Slashdot Mirror
Radiation Detection Wrist Watch
luigi writes "I4U has this story: vigiWATCH is a newly created swiss company that offers the smallest, most precise radiation detector worldwide in a normal size wrist watch.
The watch displays current radioactivity rates from 0.00001mSv/h to 4.00000 mSv/h and cumulative radioactive dose from 0.001mSv/h to 9999 mSv/h. The precision is +/- 25% over total range.
Besides the radioactivity detection, its also showing the time in a digital and analog display. The watch looks like a normal casual wrist watch. Hope this watch never becomes standard equipment for survival on this planet.
The watch is sold on the site for $1100."
when you would rather just not know... Like just how many rads that 19" monitor is blasting into your little soldiers...
I've got nothing...
Tournament Management Online &
To replace my wrist mounted poison gas sensing canary.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
What person is actually going to get near enough radiation to test if the watch even works? Sounds like a ripoff... then again maybe this story is just an ad, why else would they post the price?
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
What happens when the battery dies? Do we loose all that information about cumulative radiation?
I've not read the specs myself, but hopefully that was a typo... +/- 25% is no where near precise, especially in a dosimeter.
Sig??? I don't need no stinkin Sig!
I wonder if the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq are wearing these watches...
This is cool, but do I really want to be in a situation where my watch actually goes off? I mean, at that point, wouldn't I want to be wearing so much protective gear that a watch is a bit out of the question?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Interesting..Can't imagine it being useful for more than Nuclear Plant workers and the military though. So looking like a "normal" watch seems pointless.
:)
Guess if the thing alerts you better have a Haz-Matt suit on
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?
I hope we never have to wear those, or carry gas masks in our brief cases, or air filters when we go outside.
Yikes.
--------
Free your mind.
So what's the watch made of? I hope it doesn't absorb radiation and hold it tight to your skin.
These might be useful for the UN weapons inspectors currently in Iraq. They could keep track of radiation without alerting any Iraqi authorities and get a true feel of whether there are weapons of mass destruction (specifically nuclear weapons) around.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Me thinks that if current rates are in mSv/h, then cumulative doses should drop the temporal dimension, ie, mSv (no /h)!
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I like this watch... just a damn shame that in the UK, no citizen is allowed to own anything resembling a geiger counter. The only places they are allowed are in schools or universities, or for authorities/companies with a 'good reason' to have one.
But the average joe shmoe on the street is not allowed to own one.
is a little "nuclear" icon to appear in the upper right hand corner of my vision for all the times i'm wading through bright green stuff, a flame icon for when i'm on fire, an oxygen warning for when i'm drowning, an ... wow i'm retarded.
a crowbar and that funky jumpy thing would be pretty awesome though
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
21) You post "too much slashdot" lists to slashdot, and in true open-source style, invite others to add to it.
for the medical professional in the family who seems to already have everything?
Sure it might be great for small quantities that aren't going to kill you, but think about it... it's a watch, on your wrist.
If your watch told you it got a dose of lethal radiation... by extension, you did as well. By that time, you could equally judge the lethality of the radiation by the peeling and burning skin all over your body.
So I don't see this as warning you of danger, as it might be a bit late by the time it beeps at you.
I can't seem to find any other images of the watch anywhere on that website or elsewhere on the web for that matter. The angle it's at hides the thickness of the watch.... it could be 3/4 of an inch thick =/
-Berj
What is really sad is that in the very near future, we may all actually NEED one of these things. Think about that for a minute. Ever played the Fallout games? Better start stocking up on ammo.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
What does it mean if the watch starts glowing green, and melts? Do they have a little voice that says "Congratulations! Now you're the Hulk"?
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
*Goes outside and turns on watch*
'Reading enviromental radaition level...'
'results received'
'and you're going to.....'
'live'
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Well, that watch isnt exactly new.... its sold on this website for way less Actually only 337.20 Here is the link: http://pro-resources.net/watch.htm
Is it just be, but if you are wearing a radiation detector on your WRIST, and it detects radiation, won't it be too late?
Uhmm ... maybe that may upset the readings ... nevermind.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
*beep, beep, beep*
Guess it's time for my....HOLY SHIT!
I can see plenty of people who work around radiation buying one of these. Light, convenient, and unobtrusive... what's not to like.
Radiologists, Medical physicists, Nuc. Med guys, Orthopedic surgeons (who use lots of fluoroscopy).
I don't do very much fluoro... but I have used it in the past to straighten fractured bones and place difficult catheters. Even so... I might consider one of these.
Also, never underestimate the awesome power of "gadget lust." Even for expensive gadgets, all that's required is a wee bit of rationalization as to how it MIGHT be useful in your job.
Could even be written off as a business expense...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I'm at the cap, I'll give you some, just don't post misinformation.
Professional dosimeters have an average accuracy of +/- 10%.
25% is not considered bad, especially as these are not meant to be used for inspections. From the website:
Our aim is to help various professionals measure and control the radiation dosis they may be exposed to in a convenient, discreet and continuous way. These professionals can be radiologists, dentists, medical staff, nuclear power plant staff, waste professionals, military, customs and for those who want to know!
For uses such as these, +/-25% is definately accurate enough.
You could have gotten free karma much easier if you posted that their technical page contained the following: * all data may be subject to change without notice
Now THAT is a reason for worry.
... now we don't have only a hand full of subway security advisors [slashdot.org] but hundrets of subway travellers getting in panic.
I have an Indiglo Datalink, so my watch gives off radiation, and reads computer screens. It was also less than $80 5 years ago.
Who got the better deal, me or the shumck who know how many rads they got?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
However, most of these don't emit enough to be harmful. Working in an area with radioactive materials tends to have higher background radiation, as does going on frequent flights or other high altitude operations.
Radiation is only dangerous in large, very easily detectable doses. And unless its an extreme amount, you can even take short term exposure to a relatively large amount and suffer few ill effects. You wouldnt want to stay long in such a hot environment though.
-
Wasn't there an Asimov story with a radiation-detecting watch? I think it was in one of the foundation series novels. The main guy's college dorm room was blown up by a radioactive bomb, but later he figured out that it was staged because his watch didn't register any radiation. The watchband was the indicator, I think. It turned from blue to white or vice versa. Asimov was so great at predicting future technologies. What was that book? It's bugging me now and googling didn't help...
Just because you don't have a thorough, or even cursory, knowledge about everything in the world doesnt mean something is useless.
-
I had it ten years ago- it's in my parents' house somewhere. It was originally marketed to the general public during the early sixties, right after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Maybe someone else has seen one. It was heavy and yellow, with a handle that hung over the dial. It had three sensitivity settings- 100, 10, and 1 of some unit that I can't remember- maybe mrad/hour. (Radiation dosage units are confusing as hell.)
Either it didn't work at all, or the sensitivity was ridiculously low. I stuck a cobalt-60 source (one of those orange disks you see in highschool and college labs) right underneath it on its finest setting and the needle didn't even budge! Either they didn't understand radiation well back then, or someone was making a fortune during the Cuban Missile Crisis selling fake Geiger counters.
sales of the watch skyrocket among groups of males ages 18-25:
:P
"dude that shit's radioactive, who beefed?"
"yo, my watch says it was chris"
welcome to the future
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
This would have been nice to know about before Christmas...
Very cool. One feature I'd like to see in the next version of this watch is some sort of hook-up to a computer that would let you record good data on long-term exposure. Still, I want one of these.
As far as measuring your total dosage goes, I might as well take this opportunity to inform everyone that government mandated radiation standards are mostly erroneous. By orders of magnitude even. We now know that low-level radiation is simply far less harmful (and far better understood) than we thought it was in the 1950's. Major reason is that the 1950's model is simply a straight line extrapolation from the known lethal dosage. Back then, that was a reasonable guess considering the knowledge of genetics at the time. Needless to say, our current understanding is quite different.
5-25 rad: No observable effects.
25-75 rad: Chromosomal aberrations and temporary depression of white blood cell levels in some individuals. No externally observable effects.
75-200 rad: Vomiting in 5 to 50% of exposed individuals within a few hours. Fatigue and loss of appetite. Moderate blood changes. Recovery within a few weeks.
200-600 rad: For doses over 300 rem, all exposed individuals will exhibit vomiting within 2 hours and loss of hair after 2 weeks. Severe blood changes with hemorrhage and increased susceptibility to infection, particularly at higher doses. Recovery from 1 to 12 months for individuals at the lower end of the dose range; only 20 percent survive at the upper end of the range.
600-1000 rad: Vomiting within 1 hour, sever blood changes, hemorrhage, infection, and loss of hair. From 80 to 100% of exposed individuals will succumb within 2 months; those who survive will be convalescent over a long period.
Introduction to Nuclear Engineering (Lamarshe)
Ooh, I see a new item accessory in the making :)
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
... the green, glow in the dark watch-hands causing the +/-25%?
Seems the readers here need to retake thier RADCAS training. Relatively "high" doses of radiation exposure don't do much (if any) damage, if you limit the duration and don't make a habit of it. The current (immediate) levels are importantant only because they may indicate the risk of contamination you may be facing (and they tell you how soon you should get the hell out of there).
Remember it's not the stink you have to worry about, it's the the sh...
Read, L
The wristwatch wears you!
... a landscape filled with skeletons wearing madly beeping wristwatches...
But on a more serious note it would be kinda cool to see how much radiation a 22" NEC monitor put out.
Or to see how much radiation their is in the workplace. I wonder if i could call OSHA and complain that my workplace is unsafe due to extreme radiation. That would net a couple days off with pay. w00t!
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Only if it's gamma rays and you input your name as Bruce (It's kinda like NES Zelda that way).
That watch may come in handy for lab workers. At some of my university's labs chemistry/physicist students have to wear a radiation detection device that doesn't immediately show the amount of radation received. Rather it has to be sent to a lab every month or so and they then measure if you've been exposed too much and therefore have to stay out of the lab for some time.
With this device the procedure seems to be much more safe and hassle free. Something like an immediate children/no children display.
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
I highly doubt any radiation worker would use this in his job just due to the fact that it doesn't have any test source listed. What use is a radiation monitoring device if you can't even tell if its working, particularly a device that measures cumulative dose? It might have an application for a secondary short term radiation monitoring in high radiation areas except that anyone who is going to work in a high radiation area will already have more specialized equipment.
And why would you want a radiation monitoring device on a watch on your wrist? If it were used by any radiation worker, he would probably tie it to his belt instead (to give a more accurate estimate of dose recieved).
This device really doesn't have much practical use. Really, its just a gadget for the geek who has to have everything.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Unless this is recent, this is just wrong. People are allowed to own Geiger Counters. Why wouldn't they be?
Maplin used to sell a kit until a few years ago to make one. Second hand militaty units are available on many sites. Scientific suppliers often carry them.
Also, a dosimeter is a different device to a Geiger counter. Is the watch still illegal?
I should imagine that if this were like anything else, then dealers would get in a lot more trouble than the buyer, and I have never heard of that happening.
I sometimes think that environmental conciousness will come not because of any actions by activists but because we will develop personal, portable and cheap pathogen detection technology. This would let people know just how much of each toxin was present in their environment. There would still be arguments about what amount constitutes a dangerous exposure, but if I only get 1 PPM of dioxin at home and 100 PPM at work, I'm going to start looking for another job.
Are there any more personal detection devices like this on the market?
Perhaps what we need is a site the provides plans and techniques for detecting various poisons. There could also be a section to rate your town. Of course it would probably become competitive. Imagine the headlines; Local chess club dumps toxic waste. "We wanted to make the toxic top ten" says club president at his arraignment.
Duh! That was really lame.
In America you check your watch,
in Soviet Russia your watch checks you...
It could be handy if you were living near Chernoble I guess. Then again if you had that kind of money you'd probably better spend it moving to a safer place. I assume this watch is for Nuclear Scientists, Radiotherapists, etc. Traditionally these people wore badges containing photographic film, which get developed and checked at the end of each day.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
But will the electronics in this thing survive an EMP pulse from a nuclear bomb?
I have no idea how accurate the movie was, but in K-19, the reactor techs who made repairs inside the reactor area were shown to be puking and showing signs of hemorrhage within 10 minutes. Are we talking on the order of 1000 rad here? Anyone know of any data on the exposure of the rest of the crew?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Heavy sales of this product indicate mass paranoia. If this thing sells well. Invest in tin-foil hat and body suit tailoring company.... Perfect.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
Let George Bush start his little nuclear war, and it will be! Seriously folks, there is a faction in the Religious Right who believe that only a nuclear war will fulfill the Revelations prophesy, and bring Jesus back. And they WANT ONE. Scary stuff!
Dog is my co-pilot.
The company Polimaster has a few other wrist format dosimeters. You will also see the vigiWatch on that list.
So, you will have "1000% warning" of radiation, will it help? It works at light speed! The radiation. You will run away?
Try to make your goverment a bit peaciful instead.
Like, not bombing Iraq for sake of 3-4 petrol companies.
Why the heck would it be useful around Chernoble?
"Woah! My 500$ watch is picking up radiation!"
'No kidding genius, where have you been?'
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Also, we are talking EM radiation here, not nuclear. There is a difference.
Yeah, it's unclear what the original poster thinks that he's going to be getting "nuked" by.
Actually, several kinds of radiation leave a monitor, though it's only the last two that tend to cause worry:
X-rays are ionizing radiation and are known to be carcinogenic and mutagenic. They're essentially man-made gamma rays. Geiger counters do tend to count them, though it depends on their energy.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I've heard of watches with:
calculators
walky-talkies
gps's
televisions (Dick Tracy style)
depth gauges
calorie counters
pedometers
compasses
heart rate monitors
blood pressure monitors
cell phones
pda's
etc....
Did I miss anything?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
It'd be cool if this thing came with a glow in the dark radium face.
-josh
The wearable devices are mostly gamma detectors. More useful, for the paranoid, would be an air sampler that detects alpha and beta emitters. If you're worried about terrorist-type attacks, they're more likely to be in the form of airborne radioactive particles than from a big gamma source.
One of the things Homeland Security was supposed to be doing was putting radiation detectors into every fire station in America. That doesn't seem to have happened, and it should.
But the question is would it survive an atomic blast?
Electromagnetic field produced by nuclear weapons can damage electronic equipment in a fraction of a second.
I think they were outside the core, but inside the containment vessel. Not that I know tons about nuke power plant architecture. But the movie showed them being exposed to steam which I assumed was moving through pipes in the reactor core.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
A geiger counter in a wrist watch? Come on, James Bond had one of those in the movie Thunderball, back in the 1960s.
-- Alastair
I'm already wearing a laser watch, grappling hook watch and walkie-talkie watch, can't we just combine all these features into one watch?
This is seriously old news. I was thinking about getting one of these (thought better of it) in 1998.
In principle a gadget like this could be very useful in biology research labs, where we often work with small amounts of isotopes and need to identify any minor spills or exposures. However, the specs don't say anything about what kind of 'radiation' it detects (beta particles? gamma rays? sunshine?). Nor about the dependence on the energy of the particle/ray. So I suspect the target market is the gullible public. Rosie
--in these days of terrorism, this watch could give someone an immediate headsup to evac any area that has become dangerous from perhaps a "dirty" radiological device or just from some *insane goon* spreading radioactivity in some manner. Maybe well before any "official" word of an attack is released on the radio, etc. And after an attack it would be useful for noting hotspots and relatively "cleaner" areas to avoid or travel in. Too bad it's so expensive I would get one to add to my survival/preparedness supplies.
If it was a big yellow civil defense counter (victoreen), then you damn well better not register anything from any radation source you have laying around, otherwise you are in big trouble.
That was pretty much our assessment when we couldn't get it to work. I typed "Victoreen" into images.google.com to see what I recognized- it was a Victoreen model 715. And now the picture reminds me- the units were Roentgens/hr (on the "X1" setting- the switch had X100, X10, X1, and X0.1 positions).
The manual for this thing was pretty scary.
I went to the Trinity site opening this last October - it would have been fun to have had this watch then as I wandered around the site of the first nuclear blast.
I can think of some people that this would be useful for - anybody who works in caves. Due to naturally occuring uranium in granite, all caves with poor air circulation exhibit increased levels of radon. In fact, the National Parks Service workers at Carlsbad Caverns wear dosimeters, and are not allowed to work there longer than a couple of months before being rotated out, to limit their exposure.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Guess this will be added to the product line at the Fearmonger's Shop.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.