2 on which I'd replaced the firmware with a minimal Linux system. Apart from a re-capping some years back it's still going strong. When it fails, I'll swap in a Rock64 Pi 3 clone as I have a few spares. I found that for a DIY'er this really was a simple approach as all it took was the Geiger detector, a TTL to USB adapter, and the SBC computer with a few lines of script to send in the readings. Some very efficient kits and designs do the sending directly from the arduino or other mcu built into the Geiger detector. You could always buy a pre-built kit, which would then require only the TTL-to-USB and pi, with no soldering. I look forward to reading about your decisions and process!

Thanks for that, any ideas on the best place to start and what should I be looking for. Some interseting things on Ali Express but not so sure.
Any suggestions would be great, Thanks Ian

My own basic system uses an Aliexpress counter, which you can get as a kit or ready-built. The output resistor needed to be changed to 100nF ceramic cap, to avoid spurious counts. Connection to Radmon is by Node mcu/2866. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005983829775.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.19.34b32VJl2VJlvS&algo_pvid=e49b6584-b4a4-4d1e-94cb-ef91757c1a44&algo_exp_id=e49b6584-b4a4-4d1e-94cb-ef91757c1a44-9&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21EUR%2161.09%2131.09%21%21%21470.30%21239.38%21%40210385db17239678525925558e9a40%2112000036629548118%21sea%21PT%211824583915%21X&curPageLogUid=DA6INHlUUEmv&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A Watch out as some kits come with a tube, some without. I used a kit and fitted an sbm-20 tube.

This seems like a good opportunity to advertise ESPGeiger, which is a firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32 devices to collect, display and distribute collected count statistics from a compatible Geiger Counter.

To start, you'd need a ESP device (I personally like the ESP8266 Wemos D1 Mini (v3.0) and similar clones) and a compatible Geiger Counter - the Cajoe range of counters are cheapish and seemingly reliable.

Check out the documents here https://docs.espgeiger.com and the repository over at Github

 

ESPGeiger gives continuous monitoring and submission to local MQTT and Radmon, as well as others. A local webserver is enabled, which enables you to interactively view the data as well as exposing all the relevant information by JSON.

If you'd like to give it a go, all that would be needed is a ESP8266 and compatible Geiger Counter - the firmware installation can be done via your browser by visiting https://install.espgeiger.com

There's the documentation and a couple of posts in the forum if you want a bit more information - I'm also happy to answer anything here.

If you were happy with the firmware and wanted a bit of a cleaner package, I have created a simple development board, ESPGeiger Log , that features an OLED screen, Neopixel and SD card output - making the whole ESPGeiger experience neater -

 

Hi all!
I'm a multi-faceted geek that has managed to wander into the curious world of radiation.  I'm currently starting a RadMon+ build with a SBM-20 GM.  Looking forward to getting it deployed.

Among other interests, I collect "hot rocks" and carry a Radiacode 103 on the daily.

Like radslug, I also hail from Northern California, just north of Sacramento.  Looking forward to learning from all the knowledge here.

Cheers!
OneHotSpider