IRJET- Design and Development of IoT based Geiger Muller Counter

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 12 | Dec 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 2794
Design and Development of IoT based Geiger Muller counter
Mahammad D.V
Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication, Rayalaseema University- Kurnool-A.P. India.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract: Public protection from radioactive accidents is important task and also need to prevent from radiation exposer. To
detect how much radio movement is having, a set up is require a particular instrument like radiation detector. This
paper reports on Internet of Things (IoT) based portable Geiger Muller counter which provides to measure radioactive
particles. It consists of spark fun Geiger counter developed board (SEN-11345) and NodeMCU as host microcontroller. Blynk
app is act as IoT cloud server. Radiation dose rate was recorded and sent to cloud server via Wi-Fi gateway for connecting
network through TCP/IP-based network. Blynk app stores the data and visualize it in android mobile at any time. It is very
convenient to alert the people from radiation. The system is designed and implemented successfully in our laboratory and
tested. We found that the instrument is working properly and results were good agreement with standards.
Keywords: Internet of Things, Geiger counter, NodeMCU.
1. INTRODUCTION: Radioactive materials cause saviour damage to people. And many accidents were happened due to
poor safety precautions, free transport of radioactive materials and also poor checking. Apart from this, lack of
portable instruments for measurement of radiation. Keeping all this in mind, we made an attempt to built Internet of
Things (IoT) based Portable Geiger Muller counter. Using this we can detect radiation and access data from anywhere.
The system mainly consists of a Spark fun’s Geiger counter (GM counter) developed board (SEN-11345) and NodeMCU
as host microcontroller. Blynk app is used as cloud platform for data storage and visualize and TCP/IP protocol for
network communication. The firmware is developed in Arduino IDE in embedded C. The system is designed and
implemented successfully in our laboratory and tested. We found that the instrument is working properly and results
were good agreement with standards [1-4].
2. SYSTEM DESIGN
The proposed system’s block diagram is shown in figure-1. It mainly consist of a Sparkfun’s Geiger counter (SEN-
11345), NodeMCU as a host microcontroller, Wi-Fi module to connect internet, Blynk server and Blynk APP for cloud
services.
Figure -1: Block diagram of IoT based GM Counter
2.1 NodeMCU ESP8266
Arduino microcontrollers have a built-in ESP8266 Wi-Fi module in order to monitor and control them remotely
over the internet. NodeMCU ESP8266 is a developed open source board. It has Wi-Fi enabled micro controller for the data
transfer to the internet. It also supports to Arduino sketch using Arduino IDE. The nodeMCU esp8266 has all the
necessary modules and it would be directly connected to the external peripherals. The data collected from sensors

would be sent to the nodeMCU then send them to the cloud. Once the communication is established between host
controller and cloud server then data will be transfer automatically. In this project, the data would be sent to Blynk app.
Which is a cloud-based, open source an IoT App that enables us to store, retrieve, aggregate, analyze and visualize
streams of live data. The nodeMCU having 1 analog input channel and 16 digital inputs outputs channels. The pin diagram
of NodeMCU is shown in figure-2
Figure-2: Pin specification of NodeMCU.
2.2 Blynk App:
Blynk app is purely designed for the Internet of Things based projects. By this we can control many hardware
developed boards like Arduino, NodeMCU Raspberry pi and particle remotely and it can access sensor data to display,
storage and we can visualize it. The Blynk app having mainly three parts like one is Blynk App, second is Blynk server,
third is Blynk Libraries. Blynk works over the Internet, it means that the hardware you chosen should be able to connect
to the internet. It provide unique token for every hardware to communicate.
2.3 Geiger Muller counter
Geiger counter board is used for radiation detection and is shown in figure-3. Geiger counter is powered through
USB. It having in built an ATMega328 controller and it communicate at 9600 bps over any serial terminal and it generates
random bits in reaction to background radiation. It has voltage regulation circuit for the Geiger tube, signal capture
portion up to CPM limit to 100Hz of active high. By plug the unit into USB, it transmit random bits being generated from
the random background radiation. Each bit generated (an ASCII byte 0 or 1). For power ON we need to put switch ON
position by which it supplies high voltage to tube. For turn off, you must flip the tube power switch to OFF[5].
The Geiger tube have red boot to protect the end window during production. Its silent feature are given below;
1. 5V Logic with total current 30mA
2. LND712 Geiger Tube @ 560V
3. ATMega328 Microcontroller
4. FTDI USB Interface
5. TTL (Active High) Output Pin from Tube
Figure-3: GM counter

3. SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
The system has been developed into two parts, one is radiation detection and second is radiation measurement.
First one is a circuit design for detection of radio using ATMEGA 328. The ATmega328 is a microcontroller from Atmel
mega AVR family. It is 8-bit AVR RISC microcontroller. It having 32 kb ISP flash memory, 1 kb EEPROM, 2 kb SRAM,
23 GPIOs, 10-bit A/D, 32 general purpose registers, three timer/counters with interrupts and also it has serial
programmable USART etc. The system achieves throughput approaching 1 MIPS per MHz. The SEN-11345 board gives
directly pulses. By using NodeMCU the pulses are counted. Same data is transferred to Blynk server. The flow chart of
the system is shown in figure -4.
Figure-4: Flowchart of the GM systems
The processing of data, signal conditioning and counting is established by ATMEGA328 microcontroller board
with pre-build program. This system is programmed to count the square pulse. And it send to in counts per second (CPS)
format. The board also having boost converter circuit for high voltage conversion.
3.1 Experiment:
The experiment was carried out with two different conditions. In first time we have not taken any radioactive
material/source near to the GM counter. And noted the radiation intensity in counts per 10 seconds. In second time we
placed radioactive source near to the system, and noted the readings of radiation and also noted distance between
radiation source and GM counter. Same reading are taken with different distances, then results are tabulated. The results
are converted into radiation units by using 1 cps = 0.06 mrem/hr. And sensitivity = cps/ (mrem/hr).
4. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The Design and development of IoT based Geiger Muller counter has been successfully developed in our
laboratory which is shown in figure-5 and 6. And tested with different conditions. The experimental results were tabulated
in table-1. And compared with Indian SAR limit for mobile devices (limit is 1.6 w/kg). The system is working satisfactorily
and it is very helpful for personal radiation detection. This system is light weight, portable instrument which offer
detection of multiple types of ionizing radiation like alpha, beta, X-rays, and gamma. It very easy-to-use by users working
in potentially explosive environments.

Figure-5: IoT based GM counter system
Figuer-6: IoT based GM counter’s Blynk app
Table -1: Detected radiation levels of the system
Sr. No. Distance between
source and GM
counter
Radiation intensity
in counts per 10
sec
Radiation level in
standard unit;
mrem/hr
1 no source
nearby
6 counts /10
Sec
0.0360
2 <18cm 11 counts/10
Sec
0.0660
3 <0.4cm 16 counts/10
Sec
0.0960
5. References :
[1] Ghuge, N. N., Sapna Jasrotia, Anamika and Chilsea Sadhu. “GEIGER MULLER: A THIN END WINDOW TUBE
RADIATION DETECTOR.” (2015).
[2] Remon, Newaz & Zakir, M & Tanjir Hassan, C. (2018). Build very simple design and cost effective geigermuller
counter. Research Journal of Applied Sciences. 31. 1-10.

[3] Edwin Ataro, Diana Starovoytova Madara and Simiuy Sitati, "Design and Testing of Mobile-
PhoneDetectors,"Innovative Systems Design and Engineering ISSN 2222- 1727 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2871(Online),
Vol.7, No.9, 2016
[4] Singseeta, W & Thong-Aram, Decho & Pencharee, Somkid. (2017). Design and construction of portable survey
meter. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 901. 012056. 10.1088/1742-6596/901/1/012056.
[5] Principles of nuclear radiation detection by G.N. Eicholtz and J.W. poston (1985), Lewis publishers

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