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Retrofitting an iPod into a Geiger Counter
Doug writes "An enterprising hardware guy known as JavaMoose on Flickr has created an amazing case mod for his iPod by modifying an old Geiger counter to house the iPod and remote. The photos are up on Flickr with descriptions along the way.
Very cool, if a little big to fit in ones pocket"
So how much evil radiation does the iPod really emit? Now we can know.
This should have come from the why-would-anyone-want-to-do-that department.
Of course my first thought when scanning a post apocalyptic radioactive wasteland is: Will I have my iTunes?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Hmm, interesting yes, amazing, I'm afraid not. It did require some skill to make it a clean fit, but the geiger counter case was so large, I can't really consider it a technological feat to have done this. Now had he did this and kept a working geiger counter (recording the sounds and playing them back on the ipod to allow the ipod display to properly show levels, or something like that), now THAT would be cool.
Next thing you know someone will put one in the keypad of their microwave (you enter time via song lengths, i.e. big meals you'd set to "Freebird"), or stick one in an original walkman case. I know, how about someone sticks a shuffle inside a Gen1 iPod? oooh, aaaah.
What was the point of that, I could retrofit an iPod with my old toaster, would that be newsworthy?
I've been thinking about retrofitting an iPod into my ass. Do you think that would make a good slashdot story?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Why?
Turn in your geek badge.RIGHT NOW.
I suddenly had this visual of him visiting the blast site of a meteor. All of his fellow scientists whip out their Geiger counters. He whips out the iPod, pretends to take readings. His colleagues stare at him, because they really know he's listening to music, humming like that, and they all read Slashdot. Also, it's the white headphones.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Personally, I think an iPod mod that made it function as a Geiger counter would be way cooler. After all, everyone's iPod already plays music - but to have yours detect radiation levels? How cool would that be?
And you only have to move a radioactive source just a teensie bit closer to get a built-in metronome.
Soon, you too will be "glowing" with your musical talent...
bang goes my karma... again...
-Styx
Idiot: I started with a vintage Geiger Counter that I have had since high-school. It actually still worked too.
Idiot: so I turned it into a sparkly piece of gayware why not!
(pause)
I would've been had he popped in a macmini!
I can just imagine walking downtown with this thing, at least you wouldn't get mugged for your iPod, you could pack a whallop with that thing!
~iGlow in the dark~ ??
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Nothing quite like taking something known for its compactness and ease of use and making it bulky and awkward. Go-go engineering!
What is music when you despise all sound?
....he shouldn't have painted the case or buffed up the tube. In the old rusty yellow it looking intimidating and cool. Now it looks like a sandwich box that has asperations to be a model of the star ship enterprise. Still, respect to the guy for doing it. I wonder if he has a track on this ipod that plays Geiger counter noises.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
He didn't really mod anything. He didn't have to take apart the remote or the iPod, all he did was put mounts for them both.
Eh, slow news day.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I'm surprised that the geiger didn't go off when he put ipod near it :P go creative labs. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Totally useless and does not look cool. Let's hope that at least it is more scratch-proof.
From one of his captions:
"I just love how they used to include the schematics when you bought electronics. Kinda open-source...they encouraged DIY repairs back then."
Aaaaah, the days before "Intellectual Property" became synonymous with "classified."
I hope the land around you yields, a crop like all the other fields, and then your waiting might make sense...
Next week I'm going to try and retrofit an iPod in my A Team lunchbox.
Simply the use of the word retrofit should ensure slashdot status!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I still like the MP3 player knitted into an altoids tin better.
Now, integrate an iPod into a travel mug. Now we are talking. Or a Swiss Army Knife.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
with ipods coming in pretty small dimensions these days.. there will only be more of this... anyone remember the ipod ski jackets apple sold a few years back.. those were cool.
And if he tries to turn it into an iPod, he's gonna be in for a fight!
I'm absolutely sure he'd put the iPod inside that box ONLY to shoot the photos.
He'll NOT likely carry it around and feel cool about it.
I'd just shoved my iPod up my ass. Does that also qualify as a cool mod here?
"An enterprising hardware guy" Not really that enterprising. I looked over his site and all he's done is put some memory modules on a christmas tree, build a MAME cabinet, and put a camera in a tube attached to an overly elaborate mount to tow behind a boat. Like nobody has done any of those things before.
This would have been much cooler if he had added one of those Ipod speaker assemblies, so that he could have music comming from the geiger counter. Maybe even record a geiger counter and play it every once and a while.
..........FULL STOP.
I used to work around nuclear reactors and monitored them for years using equipment similar to the model in the article. The desire for such a mod is alien to me as I can't imagine ever voluntarily carrying around one of those things.
Before the time of commonplace computers, the Nuclear trained personnel in the Navy were the geekiest ones on the sub or ship. Carrying around a geiger counter was tantamount to wearing a pocket protector and sure to earn few jokes from passing workers.
At least he has an iPod with a built in detector for the presence of the RIAA.
Great, a Guy-Girl case mod for the iPod!
w00t
...all over the small towns of the Nevada desert.
Next thing you know they will be selling iPods in the Bay Area retrofitted with seismometers.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Remember the good ole days when we all use to play music on our iPods? *sigh*
It's an interesting change for sure, but isn't the point of an iPod and it's inherent size to be able to take your music anywhere? Unless you're taking a tour of the local nuclear facility, exactly where else would you want to carry around such a thing? The last thing I'd want to lug with me when I go out for a job is a large box flying back in forth in my hand. I don't know about you, but I would think security would be stopping me left and right wondering what I'm doing with such a device.
You: "Dude, I'm listening to my music!"
Officer: "Sure you are, now spread 'em!"
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
There are even more iPod fun moddings, for example a case mode made from an old German police flashlight, the RetroPod: fitting an iPod into a Sony Sports Walkman, the Altoids shuffle case, a fashion modding, the Wringley's Juicy Fruit iPod Shuffle mod and more.
Here is a comment from his site: "I looked at your progress photos for this. Amazing work. Impressive, most impressive. =D What exactly does it do?! Looks exciting!" Projection of average viewer first thought: "OMFGWTF this thing is freaking awesome!!!1!!1!11ONEonE! What the crap is a geigermajigger?" These are the same people that bought the N-Gage.
Is that an iGeiger in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
There is nothing to see here. It's an I-Pod in a box. All of us that have an I-Pod have seen it before. It is how it came from the store.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Those old geiger counters are demanding big bucks on ebay these days.
(Nostaliga buffs?). What a waste, that is an EXPENSIVE ipod case!
It would have been a lot cooler if it had been a working Geiger counter in an iPod case.
....but I'd LOVE to see him explain it to the TSA officer at the airport or subway.
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
"Actually, I should have mentioned this, I made sure there is enough room under the iPod to store the Charger/Cable and Earphones in the GeigerPod when all closed up. Makes it nice to travel with."
Guy's got a good sense of humor.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Oh yes! Now this is my kind of article. 37 pictures and 37 lines of text. It's going to be a good day. Where's that guys who always says "I read /. for the pictures" when you need him...
looks like a ghost trap to me. btw: refering to ghostbusters in case you haven't seen the movie
Ok - undoubtedly there are homosexuals the all over the world scrutinizing and evaluating the quality of this mod. But the majority are panning it. Despite the remote, it is still not homosexual enough to be called gayware. Rating - 2 thumbs down: not nearly fabulous enough to be gay.
Nonetheless, you are right - the original vintage Geiger counter was supremely gay: rough and rugged and *full* of beans!
I tried it at home and I keep getting the annoying clicking noise everytime I turn it on!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Maybe I'm a purist, but I don't see the point in destroying a working CDV-700 Geiger to simply put an iPod inside. There is a lot of room in there if you move the batteries around, it would be possible to do this and keep it functioning.
:)
Even scarier: That thing still has a live test source on the side of it (or it should). Scarier than that, if he removed the test source, what did he do with it!? I wonder if he even know there was radioactivity there, and it was probably old, decrepid, and dust from it poorly contained.. I think those things had a bit of Cesium or Uranium on the side. I know mine still pegs the meter.. (haven't used it in a while and it was last calibrated a few years before that so I don't remember the exact mr/hr) Not the strongest source in the world but generally I think it is good practice to avoid messing with radioactive substances that are poorly contained no matter their strength.
If the counter still worked, it might be neat.. but then, why repaint it so that no one knows what it is? That CD Yellow and characteristic shape is pretty recognizable to anyone familiar with the civil defense counters, and generally the 700 is the most desireable because it is the most sensitive (the other models were used to measure background radiation).
I used to have fun taking mine to flea markets and "Scanning" over everyones tables with a clip-board in hand, making "notes". Probably get me arrested these days, but funny as hell then
GHOSTBUSTERS!!!
When theres something strange
In your neighborhood...
Who you gonna call...
Ghostbusters!!!
I knew there was a reason god created the IPOD. So i could listen to Ray Parker Jr's masterpeice.
... that JavaMoose probably has some really cool bongs?
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Dude, he needs to get out of his parents basement and get a life!
Just kidding. Amazing mod for an ingenious design - a Geiger Counter. HIRE THAT LAD STEVE JOBS!
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
I know of one consumer electronics manufacturer, Philips, that still includes the complete schematics with (for example) their high-end HDTV's.
It's mostly just a matter of money I guess, not secrecy.
Growing up in the 70's and 80's, our generation had the Sony Walkman, and a hundred similar portable music players. They were very cool, and very trendy for a time, but eventually the hype wore off and they became fairly mundane and commonplace. Fast forward (pun) a decade or two, and we get iPod. The iPod seems nothing but the obvious, logical progression from older tech to newer - when I say that, I mean that when I first became aware of the device, my reaction was "hm, that was pretty predictable".
So what's the point? The point is, that while the iPod has a much larger music capacity than a cassette player, it's still just another portable music player.; it looks, feels and acts much like any other device of this type. The portable music 'revolution' occurred some twenty years ago - I know, I was there, and I lived it. And in kind, we had our stacks of duped cassettes - the 'free music' of the day, if you will.
In all seriousness - can someone please explain to me why the iPod merits such earth-shattering cultural status? To me, it just seems like "more of the same", rather than some fantastic new paradigm. What warrants the unstoppable media and cultural coverage of this reborn technology?
Please take this at face value - these are earnest questions.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
I had a mini-itx system in an A-Team lunch box which I used as a firewall (also did NAT and had a built-in hub). It has since been replaced with a linksys wireless router that does the same job. However, I do miss being able to say "I pitty the foo who tries to hack my network".
>
> Soon, you too will be "glowing" with your musical talent...
What the hell's wrong with this thing? It only plays remixes of one track by Kraftwerk!
iPocalypse Now: Redux
Have I officially become a grumpy old fart or has the quality of hardware hacks that reach the front page dropped dramatically?
What's next? A wireless router "retro-fitted" into a fishing tackle box with retractable CAT-V connections?
Wait... that sounds useful...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Now the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is detectable.
I modified my old refrigerator into a new case for my Rio Nitrus. A little big to fit in my pocket, true; but cool.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I can just imagine a playlist with
such hits as Kraftwerk's "Geiger
Counter", and "Radioactivity" on
that beast for the proper mood.
I've been thinking about retrofitting an iPod into my ass. Do you think that would make a good slashdot story?
- prediction-outtake in the "everybody loves Eric Raymond"
What you are talking about has precedents, http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/eler-2006
series (don't judge them by this link, please, they have some good material)
The item shown in these pictures is not a Geiger Counter. It is a Victoreen. The difference being that a Geiger Counter measures the number of decay incidents in a given period of time, whereas a Victoreen measures the amount of radiation exposure in a given period of time. The difference being that, while a Geiger Counter may be a useful tool for knowing that there are radioactive emissions are occuring (and at what rate), it is not nearly as useful as a Victoreen for quantifying what type of dosage one is receiving and what the effects might be on the human body.
If you've got a cool old geiger counter with a GIANT case and you want to put you're ipod in it, you should: A) Add a really big battery. B) Install the 200 GB Ipod Nano Hack. C) Try and maintain the cool vintage appearance D) Use Silver Spraypaint and crappy design to make it look like something off an episode of the original Star Trek. (Think William Shatner) Apparently D) is the correct answer.
I guess some people have got waaaaay to much time on their hands.
Now the cool thing, of course, would be to use the iPod as the audio portion of a Geiger counter—maybe write a meter-face and radiation level recording app for it. It turns out that modern Geiger counter circuits are readily available as finished devices, in kit form, or even as a do-it-yourself project. (The suggested schematic is a bit retro: with a more modern boost converter you could conceivably get it even smaller and simpler.) I don't have the time right now, but someone should give this a go and let us /.ers know how it went.
Unlike most PC case mods that remove shielding and cause radio interference, this one actually adds shielding! Not that iPods are likely to be poorly shielded.
An interesting mod would be if someone gave an IPod the ability to detect radiation.
As an example of great vintage case mod ideas, I was going to post a link to Audible-Ism, but the site appears to be down, and I can't even find any of his Ebay ads. This is a bit worrying, as I am a huge fan.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I would be much more impressed if he had made the ipod into a geiger counter. You could listen mp3s and hear your exposure counts at the same time!
Then he pointed both readers to the side of the old gieger counter, and both beeped with activity (far faster than the other pre-packadged samples he had). He went on to say how they kept radioactive samples on the side to both test and calibrate the sensors. They had to be near 50 years old, but they were putting out about twice the activity of the 5 year old samples.
Makes me wonder if his model had one, and if so, if he bothered to remove it. I doubt the radiation is harmful even in extended close-range contact, but methinks the hard drive won't appreciate it too much.
Dear Javamoose,
I mean it in the best possible way, in admiration of your creativity and technical acumen...
but ...
YOU ... FUCKING ... NERD!!
Over the top and outta sight, she's outta here, baby :D
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
I would bet this thing is great to listen to The Firm on... Well I'm not uptight Not unattracted Turn me on tonight Cause I'm radioactive Radioactive
Ipod turned into geiger counter
So now the RIAA masks itself as radiation? We're doomed!
...rip out its guts, add random crap (um, isn't the whole point of an ipod that it's portable?) and paint it too look like a 2nd rate prop from star trek. Wow, I'm excited.
Mods which ruin a WORKING antique and/or rare instrument are no cool regardless of the coolness of the mod itself.
I have actually been looking for a Geiger counter for years, and the first time I hear about someone having a spare Geiger counter it is gutted to insert a bloody iPod?!?
Although geeks usually are not so much into woodworks, I would say that retrofitting modern gadgets into wooden boxes,
made remotely with the same care as a musical instrument or decoration item, would score many more geek points than just fitting
one item into another box after some gluing and soldering.
This guy has actually silenced his noisy PC by putting it into a wooden case, so it could even be of some practical use to use wood too!